WINTER 23-24 KV-1 to KV-85 to KV-2 COMPLETED!

[Ecam]

Love the detail work. The roughed up circles are outstanding, reminds me of flame cut pipe. That bronze texture paint on the tracks is great too. I've used some textured spray paint in the past, and it looked nowhere as good as the tracks do.

[Ad Lav]

Have you tried putting the wheels on a drill to simulate the mud going round in a splatting motion?

Use a tooth brush or similar to flick the mud up the back etc.

[MrChef]

Mike I like your choice even better than mine for painting the plastic track! Consider the Krylon textured bronze rattlecan idea shared, borrowed, err stolen

[ColemanCollector]

Found that paint years ago when my wife brought home a cast iron patio table and said, "It's just a bit rusty. Maybe refinished in a bronzy finish?"
Got halfway through spraying it, stood back, and went...

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Mike.

[tankme]

So the little round circles aren't pegs as far as I know, they are bolts. From what I remember, they basically bolted all the armor together and then welded over the bolts filling in the bolt hole so that they didn't get loose. Heng Long exaggerated them in their molds. Early KV hulls had pretty noticeable bolt hole welds on the nose guard of the tank. Later vehicles, those "donut holes" are not or barely noticeable. You can see in the following page looking at the back of the turret that some of the welded holes are very visible and some are not. It really depends on how good the welder was filling the holes.

http://tank-photographs.s3-website-eu-w ... nland.html

[Mithras]

In some cases, when the situation was particularly desperate, they'd even -hammer- those rivets in, so yeah, the rivet fit could be all over the map in terms of quality.

[ColemanCollector]

Some most excellent information, Derek. Thanks!
The walkarounds of various KV's around the world sure show the huge variation in fit and finish.

Mike.

[ColemanCollector]

On to the Bol'shaya Bashnya (big turret), and it's big--which can be good and bad!

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This will go from a BB turret to servo recoil and elevation. This is where the big turret is nice. Following the method of Mr Imcq11, the bottom part of the bbgun is chopped off, and the internal piston used to move the ginormous 152mm howitzer back and forth.

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Best part of this build so far is being able to cut up a garden wind chime to make the adaptor for piston to the gun barrel. Hey, what's the difference between an onion and a wind chime? Nobody cries when you cut up a wind chime. I'm here all week...

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Waiting for some servo connectors, but no problems temporarily fastening the servo to the gun breech and visualizing the elevation connection--again shameleesly pirating Mr Imcq11's designs! It helps when you have a turret the size of a garden shed.

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And now the cosmetics of the garden shed. HL seems to have patterned their turret off of the sole survivor KV-2 in Russia. That means it has lifting hooks which KV-2s didn't get until they needed a turretectomy.

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Off go the hooks on the front, and on and then off with the back hook. Also chopped off the hatch outside grab handle while I was in the vicinity. And then the same woodburning iron welding of those darn donuts!

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After that comes the task of adding steel texture and welds--that's where the big turret ain't so great. I now know how Guderian felt looking out at the, wait for it--endless Russian Steppe!

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Texturing, texturing, and more texturing. Once that was over with, time for welds. KV-2 fit and finish seems pretty schwanky, so I tried to keep the weld lines neat and tidy. I really liked Herman Bix's trenching method to keep the welds low profile in areas like the vertical turret welds and the complex gun mantlet.

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I tried a no-namish epoxy putty and I like it.
Easy to roll, sticky as hell, and consistent in behaviour. And like Tamiya, it sticks where you don't want it to, and doesn't stick where you want it to!

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More to come...
Mike.

[ColemanCollector]

It helped speed the welds along using clear acrylic scraps to roll out the putty and actually see how thin it was getting. And the right welding equipment helps, too!

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The hull and bogies/idlers/sprockets are primed, and the turret is ready for primer. Next up, some of that sweet, sweet Russian green!

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Mike.

[Ecam]

Stellar work! That turret and barrel are huge and almost cartoonish. Love the home built tools, I may do some copying...