RC Tank Warfare community hobby forum

HL KV-1 with applique armor removed, replacement KV-2 turret fitted and additional stowage added.

Fantastic job Lert One of my favorite tanks

That sir looks gooood . Great job

Lert,
A great job! on one of my favorite pieces of armor, ever! ;o)
regards,
Painless

c.rainford73 wrote:One of my favorite tanks

PainlessWolf wrote:one of my favorite pieces of armor, ever!

IKR? Nothing like placing a fridge atop a clumsy chassis and sticking a big sewerpipe out the front :3 Daddy wants big boom.

Thanks for the kind words y'all, this is the tank I have that required the most work.

Very nice. Can you list your updates and tell something about the basic quality of the kit?

Soeren wrote:Very nice. Can you list your updates and tell something about the basic quality of the kit?

Sure.

The basic quality of the kit is like any other Heng Long, sturdy plastic, crude detail. Their KV (unboxing here) is one of their older models, but if you've ever had a Heng Long you know what to expect. The good thing about this kit is that the KV is a crude tank, so HL's crude detail works well here, it doesn't get in the way. The turret is an aftermarket one by Torro (unboxing here). The turret is of similar thick plastic as the tank, though it seems of a slightly harder type of plastic. Mine was the IR version with recoil, but to my shame I've not been able to get that to work yet.

The work I did on the hull was as follows:

- Removed the turret
- Removed the applique armor that the KV-1 'ehkranami' is fitted with, 10 pieces in all
- Removed the smoker, which exhausts not through the tank's exhausts, but where the KV chassis has its rear light
- Filled in the holes, sanded the cut-off nubs, did general filling-and-sanding
- Painted the rear light in, I might replace that with an actual light some day

The work I did on the turret was as follows:

- Twist-and-lifted off the German cupola (which now sits proudly on my Pz IV, whos cupola had become damaged some time ago)
- Cut apart the KV-1 turret, cut out one of the two periscopes and surrounding roof plating
- Sanded a thin layer of plastic off of the bottom of the cut-out periscope and roof plating piece to fit the hole in the KV-2 turret roof
- Moved the top hand rail from the right turret side from the side to the top where it belongs
- Glued in the periscope piece, filled in the remaining space with milliput, including the holes where the hand rail was fitted to the side of the turret

After that it was just general painting, weathering and adding stowage. I used Vallejo Air Olive Gray (71.096) for the base coat, Tamiya Gun Metal (X-10), Vallejo Air Rust (71.069) and Tamiya Flat Black (XF-1) for some of the weathering and Vallejo Black Wash (73.201) and Vallejo Sepia Wash (73.200) to finish it off and dirty her up. The tracks, turn buckles and tow cables were painted with Vallejo Air Gun Metal (71.072) and given a light once-over with Vallejo Air Rust. I still need to do some pigment for mud / dust on the tracks / lower hull, but that'll come when I have the spare time to.

I have no historical information on whether Olive Gray is the historically correct color for this tank, but since the Russians of that era basically used whatever was on hand and looked halfway right, I'm sure it'll do. The stowage was painted in various colors from my paint bin and given both washes too.

I had to take very good care with the positioning of the right-side periscope, since it's mounted slightly back and outward compared to the left-side periscope. This is its historical location.

Hope that answers your question.

I've said it before, I'll say it again, the KV 2 is so ugly, you can't help but like it.

That's quite a transformation You now have a tank that appears to have solid metal lurking under the weathered paintwork, and not some moulded HL plastic. That's really quite an achievement, and one we heartily approve of here. It's also one we seek to emulate

Well that was a conclusive answer. Thank you.