Trumpeter 1/35 KV-1 Mod1939

There's a forest of cocktail sticks in my future, I think. 

I had to steal a fender support from the KV-2 kit to replace an improperly cast one in this kit. Luckily the Eduard KV-2 set replaces them. 

I've already painted the periscopes in their deep covers. I just hope I remember to mask them before priming! 

Those PE grills are my first PE construction. They've come out okay, I think. Apart from the fact that the ends don't reach all the way to the hull, that is. The headlight (attached the the tape in front left) is not a good fit in the hole in the glacis plate. It sticks out on it's bracket, so I'm in two minds whether to attach it now and break it off a few times or just leave it until later. 

Primed with a bit of preshading. 

That headlight is a real pain to attach. small, round, fiddly and next to no plastic-to-plastic contact. I placed a bed of takk below where it sits, then postioned it in the correct facing. Only then did I use the glue. Three different applications of three different types of glue before it finally stuck! 

The plate that fits across the tail light is a PE construction. I was relived to see that the real thing usually got bent and battered beyond recognition before falling off entirely. I couldn't go wrong, really! I'm just hoping I can easily slip the tail light lens under it later on. (Edit: I couldn't do it easily. It was bloody difficult). 

Either that's the wheels ready for painting, or a pair of new Warhammer 40K vehicles. Not sure which. 

Never put these thing on your chair. Not ever. You may notice one of the return rollers is missing from the left hand jig. I did find it again. 

One and a bit cans of AK Interactive Russian Green later. 

I think I've found my Thunderbird 2 colour. 

Yes, I did remember to mask the periscopes. There's a little bit of sponge stuffed in each of them as well as the end of the metal barrel. 

I thought it would be easier to wash, filter & weather the wheels before assembling them. I'll also have to paint the surfaces in contact with the tracks, but I may do that after assembly as it will be easier to hold them. At this point, I got tendonitis in my right wrist. Everything came to a crashing halt as I couldn't even hold a pair if scissors, never mind use them. 

10 months later...Finally the tendonitis has gone & I can get back to it! 

Shading is now done & I've loosely placed the wheels on one side. 

Hmm, still a few tide marks to eliminate. 

You can clearly see one of the tide marks on the front of the right fender. 

It's starting to look like a KV-1 now. 

This laser printer makes sure you top up the paper tray! 

If this had any more tide marks, there would be seaweed too! 

I've found that you can still correct any errors a couple of days after doing the job. 

I've found taking photos a great way to find any issues. Much better than the naked eye. Well, better than my naked eye, anyway. 

Not so much shaded as under lit. It was snowing outside. Very Russian front. 

Auto focus. Such a great help! 

Ah, that's better! I'm not looking forward to painting the reflector in the headlight. It'll probably take around 40 coats to get it right. (Edit: nope, just one coat did it). 

Best shot so far. Just realised I shouldn't have put the towing eyes on yet. 

It's a turret. Not much to add to that. 

It's a dimly lit turret. 

That's better! Now you can see the tide marks. 

Last one for this session. Had to crop myself out of the photo! I do like the PE grills. 

Filter added to fade some of the exposed paint surfaces a bit. 

I gave the model a quick blast of gloss varnish before adding the filter. This makes it easier to spread the filter to where you want it. That's how you get the slightly blotchy effect. 

I've just noticed that there seem to be a couple of holes missing on the sides of the hull for locating the tow cable hooks. 

Next step will be chipping & rusting. That's the fun part, where you start to tell a story. 

This is what happens to your ride when you give the PBI a lift! 

Chipping done with the sponge method. I don't dip the sponge in the paint, I use a brush to paint the sponge, then dab it on the model. You can control how much paint is in the sponge much more precisely. 

I might have been enjoying myself too much & got a bit carried away! 

Next step wiil be a little light rusting here & there. 

Basic rust has been applied & the road wheels assembled. Whole has been goven a new gloss coat & the wheels a first coat of weathering for the test fit. 

Reminds me of a well worn Dinky Toy. 

Not easy to get good photos with the gloss finish. Mind you, I have the same problem with my head nowadays. 

One for the J-lo fans out there! 

I wondered if the rust on the turret periscopes was a bit overdone, but it doesn't look too bad now. 

The gloss is AK Interactive gloss varnish spray can. 

Next up: streaking!. Not me, (don't want to frighten the horses), rust, grime, etc. 

Humbrol rust wash for the general rusting & a coat of AK semi-gloss spray. 

Thankfully the brighter rust patches have been toned down a bit by the subsequent coatings. 

Trust me, there is some rusting below the fenders, honest. 

It looks better in this photo than in real life! 

A good view of the turret top. 

Fuel spills, and plenty of dirt next, I think. 

Stay tuned for the next exciting episode! 

AK's Summer Dust set was used here. Light dust above, Kursk Earth below. 

You can just see that I've now opened up the hole on the hull sides for the tow cable retainer. This step was conveniently left off the instructions! Luckily, I've got the KV-2 also, so I opened the holes on that kit and used a couple of carefully fitted pieces of masking tape to transfer a "brass rubbing" from one kit to the other. Then it was just a matter of some careful drilling. 

I'm a bit surprised there are no resin replacements for the stowage boxes on the fenders, or at least some replacement handles. They are probably the weakest part of the kit. 

I'm waiting for my pigment to arrive so that I can apply some earth effects around the running gear. 

I'll be adding some light dust pigment to the top surfaces too later on. 

The exhausts will get a little rust pigment too. 

Not far off finished now. (Edit: probably a bit optimistic there). 

Between fettling the treads and assembling them, the Masterclub tracks took nearly a week to do. I still need to do a test fit to ensure I've got enough links. There are 86 at the moment, but I might need to add a couple more. (Edit: Three more, to be precise). Once I've done that, I'll mask the path of the wheels & dip them in burnishing fluid. At one stage during the track assembly, a track pin shot out of the tweezers and stuck to my eyeball. I expect it's some sort of rite of passage for tank builders. 

Add a generous loading of AK Sienna Soil pigment around the running gear to give it the well used look. TBH, my car doesn't look much better at the moment. 

Might need to do several applications to even out the effect a bit. 

Sent the tracks for a swim in AK Metal Burnishing fluid. I used a whole bottle and diluted it a fair bit. It seemed to take an age to, well, age them to this stage. The strips of masking tape are to protect the paths of the wheels along the tracks so they will remain relatively bright. Not sure if it will work, never having tried this before. 

One thing I found was that it was impossible to get all the bubbles out of the recesses, even scrubbing with an old toothbrush. I eventually settled for a second treatment of spot application of the fluid using a brush. It seems to have done the trick. 

Next step is to use some dark steel pigment where the drive sprockets contact the tracks, then work some soil pigment into the recesses. I'm sure it will all fall off again as soon as I handle the tracks. We can but try. 

AK's Sienna Soil pigment around the running gear & tracks. The track might want a bit more of a buff to restore a bit of polish to the raised points of contact. I also used a little dark mud colour around the sides & undersides of all the items that stand proud of the side to both add a little shading and the impression that the dirt may be a bit damp there still. It's a bit too suble to show on these photos, though. I sealed the pigment with matt varnish. Didn't repeat the mistake I made on the Skoda Howitzer & remembered to mist it over it instead of directly blasting all the pigment off! 

The masking tape is off & you can see where the steel wheels polish the face of the treads. It seems to work okay with a bit of weathering to tone it down a little. 

The drive sprocket has had some dark steel pigment added to the teeth. I used a 2B pencil on the inside face of the tracks along the line of the sprocket holes. I had tried the pigment there too, but it proved very difficult to get a decent effect. The next step is to get the tracks & wheels fitted. There is a mud scraper to fit just forward of the drive sprocket too. That will need weathering adding too. As you can also see, the towing loop retainer is now fitted. The "brass rubbing" method of hole placement worked a treat! 

Wheels & track now fitted. I began by fitting the inside halves of the idler & return rollers first, then wrapping the track around the drive sprocket and spreading the track to shape with several fingers and lowering the assembly into place. I broke the track on the first attempt. Then I added the mud scraper next to the drive sprocket and gave it a good coating of pigment. This hides the joint pretty well as it is pretty inaccessible and already painted & weathered. 

After that, I added the road wheels. There was enough slack in the tracks to get the track horns between the wheels, plus I could slip the track off the half-idler if needed. 

I used my aluminium cutting block as a stand to hold the tank on its side while positioning the tracks as I'd run out of fingers to hold it with. Finally, the outer halves of the idler & return rollers were added. 

It's starting to look like a tank now. 

I still have to do the headlight & tail light, MG barrels, tow cables & one item to attatch to the fender. There will then be some final weathering and a matt coat to seal it all. 

I'm thinking of putting this and the KV-2 on a simple diorama along with the tank riders I've got. 

I think the masking of the path of the wheels turned out okay and the sag of the tracks looks good too, even though I didn't make any adjustment to that in these shots. It's amazing how heavy the kit is with the metal tracks on. 

You can see the mud scraper in this shot. As you can see, there's a lot of plastic in this area. You have to fit the drive sprocket first, then the scraper, do any weathering required and only then fit the road wheels & outer return roller. You would struggle to access the scraper with any tool once it's all assembled. 

Lovely clear shot of the gun barrel. Thanks auto focus! 

A better shot of the track finish and pigment on the hull. 

I still have to add some pigment to the front & rear of the hull to match up with the sides, but I'll leave that until nearer the end of the process. 

Head & tail lights, MG barrels, tow cables, etc all added. Assembly is now complete. Getting the tail light in place was a nightmare as I'd painted it first & didn't want to damage that work. I don't think it's quite at the right angle but you can't tell anyway! 

The front & rear have had their dried mud applied & the horizontal surfaces have had a good coating of dust added. 

Smoke has been added to the gun barrel, co-ax MG port & exhausts. 

The towing cables each consist of two plastic ends and a length of brass wire which you have to cut to length. I wasn't happy with the idea of trying to affix the end of a braided wire to the flat end of the plastic part, so I cut the wire about 4mm too long & drilled out the flat ends of the end parts. By applying a dab of thin CA to the ends of the wire and giving it a tightening twist, the braid sticks in a fairly manageable way thus allowing you to more easily insert it into the drilled hole without any stray strands of wire. 

Fitting the cables & bending them to shape was done before even priming them. This allowed me to break the glued on ends off once or twice, swear a lot & the fix them without having to worry about the paint job! 

Those MG barrels are very fiddly. The gate is along the top of the barrel, not at the fixing end, which would seem more logical. 

You can just about see the work I did on the stowage box handles. They aren't the best bit of casting ever. 

Putting the AK Light Dust pigment on was easy enough, but it took about five goes with the white spirit to distribute it where I wanted it. I suppose that comes with practice. 

The towing cables were primed in black, rubbed with AK Dark Steel pigment, washed with Humbrol rust wash & tidied up with white spirit. They were dusted once fitted in place. 

I held off polishing the protruding parts of the tracks too much as it occurred to me that Russian roads were more dirt tracks than anything, so they wouldn't have had that much contact with hard surfaces. 

All that remains to be done is a matt varnish overall to seal it & dull everything down. This should also blend the effects together a bit better. (The headlight only needed one coat of silver, much to my surprise). 

The final matt varnish has been applied. 

As I'd hoped, it seems to have blended the weathering effects nicely. 

Needless to say, the last coat has made the turret hard to turn. 

The headlight has come out better than I expected. 

The streaking on the turret side is still nicely visible too. I thought it might have got lost under the other weathering. 

That MG on the turret rear looks very vulnerable! 

It's taken about 14 months from start to finish, but I lost many months in the middle from tendonitis. 

I'm always happy to hear any advice or suggestions from the more experienced out there. 

I was aiming to model a battered veteran of Barbarossa. I think I've managed that okay.