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Michael van Kesteren  Whilst on holiday in London I thought I’d drop in on the RAF museum in Hendon. As luck would have it the tube station closest to the museum is next door (literally) to Hannants. I knew this, of course, and was making the day a double feature. I dropped in and had a look around and ended up exiting with a bag full of goodies, amongst which the Dragon pro-armor series T34-76 1941 model. Now I’m not the world’s biggest authority on Russian armour, but I reckoned this would be a cool little thing to build… What's in the box? The kit comes in several sprues (sorry, I’m writing this post-construction and the remains are on their way to be recycled..) of Dragon’s familiar grey styrene, a pair of Dragon’s special styrene tracks, a PE fret with an exceptionally delicate engine screen, a length of metal cable and a (relatively) large sheet of Cartograf decals. There are at least a dozen different plain green versions, a white with cross hatch version and a rather fetching camouflaged version. Also in the box are some extremely nice slide-moulded road wheels that are pre-cut from whatever they were mounted on. No tedious slice-file-sand-gluing of hundreds of wheels here! On closer inspection we find the interior for the turret! Very nice if you want to pose the big, clamshell hatch open. Overall the moulding looks very crisp and free of any sink or ejector pin marks. The surface detail looks great, especially considering the size of the thing. Let's get Busy! Construction is pretty straight forward, as I’m used to with these Dragon kits. I built the Stug IV early production a few weeks before and was pleasantly surprised. I was so confident with the detail on that kit that I covered it all with apoxie sculpt zimmerit. Anyway, back to the T34. The fit is generally good but I had a few fit issues. The interior needs some attention. It all goes together straight, but there are a few misalignments. To be honest I rushed it a bit as I was more curious to see what it looked like than to put it together with displaying it in mind. I was keeping the lid closed on this one anyway. One thing that struck me is that space is at a premium in that tiny welded turret (the whole turret is the length of a Tigers barrel). There are a few gaps on the turret that I ended up closing by painting on some liquid glue and using a dentists tool. The joins are mostly on weld seams you see. A gap on the glacis was closed with an apoxie sculpt weld seam. The tracks seem a bit too tight. The instructions lie right at you with nice saggy links, while in reality they can be used by Angus Young on stage. This resulted in the return roller axles snapping. I decided to drill through the hull and install a solid axle made from a spare track link from my 1:15 RC Tiger. I could then adjust the track slack nicely now. I ended up with a pretty satisfying droop. Now there’s something I never thought I’d say… Er, yes, anyway.. The tracks do look nice, but they’re soft and look a tiny bit rubber-band like. Not in the way Hasegawa does them, but more in the way that they look stretched around the drive sprockets. I did try to keep them tension free, but alas. Ah well, its not that noticeable and I’m still happy with the result, which is most important. The great thing about these tracks is that they’re made from a flexible styrene, which means they’re very easy to fix and attach to the vehicle using the normal styrene glue. Naturally when I’m halfway through a build I decided to do some minor, but awkward, modifications. I decided to slice off the front and rear left mudguards, half of the front right and replace the right rear with a scratch built white metal foil version. Thankfully all went well. I kept all eleven fingers, both left thumbs, didn’t shear the tracks or snap any road wheel axles. Great! What’s next? The ‘stuff’. With ‘stuff’ I mean spare tracks, tools, cables and so on and so forth. The cables are lovely items that are made from a length of metal cable and separate loops. The spare links displayed a few pin marks that were cured with some putty. Now in retrospect they might have supposed to have been there, but as I said, I’m not the biggest authority on Russian armour. This also meant I missed that the rear tail light was omitted on the instructions (as are a few other bits and bobs), so I can now have the excuse that the one on mine was shot off.    Pretty colours! I thought I’d try something new this time. I started by spraying the entire thing Tamiya XF-1 flat black. I then used Tamiya XF-26 Deep green and misted it on, concentrating on the centres of panels and working my way outwards. After this it looked a very funny dark green which was not in the least bit attractive. I then mixed a 50/50-ish mix of XF-26 with XF-57 buff and used that to brighten it up a little. I freehanded everything and didn’t really bother with masking. Thankfully my airbrush gives great control, and I kept in mind that I was going to weather it. It looked a lot better now (but still very green). I sealed that with some Xtracryllics gloss varnish prior to decaling. The decals went on without a hitch using micro-set and sol. The decals were sealed in again with a little more Xtracryllics gloss (though this was brushed on quickly). I find that on such a small scale a gloss coat is vital for a wash. It keeps it nice and tight in the nooks and crannies. But first: to do something about the damn green-ness of the thing! I gave it a filter of a drop of naples yellow in some turpentine. That’s better. It just takes the edge off. I used a drop of lamp black and burnt umber in turpentine as a pin wash. Excesses were brushed downwards and look nicely like rain streaks. Following all this was a drybrush of white with naples yellow. Pure white tends to make things look frosted over, besides, green fades to a yellowish colour. Here and there I added a few more streaks by touching the hull with a tiny-tiny drop of black which was brushed downwards with a damp turpentine laden brush. This was then all sealed in with a few coats of Revell flat varnish from their airbrush ready line. This made the decals blend in so well that they look painted on. The tracks have been left flat black so far. The tow cables and spare tracks were painted a mixture of XF-1 flat black and XF-64 red brown (roughly 50-50). The exhausts were painted Revell no. 36 (I think), a dark rusty reddish brown colour. Dirty Talk Now we have a T34 that looks fairly factory fresh (try saying that after a few pints..), we can start making things look second hand. I used a yellow pencil to put a few scratches on the hull for some general wear and tear. Putting metallic coloured scratches on can quickly look out of scale. I’m a huge fan of Mig weathering pigments. I chose to use, quite aptly, Russian earth. First I dabbed some Mig acrylic gel on the places I wanted some thick, caked on mud. This was mainly under the front lower glacis and under and around the rear. I then stippled on the Russian earth pigment until the gel couldn’t absorb much more. It gave a great natural look. I then used a small dab of pigments in some denatured alcohol. This gives what looks like muddy water and after applied it dries like that to. This was applied to the road wheels, hull sides and tracks. Some was also applied dry on a soft brush to blend in the mud to the hull. I used the same wet application of Mig standard rust on the tow cables and spare tracks, then spots of light rust. The trick is to apply it in a very thin wash, because the cables are used fairly often. The same was done to the spare tracks and exhausts, though in a slightly thicker mixture. To finish it off I used a soft pencil to put some shine to the track contact patches and a few spots on the hull where there’s a lot of traffic, such as the turret edges and also added a few last drops of black oil wash on the engine grates, around the fuel tank filler caps and the wheel hubs.      All in all this is a great little build with a few nice challenges to the average modeller. Its nicely proportioned and looks great when fully weathered. Highly recommended. Michael van Kesteren currently (very) lives in the Netherlands where he is an engineer (also very currently).  copyright©2005 ausfwerks |