1/35 T70M early Miniart

[cantara]

Hi all,

While working on the KV2 I started this one more as a side build, a tiny one compared with the massive KV2, and a first build that will sport a winter camo scheme

Overall a good kit, plenty details and fair molds quality. Straight forward assembly, will fast track through it to the winter camo paint job.
A relatively simple geometry, limited preshading only a bit of color modulation mostly on the turret and bigger parts of the upper hull.
Also at this stage I thought it useful to rough in some sparse bigger chipped areas as well as limited highlights. The plan was to apply the next white color layer, hair spray and washed out, and get some variety from the previous layers showing up through the winter camo...





Cheers,

[cantara]

At this point I sealed it with a layer of varnish, applied the hairspray and the white... a bit too tick... Turned out not such a great idea as the varnish was not completely dry. The white was peeling like a banana almost as a second skin... back to square 1 You may see some samples on the lower hull where the tracks will be although due to what I suspect was a lesser amount of varnish the end result was not that bad... will deal with it later.

Second approach was in a more controlled fashion, working little by little, sponge applied white and the green base color, and brush corrections, much more time consuming, but at the end I believe a not so bad result?

















BTW, the beast in the background dwarfing the T70 is the KV2...

Cheers,

[cantara]

Hi all,

Next on the winter camo were some general dark wash, sepia pin wash, reinforce specific areas of the white camo to increase the contrast, some sponge and brush painted chipping, white highlights on the smaller details and some edges, and finally some streaks and accents for flavor.

Please enjoy the pictures





















Cheers,

[Coen]

That's looking properly battered Calin. I like the way it looks.
I build that kit along with a KV-1 just a few months ago myself. Just out of curiosity, what did you think of the miniart T70? Did you have any trouble with it?

[JayCub]

Looks great in winter white Calin, I found mini art to be quite fiddly and this is superb, as Mike mentioned I also would like to know what you thought of this kit
Tom

[cantara]

Mike, Tom, tanks and I am glad you like it so far

To be honest I jumped in this build in a rush without doing any research, neither on the T70 background or the available kit manufacturers... I even delegated the task of finding the kit to my wife and when she showed me a shortlist I quickly picked one

The kit no is 35025 and, now that you both mentioned this issue, I tend to believe that this might be a MA product upgrade. It looks a repack for sure as it comes with a set of 5 crew in winter uniform, I remember this extra being the reason for choosing this kit.
Although I can't go as far as to say that MA may have upgraded their molds, I can tell you I found this kit brilliant in its simplicity and clarity of the assembly sequence. Very smooth and easy to build up to the point of stealing the fun out of it. Plastic quality also quite good, no injection marks or molds seams. No need for putty or other filler either, so far the various parts joined together following the real life model joint lines... but I did miss a weld seam on the front edge of the hull in my build...

Other than this, the hatches have some provisions to allow either closed or open fixed assembly. No interior details apart from the main gun and turret machine gun.

Hope this helps, I'll include couple of shots in the next update detailing the box art and the brochure.

Cheers!

[gustavlekstal]

I love this kind of work!!! Update!!! My favorite tank in the game coh2. Think you have a fan here.

[UKguyInUSA]

Awesome wear and weathering.

[cantara]

Hi all,

This build ended up on the shelf of doom almost 2 years, main reason being the awful tracks the kit came up with... i recall the links were so rigid and fragile to the point of crumbling when detached from the sprue...

No wonder when one of the other days i stumbled upon a new set of workable tracks from Miniart.
The links snap together fairly easy tough the connections are still fragile...
As such i decided to resume this build, below are couple of shots with one track mounted and the other one in progress ...

Cheers

[cantara]

Hi,

Finally with the tracks mounted and out of the way i could advance this build a bit.
Still few steps to do... but at this point is starting to take shape...
Please enjoy the shots

Cheers

[cantara]

Hi guys,

Just some minor update, added the finishing touches on this one, pictures below... enjoy.

Cheers,

[Bissyboat]

Excellent work!