Academy T-34-85 Korea War Vignette 1/35 scale

[dmminiatures]

Hi guys, I am starting this new thread to share my in-progress photos of the vignette. There are many elements that make up this vignette and its going to be a long one so please bear with me.

How it Began
It all started with a innocent plan, of course. Last year I bought the Academy T-34-85 Korean War version and went straight to building it. Then half way through it I got distracted and left the build aside. During the hiatus, I came across some interesting images of the 1950's Korean War in Instagram and Pinterest. So then, once I came back to restart the project, I thought about creating a small vignette (15cm x 30 cm) with the T-34 as centerpiece.

Mission Creep
I call this project as a good (or bad?) example of mission creep in a scale modeling project. As I was developing the idea, in my research I saw some pretty good examples of knocked-out T-34s. Then I came a cross a set of images that showed some US Marines checking out a burnt out tank. I thought THIS WAS IT! So my next step was a matter of getting the figures and found two boxes, each from MiniArt and MasterBox that I think I could play around to fit my needs.

After a couple of sketches, I realized that the small vignette needs a bigger base. Aside from the T-34, I will be adding the figures, a Willy's jeep, perhaps a tree and a telegraph pole. I took the liberty to make a wider base measuring approximately 20cm x 40 cm.



I think this one of Academy's best yet kit. Fit and mold is excellent with some notes.

• - There are options to make a late WW2 and Korean War variant.
  - Includes two turret types for the build option.
  - A nice choice of decals to reflect the build options.
  - Semi link-and-length plastic track but way better than rubberized version.
  - A reasonable cast mold effect for the turret.
  - A small photo-etch fret is included for the engine mesh.

[dmminiatures]

Initial Construction Stage
At this early stage, my thoughts was to build a straight-out-of-the-box build. That was something I really regretted. Because as my objective changed, I was technically hampered by the fact that most of the major parts and accessories were already glued in place. This would haunt me later on as there is a limit of what I could do. The penalty would cost me time and energy to do work that was unnecessary if I had planned my build better in the first place.

Here are some of my findings about the kit.



A nice touch from Academy to include the suspension springs. The are static, by the way. The only time anyone will ever notice these is when the T-34 has its wheels taken off for maintenance. Otherwise, these interesting details will be completely hidden behind the road wheels.


The basic hull looks like a T-34. The hull includes a molded-on fender on each side of the hull, but attachable front and rear mud guard. The surface detail included a cast iron texture for the driver's hatch and hull-mounted machine gun. In my opinion, the texture was too uniformed and would require some work to make the feel and look more random.


The Korean War version of the turret. Again, commenting on the cast iron texture, they looked too uniformed and repetitive, very different with reference photos. Knowing this, I decided that working on the texture to make it more random-looking was mandatory. Plus, I need to get rid of the glue seams that will made the whole model look toy-ish.


There were very few things to complain about the kit. Academy had done a good job at keeping ejector pin marks hidden and out of sight. Unfortunately, I found plenty under the commander's and loader's hatch. I required little effort to clean them with regular Tamiya putty.

[dmminiatures]

Advance Construction Stage
This stage happened after I left the T-34 in the box for a few months, and found interesting photos of the Korean War that included destroyed and burnt out tanks. With all the know knowledge and references as a placeholder in the back of my mind, I set forth in making modifications to my T-34.

The Burnt Out Tank
The new objective was to re-create the appearance of a burnt out T-34 tank. There are an abundant of photos that showed destroyed and blackened T-34s, such as these image below. It's good to know that I need not to be worried about not getting enough references. But the sheer option of what I can possibly do because of these references made my head spin!









The next step was to decide on a particular look for the model. The look could come from one photo or combined from several photos. I need to figure out if I can technically make the look that I chose to represent? are there limitations? what would be a win-win option?

[dmminiatures]

The Breakdown of a Destroyed Tank
The first order of business is to tear down what I have built. I figured that to make my T-34 interesting but still within my skills and supplies limitation, I had to take some flexibility and combine a final look that represent several T-34s from different photos.

On top of that, I improved all cast metal texture. I did this by brushing adhesive thinner onto the surface, which would soften the surface. Using a stiff old brush, I attacked the surface, make damage to it, and alter the pre-molded on texture.


The altered cast metal texture. now it looks more rough and random.

In a nutshell, here are the actions that I undertook as my first step to make a destroyed T-34, and following that are some photos to support the list.

• - Cut the fenders completely off from the model
  - Throw the auxiliary fuel tanks, but leave some behind
  - Dent the auxiliary fuel tanks that are left on the hull
  - Scratch built auxiliary fuel tank attachment points on the hull
  - Bend some of the handrails that are attached to the hull
  - Cut away the rubber on the road wheels to look like its burned out
  - Drill holes in the front sloped armor to represent a shell penetration
  - Leave the access door to the engine compartment slightly opened

Fenders out. With the fenders and mud guard out of the way, I added 0.2mm sheet styrene in its place.


Taking off the mud guards meant leaving a hole on the rear end of the hull that I had to fill with 0.5mm styrene. They were later filled and sanded.




These two photos shows the T-34 with the missing mud guards, fenders, auxiliary fuel tanks


In absence of the fuel tanks, I scratched built the attachment points using sheet styrene and copper wire.


Installed the photo-etched engine mesh cover. (sorry about the weird photo)

[dmminiatures]

Road Wheel Issue
As I have seen on several images, T-34 tanks that the North Korean were using had composite set of road wheels, which is a mix of old and newer types. I happened to find the perfect kit from MiniArt No.35227.





This is a perfect set to support my project in two ways.

• 1. The late type road wheels. I can combine this with the Academy's wheels and make an interesting composite look
  2. The single plastic tracks. I can combine this with Academy's single and pre-jointed tracks to make interesting options for a tank with blown off tracks.

How a composite road wheel arrangement might look


As with any other after-market parts, the MiniArt road wheels do not fit into the wheel hub. the Academy's wheel hubs need to be sanded down significantly in order to have the MiniArt road wheels to fit.

[BlackSheep214]

Looking forward to this one. Good eye on noticing the different types road wheels. I didn't even notice them in the photos until you mentioned them in your post.

[dmminiatures]

Thanks BlackSheep. I actually didnt want to bother myself with the different wheel type. but the more I saw T-34 with these composite mix, the more I was convinced that the practice was common-place and I bet a large number of them or like 8-out of-10 tanks would have these outfit.

Looking forward to this one. Good eye on noticing the different types road wheels. I didn't even notice them in the photos until you mentioned them in your post.

[dmminiatures]

Painting the T-34
The main paint I used was Tamiya acrilics. I didn't have any specific Russian Green color so I was forced to mix some bottles together. My sources were Tamiya XF-5 Flat Green and XF-4 Yellow Green mixed in a 2:1 ratio. I used Mr. Leveling Thinner with a dash of Tamiya retarder to improve the flow.


Prior to painting, everything was primed with Mr. Surfacer Black 1500




I use a cheap circle template ruler to paint the road wheel. This expedited the masking effort by 10 folds!!


An overall image of the T-34 assembled but not glued. This gives you an idea of the cast iron texture that looks better and the composite road wheels.


Kudos to Academy for providing a single molded 85mm gun barrel. Even though its plastic, it's still better than having to glue two-parts.


A close up photo of my attempt at putting the plastic tracks together using Tamiya Extra Thin. Parts clean up was minimal. The single tracks are used on the driving and sprocket wheels, while the lengthy pre-molded tracks are for the top and bottom of the road wheels. All I had to do was to put them together.

[dmminiatures]

Decal Disaster
There aren't many decals to work on for the Korean War version. My initial choice fell on this one, of a famous tank that was knocked out by a US Army general and a band of soldiers behind enemy lines.


The complete wordings were spread out onto smaller separate decals, a great idea as I don't need to cut them into smaller pieces.

At first, I was very optimistic about the decals. Given that the turret had a cast iron texture, and I had my trusty Mr. Mark Setter, this is also Academy newer kits with newer decals. I have done these kind of things before and was confident that the outcome was that the decals would blend in seamlessly.

As it turned out, it was a total FLOP. The decals was thin like in newer Academy kits, but they were NOT Cartograf. and did not reacted well with toughest solvent, which is the Mark Setter. in the end I was so frustrated that I decided to go for a simpler decal option: a tank No. 229.



The findings was a "I-told-you-so" moment. There was no way to use the decals as this one also behaved the same way as the former. So the only way out that I could have think of in the first place was to paint the turret number. and that was what I did using Tamiya XF-2 Flat white.



I could have solved the decal a while back if I had thought about painting them in the first place!

[dmminiatures]

The Weathering Process: Phase 1
This has always been the most fun part of any armor builds. One of my objectives is to make a very dirty T-34 as if the tank had gone through everything to get where it is now (wrecked and burnt out).


The lower fuselage section covered with dry mud and dirt of every kind possible LOL. The mix is fine sand mixed with gel medium and AMMO pigments.


Showing a similar angle but with the road wheels installed, to give you a contrasting image of areas that have been weathered and those that have not.


Soot were applied near the exhaust pipes using AMMO black pigment.


Other effects include imitating dried mud, dust, splatter, streaks, and spilled fuel. paint fading and discoloring


An image showing the full hull and turret after weathering.