SPA Modeler

A bit more progress on this one over the past week. I painted the road wheel tires and worn bare metal areas on the sprocket & idler wheels, as well as getting a flat coat on over the decals and adding the driver and bow gunner hatches. I also added some support hold open struts for the hatches that Academy neglected to include….

I’m liking it!

Thanks Tom! I’ll get it properly weathered next week…

Very nice!

- Kari

Excellent! Looking forward to the weathering effects.

Kari and Lyle, thank you for the kind feedback! Lyle, it’s about to get some mud and dirt… tanks just don’t look right without that stuff… like a little kid playing outdoors

I started on the weathering today…

Tamiya panel line wash around the raised details… which this thing has a LOT of…



and then I started applying some AK Interactive dry mud around the suspension and adjacent hull areas…






more to come in the next day or two…

Very nice!

Thanks Mike! I wasn’t too happy with the mud here, so I went back and looked some reference photos of these tanks on Bougainville. Yesterday I added some more mud on the suspension and hull sides to better match what the photos showed. It’s getting near the finish line now…

Yesterday I added a coat of more dried looking mud all along the remains of the hull sides, then today I added a bit more of the darker mud over that to give a more of that stuff… then I did a test fit of the belt tracks… they were super tight at first, but I let them sit in the Arizona summer sun for about 5-10 minutes and that allowed them to stretch and fit just right…





The tracks are not linked and still need to be painted, but they are looking proper now…