M48 - Finished

The tracks are bare and there's no weathering, but I'm at a point where I want to declare this little project finished. I'm quite happy with the "chipped paint" experiment, using AK Interactive "Heavy chipping".

I left the front idlers detachable, so removing and painting the tracks at a later stage remains an option.

Originally made to be 1/35 scale, it turned out to be rather off-scale, so later re-issues were called 1/40. You can't really blame Revell, since this kit was made in 1959, when the M48 Patton had only been in service a few years. I can imagine information wasn't as readily available as now and perhaps the blueprints even still classified?

If you want to use the bridge only in a diorama or something, that part IS compliant to 1/35.

Price : €21

Number of parts : 252

Time spent : 15.5 hours

Project completion time : 40 days

Paint : (Vallejo)

• Black primer
• Olive drab (71.043)
• Dark seagreen (71.053, the planks on the bridge)
• Natural steel (70.864, details + layer underneath chipped planks)

Other : 

• Vallejo gloss varnish (used a thick coat on the pistons, so there would be no friction at all)
• Alclad II klear kote (semi-matte) as a varnish
• AK Interactive "Heavy chipping"

Below is a video demonstrating the kit to be fully movable. The bridge halves are pulled open by a spring, that appears to have just about the right force (it could have been a tad stronger, but I'm not complaining). Remembering that this kit is over 50 years old, that's quite an impressive feat.
Important to know : there is NO piece of white string. /waves hand like a Yedi/

I found a nice video of the real thing in action. These are on the M60-chassis, but it's basically the same thing. Seeing these in real action, again brings to mind : impressive!

A few more shots from various angles :

Below a series of pictures showing basically the same as my video.

M48 - Chipping without hairspray

I decided to give the "hairspray technique" a go and add some chipping on the surface of the M48's bridge.

Chipping?

I've never added any chipped paint effects to my models. Many modellers do it as follows : basecoat your model, then - with a very fine brush - add little metallic (or whichever primer colour is supposed to be underneath the paint) chips and scratches to make the model seem "worn". This is actually the reverse of real-life paint-chips, but in small scale looks convincing.

Hairspray technique?

This technique reverses the process, actually mimicking what happens in real life with the paint. The idea is to prime your model in it's primer colour, be it bare metal or red primer. Allow to dry, than add a couple of layers of hairspray. On top of this, you add your base colour. When this has dried as well, make the surface wet again and start lightly scratching, e.g. with a toothpick. The water will "reactivate" the hairspray and flakes of your base colour wil start to come off again, the size of which depend on how much hairspray you used and how hard you're scratching.

Without actual hairspray?

I haven't tried it with hairspray, but AK Interactive has 2 products that serve the same purpose : "Worn Effects" and "Heavy chipping". The first to reproduce chipped paint, the latter to produce more heavily worn paint (i.e. bigger chips). I found it difficult to find either product in Belgium, but at the latest convention I visited I finally got my hands on a bottle of Heavy chipping.

Putting theory to practice

After a layer of primer (as always), I added a coat of Steel. When that had thoroughly cured, I airbrushed 2 coats of the chipping fluid. A week or so later (way more than actually needed. A few hours should be enough), I added the basecoat. The building instructions call for "Dust grey" (Revell), but I used "Dark sea green" (Vallejo).

Yet another week later, I found some time to continue. I liberally spread water all over the part, then started to lightly scratch with a toothpick. Light scratching turned into heavier scratching, as in some places the paint wasn't ready to give way.

Slowly but steadily, the result started to show. A comparison below between an untreated piece and a treated one.

And a picture of the final result below. If you think the planks are misaligned, it's because they're not glued down yet and just hastily placed on the bridge for this picture.

Further thoughts on this technique :

• Even though the product had completely cured - as well as the paint on top of it - it was easily activated and chipped.
  I could be mistaken (it happens), but with actual hairspray I believe you have to be quick about it before the hairspray cures. This product is very suited for modellers with less time.
• In some places, the base coat was very hard to remove, so I may need to either add another layer of hairspray or make sure the basecoat is really thin.
• Too hard scratching reveiled the bare plastic in a few spots. On top of the previous 2 suggestions, it may be a good idea to add a layer of varnish before adding the chipping fluid.
• To increase the idea of a really worn model, it may be a good idea to add rust spots and effects on the bottom layer, before adding the chipping fluid.

I really enjoyed experimenting with this technique. I hope it may inspire some of you to try it as well. The next step for me will be to apply it to a tank or something. Thanks for reading.

M48 - Painting

A lot more work has been done on the M48. Last time I stopped at that hard to figure out point where you pause construction and start painting. For the scissor bridge, this point has already been passed and some spots are very hard to get paint on.

There are a lot of workable hinges and joints. If you attach everything before painting, you risk running paint into the moving parts and restricting or even totally blocking it's mobility.

Everything is primed in black, my favourite primer. Nothing wrong with the grey and white, except the black just "feels" easier.
One day later, everything is covered in Vallejo "Dark olive drab" and construction can continue.

One annoying thing is painting the black rubber on all those road wheels. These had to be painted by hand. The alternative - masking - would take even longer.

Below is the result. Some post-shading on the larger panels breaks up monochromaticity (my new word for this week). Initial post-shading was with too light a shade of the base colour, so I went over it again with a mist of the base colour itself. Results are satisfactory.

Below is a shot of the wheels and tracks installed. The "tension idler" (front wheel, not touching the ground, used to give the tracks the right tension) is not glued in place, to keep the tracks easily removable for optional painting/weathering later. The return rollers are snap-fit, the rest of the road-wheels is glued, but they remain movable thanks to some fine Revell engineering. (Remember, this kit is from 1959)

The decals are nice and respond well to setting solution. I use MicroScale's Micro Set (the red bottle).

Below are two final shots of the result so far. All I need is more varnish to protect the decals and attach the tracks. The mechanism to deploy the bridge is fully working. By hand, I mean. No hydraulics are provided in the kit.

The last picture clearly shows the spot I missed during painting (top-middle of the bridge). I airbrushed it from a lot of angles, but I did it all in one go, so there's not so many options to hold a still wet piece to shoot paint at it from all sides. I will correct this in a last finishing session.

M48 - The suspension is killing me

My next project is Revell's 1/40 M48 Bridgelayer. It's one of their classic kits from 1959, making this one of their earliest releases. It's a re-issue of course, but still using the original tools. There is flash and ejector pins and seamlines all over the place where they shouldn't be, but for a kit designed 50+ years ago, I'd call the quality excellent.

You get a box FULL of plastic, but many of the parts have "fallen" of the sprues. This is partly because of the sprue layout (some parts of the sprues are very thin and just waiting to break or bend with the slightest handling) and probably also from handling the box a little too rough. (not me, the vendor)

One thing that does compensate for this, is that almost all the parts have the part number engraved, so even loose parts can be identified. Unfortunately, this number will also be visible here and there on the finished model, but I'm not about to go file it all off.

The bridge, carried around by the M48 to be deployed over gaps up to 60 feet wide, is a very lovely and intricate build. It's meant to be workable, so I'll have to be carefull during painting to make sure it remains like that.

One of the parts of the workable mechanism is a cilinder with a metal spring inside. Care must be taken during construction of the cilinder - consisting of 9 parts - as the spring will try to push it open.
It's possible to shorten the spring so it's equally long as the cilinder's inside, but I did not dare take this risk, so as not to reduce it's working range.

Now, on to my reason for this post's title. The tank's suspension has many parts, ALL of which require sanding in one or more points. There are 12 torsion bars with a big seam, 18 pieces to keep them in place, 10 return rollers (2 parts each) and 14 road wheels (3 parts each), making a total of 92 parts just for the propulsion system. I sat down in front of the television, sanding each part carefully over the course of an evening. It does look good, though!

There are big locator pins inside and in the back, hinting at some kind of extra modification. The drive sprockets are movable, as are all the wheels, so I'm guessing this kit was able to be motorized.

While looking for part 10R on a particularly wobbly piece of sprue, I accidentally misjudged the shape of the part and cut it in half, thinking it was a sprue attachment point. After realizing my mistake, I was able to glue it in place as good as possible, but traces of my error remain visible.

Below is a hint for storing small pieces, ready for assembly, but not yet being used. Don't just throw them in the box, they tend to disappear.

In the back is a big gap, again assuming for possible motorization, which is neither mentioned nor shown in the building instructions. I could leave it as is, but I'm going to try to fill it up and remove any trace of it altogether. I started by glueing a piece of sprue to the inside (black sprue, in case you don't see it in the second picture). Once fully cured, I'll add putty and sand flush (or at least try to).

I like movable parts and this kit is full of them, like the turrets seen below. The tricky part will be to keep them movable after they have been painted.