ICM T-28 Soviet Medium Tank (2007)

[Bill Plunk]

Build log for ICM kit #35031 T-28 Soviet Medium Tank with Model Kasten replacement tracks, Jordi Rubio short 76.2mm barrel, and Eduard PE detail set (originally designed for AER kit).

[Bill Plunk]

Since the Char has entered the "hurry up and wait" stage in painting/finishing, I decided to start work on ICM's T-28 multi-turret kit. Smaller brother to the "land battleship" T-35, its got that massive appeal to it and I'd picked this kit up dirt cheap at my LHS during a clearance sale and thought its time had come. I will be building this one up with the short barreled main gun and markings for one of the Moscow parades with the frame antenna using the kit supplied markings.

Upon opening up the kit however, it became readily apparent to me that some "pre-build" steps had to be done first. The sprues were liberally coated with greasy mold-release agent so a bath was in order. Filled up a sink full of warm water with dish washing soap and allowed it soak for about 30 minutes.



Then pulled out all the sprues and laid them out on paper towels to dry overnight.





Close examination revealed that my kit shared a common problem that I've heard about with both this and the T-35 kit, the lower hull plate was warped, so I drafted one of my wife's salad bowls that was large enough to take it and filled it with hot tap water and submerged it with two thinner cans to get it to, hopefully, straighten out. It may take a couple of treatments to rectify though as it was pretty badly warped.



Actual build will begin in the morning once everything is squeaky clean.

[Bill Plunk]

As promised, construction work began on this beast today. I was pleasantly surprised to see just how much of an interior, particularly in relation to the engine bay, that the kit has included.

Step 1 deals with the engine assembly and has an entire sprue dedicated for this purpose. The assembly is pretty straightforward although there aren't any locating pins/holes on any of the parts, so it's necessary to have a good tight fit before glueing. The instructions are a little bit vague, showing the engine partially assembled with some parts called out for on the assembled side with arrows while the other side shows it disassembled in an exploded diagram. Everything generally fit well, although some minor sanding/trimming was necessary on the mount supports to get them to fit properly up against the engine block, it was easily taken care of with a squre tip needle file after some fiddling. The engine is fairly well detailed given the age of the kit (sprue molded copyright says 1997), and the assembly for this step consists of 18 separate parts, providing a nice representation if you decide to leave the engine deck hatches open later in the build. I'm not intending to do that, but went ahead and built it up since it will be useful in helping with the floor plate alignment later on.



Step 2 deals with the driver's compartment and this area is far more basic in detail vs. the engine. The floor plate has a suggestion of a diamond pattern that's not very well executed and the compartment consists mainly of a driver's chair, the two stools for the MG turret crew, a gearshift, and two traverse handles and that's about it. Strangely enough, the arm rests of the chair do have very nice hinge/bolt detail but it's lost to view once installed.



Step 3 continues work on the engine interior, dealing with the assembly of the transmission housing. The housing is two parts, again without any locator pins, and the alignment needs to be just right along all sides. The installation of the housing on the front end is a little tricky, the wheel portion has a very shallow connection point to the housing and the part that goes on the end of it, D9, needs to be aligned up properly with the piston arm like part D12 on the top for it all to fit well. I ended up trimming the pin on D12 down considerably to get it all to fit right, but it worked out in the end.



Step 4 is where some of the fun begins, it deals with the construction of the two MG turrets and first directs you to install the MGs along with their ball mounts into the turret front plates. The assembly includes a ring, part C11, that is designed to trap the ball mount and leave it positionable, but it doesn't quite work as the ring is too small to fit over the ball and sit flush with the turret plate, so I just glued the ball mount into a fixed position with some liquid glue and did away with the ring entirely. I also drilled out, very carefully since there's not a whole lot of surface to work with, the muzzles of the MGs with a #80 microdrill. The guns themselves are rudimentary in detail but provide something there if you decide to open the turret hatches. The guns themselves are extremely fragile and easy to break, I had one snap off cleanly right at the join plate into the ball mount and had to be creative with the glue to get it back in one piece.



Once that was drying, I worked on the turret construction. The turrets are each 2 halves that have very large sprue attachment points in awkward positions that require some very careful cleanup, particularly the point that attaches where the front plate needs to join. There are also very large ejector pin marks on the inner surfaces of each half, so if you do display it open, those will have to be dealt with. No locator pins or holes are provided, but the fit was very good front to back on both turrets, I used regular glue for the joins and then followed it up with some liquid glue to make sure the seal was nice and tight.

Once that was set up, I installed the roof and front plates. These also had a very good fit but even with the use of liquid glue a slight lip/gap still resulted at the join lines that needed to be dealt with. Checking the references on T-35 turrets (same turret as the T-28 ), shows that these turrets were all smooth cast single-piece so I sanded down the lip as much as possible and followed it up with some putty to fill in the remaining gap and still retain the curvature of the turret.



Both turrets were given the same treatment and their hatches and lifting eyes installed. The hatches have some nice exterior detail but are totally blank on the inside and also have a sink mark to boot, so I elected to close up both turrets and leave it at that.



Overall I've been pleasantly surprised so far with this kit, there's been very little flash and the mold lines, when present, have been small and easy to deal with. Too early to tell if this carries over across the rest of the kit, but so far, so good.

[Bill Plunk]

Managed to squeeze in a little bit of time today dealing with Step 5, although I didn't complete the whole step, just the first sub-assembly. This step has 3 parts to it, the first of which deals with the main turret roof and its details. This is also the first area where the PE set begins to come into play, so some extra time was required for that as well.

First up the turret roof is a single piece with some of the detail already molded on. There's a ventilator cover that's solid and needs to be removed to take the PE replacement part that's open. Some quick work with the sprue cutters and it was gone.



Both the commander's and loader's hatches are also fitted in this step and the square loader's hatch turns out to be a bit larger than the cutout provided. I used a sqaure needle file to sand down the edges on the cutout instead of trying to sand the hatch itself and after some back and forth, was able to get it to fit in the designated space with a tight fit. The commander's hatch consists of two parts, one of which is a ring that fits around the molded on based very tightly, almost a snap fit, so careful placement initially is key as there's not much to grip onto to adjust it. Fortunately I'd placed it more or less in the right alignment and only had to adjust it slightly. The second piece is the hatch cover itself, this also had a nice tight fit with only a slight adjustment to the base of the MG support required to get it to fit.

I decided to use the Eduard PE parts for the MG mount and the multi-part arrangement required some care to get all the parts to fit together properly. The end result is a little shorter than the kit supplied parts, causing the shoulder rest of the MG to sit on top of the hatch instead of the ring like it should, but I'm not too worried about that considering the mount was designed for a different kit and still provides better detail than the kit supplied items. I also added some of the PE details to the MG itself and drilled the barrel out with a #80 microdrill bit. The mount to the commander's ring needed to be cut down and sanded smooth to accept the PE mount, but other than that it wasn't too complex of a switch out.



This is all the work I'll get done on this for this week since I'm travelling again and will be away from the bench.

[Bill Plunk]

Managed to return to this one today after a 3 week hiatus due to the need to finish up the Char, travelling, etc.

I finished up Step 5 by assembling the turret. Once again, it's in two halves with no locating pins, and the roof as a separate drop-in insert. I decided, for convenience sake, not to assemble the turret floor and ready rounds just because the hatches are closed and the assembly instructions are somewhat vague on the exact methods required...so rather than bother with it, I just left it off.



Step 6 deals with the 76.2mm main gun assembly and I elected to go with the long barrel version since I have both JR barrels, the short barrel might come in handy on a future T-35 build. This meant making the right selection of mantlet and face plates for the turret to fit the correct gun based on the instruction call outs of course. The barrel had a tight fit due to the weight ring at the end of the muzzle and the opening on the kit part had to be widened just slightly to take it but it fit snugly at the breech. I left off the interior breech details since all the hatches were closed, the detail isn't that great and is essentially just there to give the impression of a breech should you choose to open the hatches and nothing more. The exterior plate shows some stress marks, this is due to the extremely tight fit over the mantlet and recoil housings, it had to be coaxed into position carefully not to snap the thin sides but a little back and forth using a blunted toothpick eventually got it into position.



Step 7 completes the turret assembly with the installation of the main gun and both the front and rear MG mounts. The fit on these is only average, both required some putty work and finesse with liquid glue to get them installed. The rear MG mount also needed some sanding on the interior edges of the turret to get it to fit properly. The main gun mount was a little better, only requiring some additional finger pressure and strategic use of liquid glue to get it into place. I drilled out the MGs using a #80 micro drill and fixed the mounts in position since I couldn't keep them for settling at crazy angles if left positionable.





Next up will be the hull construction and dealing with the warped floor plate. The turret has molded in location points for the feet of the antenna support arms. I still haven't decided if I should go ahead and install that or leave it off...seems that there are examples of both cases, but both options have challenges...if I install it, the challenge of the antenna feet being square vs. a rounded surface will have to be dealt with...if left off, then the mount points on the turret will need to be puttied and sanded. Decisions, decisions!

[Bill Plunk]

Picking up from yesterday's efforts, I focused in on the lower hull and dealing with the warped lower plate. Step 8 provides the first means of addressing the warp in the form of the engine mount and transmission. The transmisison links up with the engine, and while the transmission is raised on two support posts, the engine mounts directly to the floor, providing a central point to "lift" the sides somewhat. Since all the hatches will be closed up, I was more concerned with using this leverage to get the hull to be square than with neat assembly, so a liberal dose of liquid glue was used along with finger clamp pressure to get it all set in place.



This only partially solved the warp though. Next step in Step 9 involved building up the hull sides and sponsons. I started by gluing the front and back but leaving the longitudinal areas that mated with the floor unglued. Once those had set up, I worked my way down the hull using liquid glue and finger pressure until it was all glued down and allowed to set up. As a last step, the interior square firewall panel was inserted and glued down. It wasn't molded perfectly square and I had to remove part of the front of the engine for it to fit properly, but it served its purpose as a stiffener for the hull sides.



Once that was taken care of, the sponson sides were installed on both sides and again each one was carefully secured with liquid glue to further remove the warp and keep the whole construction as square as possible.





While the interior bulkhead bows slightly at the top, a test fit with the hull top shows it won't interfere with the final assembly when that time comes.
Step 10 begins the next nightmare...and it's made even worse by how deceptively simple it looks at first glance. This step deals with the installation of the suspension and running gear and I confess that I didn't get all the way through it tonight. I started with the actual suspension itself, this consists of 6 posts per side to hold 4 wheels each. The posts are designed to sit inside a socket with a semi-circular support that's very shallow, allowing some play to the final position. I placed them all in position, tweaking their alignment until satisfied, then flooded the posts and mount holes with liquid glue and then up-ended it so it would rest evenly with the hull and let it set up.



While that was going on, I started in on the no less than 48 roadwheels required for this vehicle. These have a nice level of detail but each has a rubber rim...so a quick test fit showed I could install them and still get sufficient clearance to use a circle template later on, so I will install them in place. Before that could happen though, each one needed to have its hub cleaned up to be accurate and remove a sink hole as well as have the seam removed. After 2 hours, I'd had enough and left the actual installation for another day.

[Bill Plunk]

I decided today to take the plunge and try my hand at soldering. The Eduard set provided some very nice front fenders as a replacement for the molded on styrene items and there was just no way I could use them with CA and get the right look. I'd been intending to jump into the world of soldering for some time now, and since I had all the equipment to hand figured this was as good a time as any.

The replacement was going to require some substantial surgery to accomplish. The fenders are integrated into the hull top and so some careful trimming and sanding was necessary to get the right dimensions to accomodate the fender. I used my normal sprue cutters to remove the bulk of the fenders and then cleaned up with sanding sticks for each side.



I annealed both fenders using the gas burners on the stove in the kitchen along with locking tweezers, this allowed for them to be curved into shape and also bent up a bit both during soldering and afterwards when mounting to give it a beat up look. The fender hinges/bolt plates weren't quite the right dimenstions for the ICM kit, so some cutting and adjusting were needed there as well. I used some gap filling CA to place those and will correct the slight gaps that remain with some putty before painting.



With that accomplished, I stepped outside the instruction step pattern to join the upper and lower hulls together. The instructions leave this off to the very end and having done a dryfit, I knew that some traction was going to be needed to get a good join and all the stuff on the hull in later steps would just get in the way. A combination of regular and liquid glue were used along with several good strong rubber bands to get the two together.



Returning to the work with the roadwheels/suspension, I mounted the sprockets using the MK included adapter that would allow the sprockets to freely turn once installed. As I've discovered with most of the parts in this build that have round holes or pins, the dimensions of the sprocket hole didn't quite match the diameter of the mount arm and the sprocket opening had to be enlarged to fit corectly. The MK adapter was then glued in place on both sides.



To round out Step 10, I assembled the 8 return rollers after sanding down their mold seams and installed them dryfit onto their mount arms. The idlers and their tensioning appartus were also installed and the roadwheels dryfit as well to see how it would all look later on. I opted to not install the roadwheels permanently so it would be easier to paint and detail them, but man there's a lot of them!



Moving on to Step 11, the upper hull details began to take shape. I hollowed out the siren horn with a drill bit and also elected to install the headlights in the stowed position. They have very nice interior detail including hollow lamps, but lacking any suitable lenses to put in them I decided to stow them. The driver's two-part hatch was also installed along with the left side hull panel and rear light, also with its cover in the closed position. The light had a deep sink mark in it that I filled with putty to correct. The engine access hatch was assembled with its armored ventilation cover and this one was a tough fit to get into place. The hull cut-out doesn't match the hatch dimensions so some careful trimming on the long edges of the cutout as well as careful sanding of the hatch itself were needed to get it to fit properly. The twin exhausts were also assembled and installed with their prominent join seam sanded down on the exposed rear face. Last but not least, the hull storage box was assembled and installed. The box is a multi-part affair and the fit of the box panels wasn't very good, requiring some putty work to correct as seen in the pic below.



I also started in a little bit on Step 12. One of the disadvantages of trying to use a PE set made for the AER kit on the ICM is that many of the parts aren't the same dimensions, so some of the parts end up with great detail but are unusable as a result. Fortunately one of the parts that were useable were the radiator fan cover hatch doors. The kit parts are molded solid but the Eduard parts create the slotted open look perfectly. I was very pleased that at least this part was usable even though the side grills for the same section are not, it made it worth it IMHO to get the set just for this. It's a 10 piece construction and fits perfectly in the designed space without any modifications required.



Tomorrow will likely see the completion of the remaining construction steps and maybe, just maybe, the start of the painting process.

[Bill Plunk]

Made great progress today, continuing on with Step 12, the remaining upper hull details were added. I had a sort of comical incident which plays up the reason why PE sets are made for specific kits. I wanted to use the Eduard replacement intakes because the kit supplied items were just solid molded pieces. I dutifully soldered the frame of one together without comparing it to the kit part and when I went to test fit my latest joyful soldering creation, I discovered that the Eduard part is substantially larger than the kit part. A quick check of the references showed that the ICM part is the right dimensions, so the AER kit must be waaaay off in this area.



I was able to at least use the grill portion from the PE set, although it had to be cut down to size, it's still better than the molded on piece.



The rest of the details went together pretty much the same as with the opposite side. The storage box again needed some trimming and putty help to get it to the right shape and fit and I installed the fan grate cover as well. I'm leaving off the pioneer tools for later, but I did install the spare roadwheel suspension after opening up its holes (a common occurrence throughout this build) wider to be able to take the roadwheel hubs. The side panel on this side had a worse fit vs. the opposite side and some putty and sanding were necessary here as well to close up the gap.



Step 13 brought the moment of truth. Since I've got the T-35 on order (couldn't resist!), I decided to save the antenna mounts and frame antenna since it's in very good condition in case I need it for the T-35. This meant that I needed to fill in the molded in mount points around the turret with putty. The straight antenna and pot were installed on the roof of the turret to complete the step.



Step 14 calls for the installation of the three turrets and since I'd been forwarned about the fit, I made no assumptions and dealt with each turret individually. The main turret needed two modificatoins, the first being the turret ring in the upper hull requiring the "ear holes" to be widened to take the ears on the turret bottom. The second modification came in the form of having to sand down the inside of the turret ring itself. The dimensions are close but not perfect and to allow the turret to tun freely, several passes with a large sanding pad were needed before it would fit. It's snug but not forced and can turn easily enough.

The MG turrets had a different problem. This time it was the turret diameter that was too small to fit on the rings on the hull. Their ear holes were also widened and since the turrets are small, I used a sharp #11 blade to trim down their inner diameters until each one would fit and rotate properly.



This step also calls for the installation of the tracks, since I'm using MKs, these will be done later. This was also the point where the instructions wanted the upper and lower hulls to be joined and I'm glad I didn't follow this path...way too much stuff all over the place to get knocked off, banged up, etc. in the process of trying to get a good join. Last but not least, the rear hatch for the transmission was installed and for some reason, the hinge points weren't completely formed, so I used some styrene rod to scratch a semblance of the missing parts.



Step 15, the final step, calls for the installation of the front tow pintles and the tow cables. The method for installing the cables is a true feat of contortionist tendencies, calling for the straight molded tow cable to be bent and shaped around the MG turrets and connected up to the tow pintle. I tried mightily to get it to work and after about 30 minutes of struggling, gave up and just installed the tow pintles in their "normal" position.



Tomorrow's a three day weekend for me so I might just get some painting done, have to see.

[Bill Plunk]

Sometime back a couple of weeks I'd started on the MK tracks and worked on them off and on while watching TV in the evenings. I've found that's the best way to work on them, just a little here and there to break up the tedium! This particular set of MKs behaved a little differently than what I was used to. The jig provided in the kit took 10 links at a time, which was nice because each track run consists of 118 links. The jig was a tight friction fit with the links so it held them nice and firm, requiring a slight snap pressure to seat them properly but without damaging the links. The tracks are handed, with different types of pins for the interior and exterior sides of the track and MK includes different pins on the same post. The whole process begins with the tracks and pins in this condition:



Each of the links needs to be removed from their sprues and attachment points cleaned up. I use a series of 3 glass bowls for this, 1 bowl to hold the sprue debris since I'm working in the living room and my wife doesn't appreciate bits of styrene all over the place, 1 bowl to hold the sprues once 118 are counted out, 1 bowl to hold the removed links.

The jig is loaded up and the #1 pins inserted first. I touch just a spot of glue to the top of the pin and insert, seating the pin firmly.



Then the handle is twisted off and the #2 pins inserted in the same way on the other side. I've found this works better than trying to use sprue cutters although a little bit of cleanup is sometimes required with a #11 blade once all the pins are nice and set up.



Each new run of 10 links is joined to the preceding run using the same jig and pin method.



After doing this 11 times, the tracks are assembled and fully workable. The MKs had more detail/definition than the kit supplied links and even though there's so many, it's worth it for the flexibility in painting/finishing and added detail IMHO. The set has an extra 5 links and pins left over (not counting the pins needed to assemble the final runs together), so a little margin for accidents/errors is there, but not much.



Finally of course, there's all the debris left over from the process!



With that out of the way, I started the painting process as well. The vehicle was broken down into components with the turrets removed from the hull along with all the return rollers, idlers, and sprocket outer halves. I left the roadwheels in place for the first paint stage but they'll come off later on for their own detailing process. Two of the return rollers were stubborn and actually ended up breaking off their support arms in the process of removing them...I may have gotten some glue on them earlier and not realized it since none of them were force fit for the dryfit test a week ago. The spare wheels for the fenders were secured to a strip of masking tape to make it easier to paint them and it was off to the garage for some time with the AB.



I laid down a primer coat of Flat Black to get a nice even coverage over the whole model and to spot-check the many areas that had received putty and sanding treatment earlier. The Flat Black is perfect for this and it revealed several areas that had looked just fine earlier but once painted were less than expected. The area that needed the most touchup were the frame antenna mount marks on the main turret. All of them needed more putty and sanding work to get them to the right look. I also needed to touchup a couple of areas on the smaller MG turrets, most noticeably was a very large semi-circular mold mark that showed up in the outside light plain as day but somehow I missed at the workbench. These will be repainted with Flat Black tomorrow before the painting process continues.

I also started the track finishing process, priming them with Flat Black and then following it up with Non-buffing Metalizer Gunmetal. I've found this is the best way to insure the laquer-based metalizer doesn't attack the styrene and weaken the pins, causing the runs to fragment. I had a bad experience way back when the first time I used MKs where a set of tracks literally fell apart in my hands so this precaution is always a must for me since then.



Tomorrow the touchup will be done and then an overcoat of Deep Yellow applied as the foundation for the green coats to follow.

[Bill Plunk]

The weather today was absolutely gorgeous and perfect for painting out in the garage. I certainly needed it, spending the full day working on the paint finish and enjoying the whole time.

First up after yesterday's Flat Black primer coat was an overlay of Model Master Deep Yellow enamel thinned for the AB and applied with the gray Aztek nozzle (the General Purpose one) at about 25 psi. Since the overall finish is a green tone and the Russians used yellow chromate or similar paint for their primer, it helps IMHO to approximate a closer finish color plus adds some underlying variation for the green tones to work with overall. For this step, I dismounted all of the roadwheels and was once again reminded that there are 48 of them (54 counting the spares!) when it came time to paint their rims using a circle template and lots of patience! Thy were painted on both sides to allow me to choose the best ones later on to be "outward" facing vs. the others that would be "inward" facing. Somewhere along the way I managed to snap off the rear MG barrel for the main turret but fortunately was able to locate it on the concrete floor after some very careful searcing on my hands and knees. Knowing that there are many more opportunities to come for it to be broken off again, I stuck it on a piece of masking tape and will attach it later.






Next step was to apply an overal coat of Green Drab as the base green tone. This was done with the same nozzle and pressure but with much finer passes, slowly building up the green on the different surfaces and areas and interacting a bit more with the yellow undercoat. Once again all 54 wheels were given the similar treatment...and again, I managed this time with one of the MG turrets to snap off yet another MG barrel, which also got stuck to the same piece of masking tape for later reattachment.






The final step for the day came in the form of spot applying some Olive Drab to lighten/vary the green tone some more. This was applied at 15 psi using the tan nozzle for the Aztek and very close up, barely depressing the trigger to add the paint in various places. The idea was to produce variation and retain some of the earlier darker green as shadows, etc. From the few color photos that I've seen of KV-1's and 2's it would seem that the early war/pre-war Russian tanks were painted more in an olive vs. the standard "Russian" tractor green so that's the type of finish that I'm aiming for with this color application at any rate.




Next up will be the reattachment (permanently) of the roadwheels, fitting of the remaining details and tools, etc. before the weathering process begins in earnest. At some point I know I'm also going to have to sand/scrape the paint away from the turret rings on all 3 turrets so they will be able to be mounted and rotate properly since an early test fit revealed the need for this as well.