Well done Tim!. It has the old Verlinden style finished look about her. Lovely tonal work on the side panels. A very nice crisp finish to a very lovely looking model.
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Very nice build Tim, lovely job!!Comment
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Nice one Tim, that's a great build and finishComment
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Just caught up with this, Tim. Lovely job! The paint looks great, the track building looks terrifyingly fiddly and laborious! I'd agree that including a figure would've been a great addition, but knowing your skills in that department he might totally eclipse the rugged beauty (!) of that bizarre bit of machinery!
I'm creeping towards finishing my own miniature army, and thinking about what to do next, so it's interesting to see where the painting experience I've gained from that exercise might translate across to other related disciplines. This thread shows it can be done (although I appreciate you've got tons more experience in these related fields than I have).
As an aside, looking at those tow cable screw tensioners - what were they thinking? There MUST have been a reason for using something more complicated and costly than simple clips or hooks for mounting them, mustn't there?
Could it be that, if the final bit of slack in the cables wasn't taken up by a screw tensioner, then stuffing the beast in gear and lurching suddenly backwards might snap something? If not that, then what? (Disclaimer - I have ABSOLUTELY ZERO expertise in any of this heavy metal stuff, real or modelled!)
PaulComment
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Cheers Paul. Track building using the tape and Contacta method (as shown by John R I think) was actually quite simple. It helped that these were link and length, so I didn’t have to put together every single link, but like everything, it pays to think through the job several times and solve problems in your head before you do it.
As to what you do after your army, you could do another army, or think about what you actually liked best while doing the current one, and do something that builds on that. Larger scale figure, or perhaps a bust, maybe a simple scene to build on your excellent base work, or something completely different like a ship or truck? That’s the best thing about this hobby, at the start it’s all bare plastic and imagination.
Regarding the cables, I really don’t know. The only thing I can think of is that they were already available so that’s what they used. They can’t exert tension, the cable is not even taught, and they are simply too weak to use as tow points. John R might know, but I don’t LOL.Comment
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Excellent result on this KV Tim........and I already stole your track recipe......used it on my SU-100s......mind, it did not have the same effect but it was deffo better than what I have done in the past. Thanks for that. Soooo......now it's back to the "wee" people for you!!
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Cheers Rick. Yep, the track recipe works best when there’s a bit of texture to play with. i always think pencil lead looks as much like metal as anything else, but it can’t be handled much so it’s only useful on display models. I use paint on the little blokes….and I’ve already got some on the build bench at the moment.Comment
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I wonder if that screw adjuster (aka binder) is useful when the tow cable is used to replace a track, as it would give a finer adjustment than just driving the sprocket?
PeteComment
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I don’t know either, but Soviet tanks are not my speciality. It also comes across as an unnecessarily complicated solution to me, but what I do know is that the KV is riddled with unnecessarily complicated solutions due to the unique circumstances of its design. There was a very good series of articles about it in Military Modelling 15–20 or so years ago that included a full development history, whose principal ingredients appear to have been ambition, engineering students, envy and politics … That could explain those fasteners
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To expand on that last comment a bit, I went and found the first of the article series: in Military Modelling Vol. 34 No. 9, ca. September 2004. The following is paraphrased from there.
The KV was designed by Josef Yakovlevich Kotin (Жозеф Яковлевич Котин), whose ability to ingratiate himself to his superiors was greater than his skill at tank design, and as a result, he of course ended up leading tank design bureau SKB-2 at the Leningrad Kirov Factory (LKZ) when the man who had been in charge there, O.M. Ivanov, was denounced and shot in 1937. He also was put in charge of SKB-1 at the Voroshilov plant.
Kotin liked heavy tanks, but wanted to make one that was better than the T-35. SKB-1 designed the T-100 and SKB-2, the SMK, both of which were very big, heavy, and multi-turreted. Stalin didn’t like these at all, calling them “Myur I Merlits” tanks, after a Moscow department store that sold a wide range of guns and apparently telling Kotin to get rid of a turret.
While SKB-1 and -2 kept tinkering with their designs, Kotin set five engineering graduate students the task of designing the single-turret tank that Stalin wanted. They did this by essentially making the SKB-2 design shorter and with only one turret, but when it was presented to Stalin, Kotin credited the actual engineers of SKB-2 with the design instead of the students. He also proposed naming this design Klim Voroshilov after the People's Commissar for Defense of the Soviet Union at the time, who just happened to be his wife’s godfather as well.
When the students, now graduated, designed a transmission for the tank, one of Kotin’s protégés, Nikolay Dhukov, told them to use an existing one instead — basically one designed for a Caterpillar agricultural tractor two decades previously, and nowhere suited for the weight of the KV. But because Dhukov had his eye on Party membership, this was the politically savvy move, so there was to be no discussion about it. Dhukov then went to the designer of the KV’s engine, because it was not really strong enough for the heavy tank, and told him to get more power out of it without bothering to ask about the wear and lifespan that would result.
In 1939, the KV and another new design, the A-32 (to become the T-34) were tested together with the T-100 and the SKB and a few others; predictably, the KV was better than the T-100 and SKB but inferior to the A-32. It did show a lot of teething troubles, including such things as an unreliable engine (what a surprise), air filters that were all but useless, and the impossibility of reloading its 12.7 mm machine gun without removing the gun from its mounting …
Not from that article, but if I’m not mistaken, Kotin had also managed to force the A-32 prototype to travel to the test site in Moscow under its own power by road, from the factory in Kharkov — something like 800 km — to try and make it fail. This because he hated the Kharkov design bureau with a passion, and did everything he could to make their life difficult, and to prevent their designs from competing with his. Quite possibly because he could see they were better.Comment
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Great info Jakko!!! It's all about rivalry, prestige and Bumskie politics from back then and to trying keep Stalin happy without paying with your life..........
I think Pete's onto something and the binders could have been used to bring the tracks together to drive the last track bolt in place. Sort of like the track jacks we had for our M-113's when we changed track shoes and such.....
Prost
AllenLife's to short to be a sheep...Comment
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