Quickie: Takom M29 Weasel

[Guest]

The finishing line is in sight:

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All of the major parts are now assembled, I just need to add a number of details parts and it’s done. I had some trouble fitting the rear plate as well as the small front and rear decks, though nothing that some clamping and tape to pull them together didn’t fix. Once again, though, it’s making me think that leaving off the left side until you’ve finished the interior, and can then add the remaining outer panels, may not be a bad idea.

The windscreen is still loose, and it’s the only part where I really had a fairly difficult time getting it to fit. It kept getting pushed forward by the engine cover, so I had to scrape the forward edge of that down a fair amount. By the time the windshield fit reasonably well, but was still being pushed forward a little, I noticed there are some bolts on the back of the windscreen that are in the way of the engine cover. Shaving them off solved the last part of the problem. A missed opportunity by Takom here is that the windshield can’t be built as folded down.

I’ve also built the seats, but they’re still loose too.

Here’s an extra tip: how to get the driver in and out without putting strain on the levers:

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Put his feet under the front deck and move him forward and down while rotating him backwards. You can also do this (just) with the windshield in place.

[scottie3158]

Looking good bring on the paint.

[Guest]

Not yet, I need to add a good number of small parts first

[Jim R]

You've done well to get this far. It looks neat and tidy. Glad the driver can be made to fit. It looks fragile enough already but if you've got a lot of small parts to add you're going to find holding it for airbrushing very awkward.

[Guest]

Luckily, most of those are on the inside

[Guest]

The model is now finished:

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The holders for the framework of the canvas tilt were not too bad after all. I annealed them with a cigarette lighter while they were still on the fret and then bent them around a piece of thin steel tubing. That went reasonably well, but I think that for a future kit I’ll look for material that’s easier to bend than brass.

The grille over the exhaust is still loose, as are the seats and the driver, and the windscreen wipers are also to be attached, all to ease painting. There are three parts I didn’t install: the cable between the two parts of the radio, because it pinged away and I couldn’t find it anymore, and two etched parts (TP12 and TP13) that go inside the grille at the front. It’s totally unclear from the instructions where and how these actually go, but this photo shows them well (in the yellow circles):

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(source)

The reason I skipped them is because they’re etched parts of about 3 mm long and 0.5 mm wide, with a section of under 0.5 × 0.5 mm that has to be folded over at right angles to the main part. I gave up trying to do that after a while. Because I’ve wanted to build the model straight from the box, I didn’t replace them by plastic strip, which I would if I were building this “for real”

And because I was taking pictures of the completed model, I dug up my part-built LZ M29C for some quick comparison shots:

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I still need to hold a ruler or calipers to them, but at first sight their dimensions seem to be quite close.

[Scratchbuilder]

Jakko,
Just caught up on your build and see you are overcoming the problems.
Tracks, now that the body is in place if you did not know it, the problem of the tracks running out of true cannot be seen.
Comparing your build with the kit - again if we could not see it, we would not know, what is it 2mm and I bet your measurment is correct knowing how much you look into/research your builds.
Time for paint....
Mike

[Jim R]

Ready for paint so well done. Some pe parts are ridiculous. So tiny and requiring impossible bends.
The two weasels do look very similar

[Guest]

Just caught up on your build and see you are overcoming the problems.

It’s not a difficult kit, but it is one with rather tricky areas that make it not for the novice modeller, IMHO. I joked on another forum that LZ’s Weasel kits say “suitable for advanced modellers” on the box front, and that this one should have, “not suitable for modellers used to Tamiya kits” — and I stand by that

Tracks, now that the body is in place if you did not know it, the problem of the tracks running out of true cannot be seen.

Nor the roadwheels. Many are are wonky and not properly aligned, even two on the same axle, but because the track teeth straighten them out fairly well it’s not obvious and so not much of a problem. Of course, for the next one I have the even bigger advantage that there will be a track skirt over most of it, so I can just bodge some supports together that hopefully will line everything out much better.

I bet your measurment is correct knowing how much you look into/research your builds.

TBH, I did not do much research into this one at all, other than what I already knew from when I was building the LZ kit. It probably helped a lot that I photographed a real M29C in detail back then, of course

Some pe parts are ridiculous. So tiny and requiring impossible bends.

This kit definitely suffers from that. It’s a good example of how modern design and mouldmaking technology allows kit designers to create parts that are effectively impossible to build, at least for the vast majority of modellers.

[Guest]

Sprayed some primer onto the model today:

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First time I tried Badger Stynylrez, and I think I don’t quite have the hang of it I shook the bottle well, like it says, then chucked it into my airbrush and sprayed it, but it was like I had put milk into it instead of paint. I didn’t bother trying to cover the whole model, I just wanted primer on the etched bits, but look:

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After it dried, you can still see the brass colour through it, even though I gave it several thin coats like the bottle says. I think I’ll just skip straight to spraying olive drab after this, trusting that not handling the model too much will keep the paint covering the brass parts

[scottie3158]

Jakko,
It looks to me to be far to thin. But I never prime I just use the black pre shade to cover any etch.

[Guest]

That’s what I was thinking too, but like I said, I shook the bottle what I thought was quite well … Maybe the pigment has mostly congealed at the bottom, though? Perhaps I should give it another try after shaking it even more thoroughly, perhaps after seeing what I find out if I put a cocktail stick into the bottle.

[scottie3158]

That’s what I was thinking too, but like I said, I shook the bottle what I thought was quite well … Maybe the pigment has mostly congealed at the bottom, though? Perhaps I should give it another try after shaking it even more thoroughly, perhaps after seeing what I find out if I put a cocktail stick into the bottle.

I tend to put a ball bearing in the bottom of the bottle to give the bottom a good stir.

[Jim R]

Strange that Jakko. I have not had a problem with Stynylrez. In fact I usually thin it slightly so I can spray at a lower pressure.

[Guest]

I tried again, stirring it with a cocktail stick before shaking it, and spraying far thinner coats than before. This seems to have worked reasonably well, in that it covered better, so I went with it. Next, I put on a coat of Mr. Aqueous Hobby H78 Olive Drab (2):

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… but this photo is very deceiving It is an excellent example of how camera apps on phones and tablets screw with the colours, because on my iPad and iMac screens, this looks a lot different from the actual model. So I decided to take a second photo:

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For this, all I did was lift up the model, put a sheet of white paper down and replace the model. Nothing changed about lighting, camera app settings or anything. This one does look pretty close to the colour on the real model (again, on my iPad’s screen, where I could compare the two easily).

And that’s not the end of it My bottle of H78 was almost empty, but I thought I could probably get enough out of it to spray the model. But no, it ran out when I still needed to paint the right-hand side of the hull (where I should note that I never intended to spray the running gear and lower hull OD: they will get a coat of mud colour later on). As I had expected this, I ordered some more recently, but when I opened one of those new bottles, the colour inside immediately looked different to the old one … It proved hard to photograph, but:—

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In both of these, the bottle is next to the colour that came out of it. The one with the logo moulded into the cap is the new one. You can see the difference in the photos, but it was more obvious in the flesh, so I ended up respraying the whole model in the new colour — which is what you can see in the first two photos in this message.