I have had all the components for this build for a while, and since I’m not in a painting mood I dove in. I started with the very good Takom hull, eBay special tracks and an old Legends -6B Gal conversion which includes a whole turret and a loaded basket. The mine roller itself is the Miniart KMT-5. Initially I was going to grab the adapter from an Academy Magach kit but it’s mostly fictional so I used a few bits from it and scratched the rest, using pics and an old Verlinden part as a guide. Some parts are Academy and there may be a Dragon part on it too. Pics show the hull very nearly done, turret ready for the reactive armor blocks.
I built one “arm” of the Miniart mine roller to use as a guide to place the mounts on the adapter and it was six parts, instead of the two parts that Academy makes one arm from. The rest of it will probably take me as much time to build as the entire tank so far has.
It just occurred to me that I have the Miniart KMT-5 mine roller ass’y and the IDF used the KMT-4. So far as I can tell, the obvious different is the number of rollers on each side, so I should be able to use Academy parts to make that change. Other differences are minor and should be no problem to work out.
Making a KMT-4 from the Miniart KMT-5 wasn’t bad but I did scavenge parts from Academy (greenish tan), Meng (light gray) and Miniart (dark gray). I’ve got enough of the roller assemblies together to start adding details now. I will say the Miniart parts are well detailed…. all nine billion of them.
Tonight was turret time. ERA is on, most detail parts are on. I used Academy, Dragon and Italeri parts for the ERA blocks. I need to do the side rails on each side, decide on which gun tube I want to use and hang stowage on the turret sides. After that I need to do the cables for the mine rollers and tow cables.
Thanks! I decided to paint it, and the T-34, this week. I just need to make up the cables from the adapter to the roller arms and the leads to the mantlet.50 cal. to finish. Then maybe I can get back on the campaign Sho’t.
Russ, your builds are miraculous. What you do with spare or orphaned parts is just amazing. It’s nice to see a couple in paint, and your finishing skills are just as great, so these will be excellent models. Still, your building talent is most impressive.
They look great painted, but they were fantastic unpainted with all ghose different colours of plastic, even the ERA were not all the same plastic colour…
Still, they will be fantastic again once you’ve finished paint and weathering
IMG_4999 by Russel Baer, on Flickr
IMG_4998 by Russel Baer, on Flickr
IMG_4997 by Russel Baer, on Flickr
IMG_4995 by Russel Baer, on Flickr
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