Mini-Art Campaign 2021

My Panzer III Ausf B had me build the road wheels twice.

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@petbat @brekinapez

just curious, did you go thru the thoughts that “I must be reading this wrong”? I was building late at night and was already doubting my skills.

other than that the kit has great detail and seems fairly easy. Just planning out the future painting without already knowing what to leave off to paint if doing a two tone color is a bit tricky.

No. In my case it asked to build the road wheels, then there were a couple of steps doing other assemblies, and then it asked to do the road wheels again. Page 7, Step 13 asks to build 4 sets using AD18 and Step 14 wants 4 sets using AD19. AD18 and AD19 each hold a pair of wheels, so 4 sets of AD18 times two (one pair) equals 8 wheels plus another 8 for AD19’s 4 sets. Sixteen wheels total. Then on Page 8, Steps 15 and 16 ask you to do it again, creating another 16 roadwheels. But there are only 8 because that is all you need. If they had just put a ‘x2’ next to Step 13, 14, the second 15 (oh, yeah, there are two Step 15s), and the 16 it would be fine. Or they could have left out 15 and 16.

They don’t make these errors in the Ausf D kit.

They are just giving you the full factory worker assembly line experience. It’s a feature not a bug!

@Mrclark7 My thoughts were more along the lines, "Why do these (bleeping) idiots not check the (more bleeping) design plans to the (yet more bleeping) drafted instructions to the actual (bleeping and even more bleeping) numbers marked on the sprues… or maybe I exaggerate… :rofl:

I should also point out some of the numbers on the etch fret did not match the instructions and one sprue had no ID number on it - process of elimination in the end…

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You would think they would QA/QC before mass production would be to build one kit and see how it goes.

Would it be bad to mention I actually do a form of Quality Assurance as a job…

Imagine a conversation like this:
Here are the designs, specifications, sequence and requirements. We have the discussions and you are sure you understand? Okay, build us a prototype
Now build a second prototype to fix what you did wrong here, here and here… see in the designs?
Build a third prototype because you didn’t listen to me in the first place and you went and changed the wrong things and didn’t fix what needed fixing…
Would you like me to build the fourth prototype? Maybe that way we can stop wasting time and money and we can look at starting production and fiscal return…

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Pz III Ausf D is nearly finished, need to do the tyres and the guns then add a little dust…

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probably wont get this finished during this campaign but building it for the T54/T55 one starting this week… if I thought I was mad doing the Wespe with a load of add-on PE and tracks, I am now starting this… full interior T54-2 1949… I hope to be able to do it justice, some of the other interior builds I have seen is what are driving me on…

so far I have just opened the box and panicked… need to label all the sprues I guess before starting

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Looking good Rob. Love the 1/2 forest on the rear of the Panzer 3…

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I am actually a QA director, and your conversation reminds me the PDCA model in an eternal loop :slight_smile:

My T-55 kit had no any error in the instructions, although I changed the sequence many times as per my usual work methods.

To be honest, my method failed sometimes, not Miniart engineering.

I belive that those guys being ukrainian know the T-tank series the best and that is why these kits are smartly engineered. Other subjects might be less known, resulting problems during assembly on the workbench?

Just my theory…

Hi Rob,

Your point to make labels for the sprues is a proven method in my attempt with the T-55 kit. It helped me a lot.

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I agree, I also labelled the Sprues in my T-54-3 kit, made it much easier to locate them when I needed

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Hi my friends.

I am happy to report that the building phase is completed and now the hull is black primed, too.

The last couple of parts were easy to add so I was pretty motivated after a looooong build :grinning: to complete the hull.

Since the photos taken and the primer is dried, I did some minor touch-up and re-applied the primer to the affected areas. Now the kit is ready to be basic painted just like the hull bottom and the wheels are painted already.

Cheers

Tamás

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Hi all,
Been a long time since I posted an update on my progress with the Valentine because I have not had nearly as much time at the workbench as I would like, purely because work has been manic and I have had a lot going on outside of work too, but the tank itself has actually been finished, although I have not had enough time to paint the tank riders yet, but at least the tank commander figure is done!






I realised that I had made A bit of a balls-up with one of the fender brackets on the side so it does not actually line up with the side skirt bracket, that’s why I decided to stick a tarp on there to cover it up!

Anywho, I’m personally very happy with the result so far, it has come out far better than it probably should have! :smiley:

I will try to work in some time to paint up those tank riders some time soon, so I can actually call the entire build finished!

Cheers, Simon

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T-54-2 all marked up ready to go (apart from the 10 sprues of tracks, 8 of wheels and 6 of shells)… noted the interior paint colours and ordered the few I was missing

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started on the T-54-2 tonight and started with the engine… first page done (21 left)

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Calling this one done(ish) still gonna weather it more (for now it’s just had a raw umber and ivory black mix wash) but my skills need to improve first.

Built OOB except for the tow cables, these were made from annealed picture hanging wire.
















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We’ve reached the half-way mark in terms of calendar months on this campaign. Good to see that some folks have finished. Hope to see continued contributions in the 2nd half of the year!

Some more shots of the detail and interior


















Excited to follow along on the builds everyone else is producing!

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