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This is Tamiya's Leo2a5 will be finished as a Bundeswehr mbt in the usual 3 tone natoflage.
It took about 3 nights to get to this stage as you can see the hull required putty (gunze dissolved) and sanding. Surface feels smooth enough despite the appearance, we'll see how i fared with the surface finish after a good coat of primer of course.
Except a couple of details like the spare tracks/grousers on the glacis and the axles the hull is complete. I'll move on to the turret now.

 

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Edited by murad
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36 minutes ago, scottr5213 said:

I feel lucky to actually see them in action while stationed in Germany. One thing for sure they knew how to camoflage

 

Germans love optics and anything to do with them for sure on historical accounts.

 

Anyway the assy is complete, more or less. Axles were on the jig that tamiya provided for a good day and before the primer i'll mask off the vision ports (loaders is not attached since i can easily access it from underneath the turret to glue it after everything's done) and check the polishing once last time in a couple of places. Left the smoke dischargers on purpose to make painting easier - when it comes to masking the 3 tone less protruding items the better to avoid overspray - remember, every modeller will taste overspray one day - do whatever it takes to avoid it in the first place! As you might have guessed the camo will be hard edged, i'll be using rolls of tac..

 

As a final note i did leave the baskets at the back of the turret after seeing tamiya has supplied a decal for a vehicle without them - honestly i always thought the baskets was part of the basic package (no sunroof tho! :D ). Reason being after assembling both of them they looked terrible so instead of fixing em somehow i am chickening out, yes!

 

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2 out of 3 is applied. Now this might look weird at this point so let me explain; after a bit of contemplating i decided to use the brown as the base color for. Reason being if i chose nato black it'll be very hard to make a definition against against the black primec (gunze 1500 black) so i needed another color, brown being a nice shadow for the green i opted with the brown as a base color. It's a custom mix of (all tamiya) nato brown, gloss white, clear orange and smoke.
Than came the green but first i used tac to mask the brown parts and painted the rest of the green parts freehand with overlapping into where the black would come because next step would be to mask the green again with tac and lay the final color. So yeah it is a bit of a weird way of doing things.
Why didn't i fill in the tac with masking paper? Because i went in with a .2 needle working panel by panel with highly diluted paint. Even if there is overspray i am expecting it to act as a filter overy brown anyway. Down side with this method was the amount of hours accumalte, for the sake of it i've clocked around 20hours of paint with this 2 colors. Now if it is not worthy in the end, that'd really be a bummer and big huge waste honestly...

 

Post black primer i did some ground work for streaks and chips with white oil paint, some can be easily seen on the sharp edges of the sideskirts etc. i'll improve them during the wx.

 

In the mean time i've painted Wilhelm, dunno why he's frowning but looks like something's going on with the rest of the crew inside, who knows what the scuttlebutt is...

 

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nope it's usual tamiya vinyl type.

afraid that in the long run any hot paint might eat into them i went in with vallejo acrylics thinned with tap water and they seem to be holding well onto the vinyl so far. i'll have to glue the ends eventually but that section will be hidden well behind the side skirts. since the rollers are on polycaps they are rotating, if and when in the long if the glue messes with the joint it should be easy to repair. all wishful thinking of course. :)

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Bulk of the camo is done now it's time to go in fix overspray and highlight the panels a little bit.

 

Running gear and tracks are dryfit, i'll remove em during the wx, will give it a gloss coat and do the decals beforehand of course.  

 

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11 hours ago, scottr5213 said:

Spot on , cant wait till you start the weathering, I have been reading up on weathering and just scratch my head

 

what do you have in line for the weathering? asking because this 3tone nato won't help you in that regard - in my experience it's a hard camo scheme to weather due to the colors already being on the dark side (we have cookies luke!) whatever i do usually ended up a blackhole in the past no matter the scale so this time it'll be a bit on the safe side when it comes to elements...

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Trying to get back into modeling I have been absent for about 15 yrs (work is killing me) Finally got me a new airbrush and compressor and reading books so I think my first one will be trial and error. I got me a Hobby Boss Merkave MK3D so as soon as I can find time I will start

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