Monday, August 11, 2008

1/35 Eastern Express KV-1s

I've switched gears to finish a couple of projects for some online group builds I'm involved in. The subject for this armor build is the Eastern Front. I have a number of suitable subjects in my stash and I ended up choosing Eastern Express' KV-1S in 1/35 scale. Once you get past the flash this is not a bad kit. So far I've had no major fit problems and the detail is pretty decent. Incidently the my Tiger I build is also an Eastern Front subject but since I had already started building it doesn't qualify as an "official" entry but I still hope to finish it for the campaign.

Anyway, on to the model. I didn't want to invest a lot in after-market products but I still wanted to enhance the detail of the kit. I replaced the front fenders and the sheet metal deflector at the rear with cuttings from a frozen lasagna tray.




Weld seems were enhanced with a hot knife and some added with plastic strip. The grill under the rear deck was made from a bit of window screen on a plastic strip frame.

The handles on the tool boxes are wire and more bits from the lasagna tray.

Here's the turret for the KV. The texturing was achieved with some Model Master glue smeared about and scrubbed with an old brush. A little Tamiya putty smoothed out any overdone bits. The rear machine gun needed some filling at the join but nothing major.

Handles are made from copper wire. The casting numbers came from the spares box from an accessories sprue for a 54mm figure. They are not 100% accurate but add interest to the turret.


GB