Royal Thai Army M41 Light Tank (Tamiya M41)

This is Tamiya's vintage M41 light tank with the metal barrel from AFV Club's M41A3 and following some references off the internet one of the radio antenna on the turret is removed. It's a simple plain build with a clean finish depicting one of the tanks in the streets of Bangkok in 2006.

This is also my first use of airbrush, I mixed Tamiya's acrylic dark green and black in about 2:1 ratio to get the base coat. It's definitely a step up from what I've been using before. After the base coat the usual dark wash with oil paints and then light dry brushing and weathering on the tracks.

Fun quick build and I'm happy with the final results

It was meant to be test for the first airbrush use, I dare say it turned out better than expected.

Tamiya's vintage T-34/85

I've always wanted to do the workhorse of the armies of world war 2 and Tamiya's T-34/85 from the 70s/80s fit the bill, well actually HLJ was running these on discount that's why I picked one up rather than build something from stash.

There're a few firsts in this build, all part of my feeling my way back into the hobby properly this time, aftermarket tracks, oil paints, metal barrel and pigments (Tamiya weathering master).

I used AFV Club's T-34 500mm workable indy tracks which fit perfectly fine I might add. I dare say I agree with what I've read online mostly, having individual link tracks rather than the vinyl ones that comes standard with lots of kits does make a difference. I must confess I think I was too concerned with having the sprue links for each individual track link be sanded smooth which took some joy out of the build (THOSE DAMN TRACKS!) but it was unnecessary! Just a bit of sanding did the job and that's how I completed the set.

The metal barrel was something random I picked up and initially couldn't fit onto the mantlet properly, a bit of sanding did the trick and it does improve the overall look of the tank. More like I was too lazy to sand down the seams of the plastic barrel.

Oil paints were much better than the usual acrylic I use for washes (Yes I'm an idiot, and lazy). Got them off M Workshop just to try something different. The weathering master works wonders too when applied on top of the usual washes and dry brushing.

Here's the finished T-34/85

I still didn't have an airbrush at this point and the base coat was Tamiya's dark green spray paint on top of Mr Surfacer 500.

More to come!

Welcome! And the first project after the hiatus

It's been ages since I've done any scale modelling, my return from Australia in 2011 marking a return to the hobby as well. This blog will be dedicated to these projects as they come, sometimes there may even be others that are related (Such as 3D Modelling etc..).

Here's my first project after years keeping my hands off hobby knives, cement and paint. Tamiya's venerable M113ACAV without much tinkering at all.

I have never used airbrush for my earlier projects, this one was done as I was just getting back into the swing of things and was done with Tamiya's aerosol spray paint. Putting into effect the stuff I've learnt over the years (and forgot, naturally). The kit has been sitting in my stash for years as I was away in Australia and I seem to have lost the instructions for it. I managed to find some online from model-making.eu, it did the job!

I've done a few since then so there'll be a few more posts coming up for projects done post 2011!