Here is the turret with most of its bits:
The turret is really only missing the gunner’s seat and the gun elevation mechanism here. I could add all kinds of cabling and plumbing to the turret shell and the gun, but I checked and just about all of that would be completely out of sight, so I’m not going to bother with it at all.
I had to scratchbuild a box on the turret wall and a tray on the turret ring, because I noticed in photographs of the real tank interior (in my new book
) that
MiniArt inexplicably missed them. The box is a leftover from a 1:72 scale kit, that I cut down a little and added the lid and catch to from thin plastic strip. The tray is a simple scratchbuild from a few bits of plastic card and strip.
The copper wire, by the way, represents hydraulic lines for the turret drive.
MiniArt doesn’t include parts for them but does tell you what you need to scratchbuild. Though I think this is good, it would have been better if they had supplied the hoses in plastic — they can for the engine compartment, so why not the turret?
Then I sprayed the whole interior white with Vallejo primer from an aerosol can.
Or that was the plan, anyway. In practice, the already mostly empty can ran out before I had painted everything I wanted to
As I didn’t have another, I waited for it to dry and then airbrushed the whole interior Vallejo
Model Air signal white instead:
Most of the bits I sprayed are in the picture, but as I had the paint in my
airbrush anyway, I also painted some parts that are still on the sprue, like the armour plates for the rear corners of the fighting compartment and the engine compartment rear doors.
Now on to washes, detail painting, etc.