Tank (side) Tracks: Trumpeter 1/35 Russian T-80B MBT

I am both loving and hating my foray into 1/35 tank modeling.  The amount of detail available in the tank world makes PG Gundams look like toys, which I love, but the fiddliness of the tiny details makes my eyes and fingers ache!   I already started the Academy Merkava III kit but soon added Fruil metal tracks and a Legend Productions resin-based detail-up set that pushed the kit from my beginner kit to a long term project.   I'm still skittish about working with resin as I develop my skills so I'm on a side-journey into this Russian main battle tank kit.  I don't know much about Russian armour but this tank seems to have been in service in a similar time frame to the Merkava III.  A quick wikipedia check tells me the T-80 entered service in 1976 while the T-80B entered service in 1978 and it's improvements were a new turret, autoloader and fire-control which allowed the firing of the Kobra anti-tank guided missile as well as improved composite armor.

This Trumpeter kit is on par with Dragon kits as far as detail and sheer parts count goes.  4 sprues of brown track links (with jig included for assembling tracks), approximately 20 sprues of gray plastic parts, turret, hull and clear parts.  As is becoming the standard in the tank world,  a sheet of photoetch is included.   For this build I have also added E.T. Model's detail-up set for the T-80B which includes a large and 4 small sheets of photoetch, a resin antenna and a small fret of resin parts.   I must be a glutton for punishment with all the photoetch for this kit but I'll take it slow.

First up is the drudgery part of the kit.   The wheels and track pieces all need to be cut from the sprues and cleaned up which I find oddly soothing.   I keep the parts in little bags and while I watch TV I clean the parts up with a file and sandpaper.  The wheels have huge connections to the sprue, leaving nice big nubs when you cut them off so hours of cleaning these parts is ahead of me.  As I'm doing the wheels I noticed in the instructions that the hubs on the outer wheels are NOT molded into the wheel itself but are a separate piece.  These pieces are difficult to put onto the wheel as the center part of the wheel is sunken beneath the rim of the wheel making it impossible to get my fingers in there to push the hub onto the wheel.  I figured it out eventually after much trial and error:  use the flat end of a bamboo skewer and a tiny ball of blu-tack to get the hub lined up (there is a notch you need to line up) and then use my fingernails to push the hub down.   Gluing this piece traditionally is impossible as it takes me anywhere from 10-30 minutes to get the tricky pieces to line up so what I did was put the hub on then use some Humbrol glue with the needle applicator to put some glue to  the joint from the inside of the wheel.  If this is an indication of how this build is going to go, it'll be a loooong build!

Some early build shots....track links...you've got to cut them each off the sprue and there's 4 sprues of track links.  I keep them in a coffee can so I don't lose any while I'm cleaning them up as cutting them from the sprue leaves some bad scars.

Road wheels.   The wheels are nice but they have a couple issues...the aforementioned outer wheel hub issue as well as the amount of cleanup they need.   Cutting them from the sprue leaves 3 hellish scars which have to go and there's a seam line all the way around the wheel that has to go.  Bandai is the market leader when it comes to thinking about placing pieces on the sprue and where the cuts will be and if they'll be visible but even they can't get around it sometimes...for example, the chromed swords in the RG Exia and PG Astray Red Frame cannot be removed without leaving a visible scar.   So I shouldn't harp too much on Trumpeter for theirs, especially in such a wonderfully detailed kit.  I don't mind cleaning up parts anyway, I usually do it when I'm watching TV.   Here is the first batch of inner road wheels.  I am using 2 new paints here....Vallejo's Russian Green polyeurathane primer, which is as good as their other primers in this line and having it in Russian Green saves me having to prime then basecoat it; The rubber "tires" are done with AK Interactive's acrylic "Rubber Tires" paint, by hand, another excellent product.