Mastodon

18.10.17

Session IV

Turrets!

As soon as all the juice straws were all built, I got to assemble the turrets and then install the guns into them. Either I had been cleaning the pieces a bit too enthusiastically, or their fitting was less tight than I had expected. For a moment I was afraid that I couldn't get them hold together without a fight!



Ultimately they did fit. On the tops of the gun turrets I added a few hoops for lifting the thing on and off the tank itself, some cellar door -like hatches and the cover for the air vent. I don't think I have commented on the quality of the pieces so far in this series of posts, but they've been pretty damn nice.


Of course I just had to try the four turrets out as soon as possible. I'd loved to have them all pointing at the same direction (broadsiding would've looked so very cool), but of course it wasn't possible. At this point I started pondering on the painting and I decided that I wouldn't install them anytime soon - at least the MG turrets should be traversable thanks to some locking pieces, even though I doubted that a bit - because otherwise I'd just shoot myself figuratively in the foot.


As my last-last act of the evening's session I glued together one of the weird boxes that was destined to be installed to the side of the main turret's riser. Those triangular supports you could see in the instructions just didn't have the time to be included this time.


4.10.17

Session III

The turret production proceeded

The very same stuff kept me in its clutches: I was assembling turrets with their equipment. I started by quickly building the second MG turret up to the same point with the first one and then progressed to the 40mm K-20 guns. Those guns had a nice amount of details, but who'd ever be excited about the elevation-controlling gears, locks and such, if they'd end up being sealed inside this tomb on caterpillar tracks?




The rear bits (I really couldn't remember, after over a decade, what were the actual names for each bit) were indeed cool. I wasn't going to work on their paintjobs but instead take the "lazy" approach of only painting the visibles.

Maybe :p