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Building and Improving Aero Plast's T-60 light tank |
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Background |
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The diminutive Russian T-60 tank has long been one of my favourite subjects. The T-60 was a design that grew out of wartime expediency. It was developed from the amphibious T-40 tank, which was built in small numbers. The T-60 was the result of need to design a tank with heavier armament than the T-40 that would also be cheaper and easier to manufacture. The T-60 shared the suspension and automotive components of the T-40, but dispensed with the propeller and it's associated complications. Many of the automotive components used on both designs were derived from commercial trucks. The hull design of the T-60 looked totally different from the T-40. It was far more compact as a result of not having to provide buoyancy. The resulting lines were quite sleek and made the tank look to me like a sports car among tanks. Its performance was not so impressive. It was not as mobile as the T-34, which created difficulties in combined operations. The crew was limited to 2 men with no radio equipment, which further hampered its fighting ability. A common Russian nickname for the T-60 translated to "A coffin for 2 brothers" which speaks volumes. Armament was a 20mm cannon plus a DT machine gun, both mounted in the turret. Such a combination proved less and less effective as its service career progressed. It's redeeming feature was that it could be built by factories that were incapable of building larger tanks at a time when the Red Army required all the tanks it could get put in the field. The T-60 was replaced by the T-70 which was larger, better armed, better protected and more powerful. The extra power was due to a twin motor power plant as opposed to the single motor fitted to the T-60. The T-70 still however retained the clumsy inefficient 2-man crew. T-60's finished their days relegated to gun towing duties and were also used as self-propelled mounts for Katusha rocket launchers. At least 2 remain preserved today that I know of, one at Kubinka and the other at Parola in Finland. The Finish example is missing some parts including the main armament and suffers from being displayed in the open air. |
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The Kit |
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On the hull top, I cut out the engine intake louvers from the rear deck as these were moulded as a solid mass. A circular saw blade in my motor tool made quick work of this job and files finished it off. The louvers were replaced with new ones made from plastic strip. I was not sure how much would be visible on the finished model so I added a radiator and a firewall to the engine compartment to seal it off. This area was then painted black before final assembly of the major components. I might as well have just used blank card for the radiator, as you can't see anything anyway. A new grill was added from the mesh supplied in Tamiya's Steyr 1500. This was finished off with framing made from plastic strip. I laminated pieces of 10 thou card with notches cut out to the sides of the grill based on photos. Plastic rivets in each notch finished the job. The exhaust pipe was reamed out with a round-headed burr mounted in my engraving tool. The raised box-like air intake on the engine deck, beside the turret was moulded as a single piece. In reality, the sides of this are covered with mesh and the kit part gave no impression of this. I built a replacement from plastic card and strip and again used the Tamiya mesh to cover the sides. Rivet detail finished off the piece. The engine deck lifting handle was replaced with brass wire with hinge points made from telephone wire insulation. Some rivets were added to replace damaged or missing detail.
I then moved on to the turret. This is not too bad shape wise, but did need some work to improve the level of detail. The commander's hatch appeared to be oversized so this was sanded down in size. If you want an open hatch you may need to consider vacforming a new hatch as the original was of pressed steel construction while the kit one is solid. The hatch detail had to be redone which included making a new signal port and adding a number of rivets. I added welding detail, rivets and a pistol port to the turret sides The welds on the turret sides were simulated with Gunze Mr Surfacer while the roof joints were replicated with textured plastic strip. The rain guards over the 2 vision blocks on the turret sides were made from copper sheet with punched plastic rivets. A new gun barrel was made from a length of fine brass tubing. This was test fitted but not fixed to the model till near the end of construction. The rest of the main armament was tidied up and a few rivets were added to the front of it. The kit MG was poor and I replaced it with one I modified from a spare Dragon BAR from their allied weapons set, although this too was not installed until near the end of construction.
The suspension was then added. I positioned the suspension arms and left them to dry over night. I reworked the hub detail on the Techmod sprockets before attaching these to the hull. The next day I added the road wheels and began assembling the Techmod tracks. These required little cleanup and went together with minimal fuss. They are made of a soft white plastic and have no sinkholes. I assembled strips of track which were added to the model one section at a time. On each track I started from the bottom run and worked towards the sprocket, then around the sprocket back along the top run until I reached the last return roller. The final section from the lower rear to the rearmost return roller was added last. The idler arm was adjusted until I was happy with everything and then it received a touch of liquid cement to set in place. I kept the sag to a minimum as photos show only a small amount of sag on the real thing. The Techmod tracks are a marked improvement over the kit ones and I was pleased with how they looked once installed. The lack of detail on the sprocket rear is mostly hidden behind track teeth. The kit fenders were added next. These come with only 3 ribs that run lengthways while all my references indicate there should in fact be 5. I glued 10 thou square strips between the outer ribs and the centre one and sanded these to contour when dry. The fender ends were thinned down with files. The fenders were then glued into position. The fender mounting brackets were replaced with strips cut from brass sheet. This proved to be quite time consuming as I was trying to achieve some degree of uniformity while using the simplest of tools and judging things by eye. I would like to figure out how to make bending jigs that take the guesswork out of it. I finished the brackets off with punched plastic bolt heads. I also replaced the triangular fender braces at the hull front with new ones from plastic card. The stowage boxes supplied with the kit are poorly detailed. I used only 1 on my model and detailed this with added hinge and catch detail from plastic scrap and fuse wire. There appears to be some slight variations with these stowage boxes. Some have 3 narrow hinges while others have 2 wider ones. I chose to have 3 hinges on mine. The 3 catches were detailed with plastic card and fine half loops made from fuse wire. These were so tiny I made the up in the shape of a walking stick and drilled a single hole for the 'handle'. The wire was then inserted and locked in with super glue. The last additions to the fenders were an axe and a spade these were purloined from an ICM T-28 kit where they were surplus to requirements. The retaining brackets and straps were carved off these, and replacements were made from lead foil and paper.
I left installation of some of the more fragile details till last. Previous experience has shown that this is a wise move, as I can be very clumsy at times. Things that I added at this stage included the headlight, horn, MG and 20mm barrel. The headlight came from the spares box. I ground out a hole in the front in preparation for the mounting of an MV Products headlight lens which would be added after painting. The horn was based on a cut down Tamiya T-34 horn. I made mountings for the light and horn from scrap PE brass. I drilled a hole in the glacis plate beside the drivers compartment just behind where the light mounting was and glued in a section of insulation from a piece of telephone wire. Fuse wire leads from the light and horn were fed down into this. Despite leaving these details till last I still managed to knock the headlight off it's bracket while doing some last minute filing and sanding. The model was finally ready for painting. |
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| Painting and Finishing | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| I mounted the finished
model on a piece of wooden dowel before commencing the finishing stage.
The dowel provides an excellent method of handling the model during the
finishing process. The screw hole that is left at the end of the process
can be either left if it will be invisible or filled and painted over
with a dark colour. A block of wood, drilled to hold the dowel, held the
model in between operations. Cheap but effective!
The completed model was first primed with grey aerosol automotive primer. The undersides and running gear were base coated with a mix of brown and black. I sprayed a number of coats of Tamiya acrylic greens over the whole model, starting from dark and working towards light. The lighter coats were applied to the middle of panels. I also backtracked to darker paints when I felt things could look better. Some thin brown was then airbrushed around the lower hull, getting lighter as I went higher on the model. Verlinden dry decals were added to the turret. Joints etc received a touch of much thinned brown oils. The wooden tool handles were base coated in Tamiya sand acrylic and overpainted with raw umber oils. The exhaust was base coated in a mix of Tamiya dark brown and black. Rust and paint chips were then applied with tamiya acrylics using a fine pointed brush. I then sparingly applied various shades of pastel to simulate dust and add more life to some of the rust effects. Metalising was kept to a minimum. I used Paynes grey oil paint and pencil lead to do this. .Attaching the MV Products headlight lens completed the model. This looked far too bright on my dirty model so I airbrushed highly thinned Gunze clear acrylic over it until I was happy that it looked like it was part of the vehicle The model was mounted on a simple base and will remain on this until such time as I can come up with a more imaginative setting. The base was made from styrofoam coated with premixed household patching filler. Static grass was added from and then the base was airbrushed with Tamiya acrylics. All in all this was a most satisfying project. The basic kit is sound and with the addition of the Techmod parts and a little elbow grease it scrubs up very nicely. I look forward to building another one or two models from this kit. The lessons learned from this project will be put to good use.
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Internet
Books/Magazines
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