T-72 with KMT-7 Mine Rollers

Since my last post I have been spending time on projects other than the siege machines I was working on last post. Part of that was due to my normal process of having several projects on the go - so I can work on something as the mood takes me, and partially due to having dropped the box with them in while moving stuff in the garage and the battering rams requiring minor repair before I proceed to undercoating them. Still these things happen.

I have earlier made the Trumpeter T-55 with KMT-5 Mine Rollers using magnets to attach the rollers to the tank hull, (Click here for details) so it seemed a natural progression to add some mine rollers to a T-72.

The completed beast.

 The base T-72 is a Deagostini die cast that has been given a slight repaint and a heavy brown wash,(Click here for further details on the process) while the mine rollers are a very nice Zedval resin conversion kit that I bodged the assembly of.

The very fine wire supports are missing...

 However, I'm not too concerned as the end product, even with my clumsy corner cutting looks good. In large part this is due to the excellent design of the conversion kit. Like all things excellence costs, and the conversion kit was not cheap! I have some more Zedval conversion kits to assemble, and hopefully they will turn out just as well!

 

More  Soviet engineering goodness!

The other Zedval conversion kits are for what I would describe as being a mine plough attachment set, and a dozer blade attachment. These seem to be the only T-72 engineering conversion kits that I can find - although I'm still hopeful that I will find a conversion kit to make a MTU-72 AVLB from a T-72 hull someday!

WIP Matchbox DAF Pontoon Carrier Trucks

A number of years back, Paul from Plastic Warriors, posted his conversion of the Airfix Thornycroft truck with Coles Crane, into the much more useful for wargaming Thornycroft pontoon truck (Click here to see it)

Matchbox Super King DAF Truck.

Inspired by this, I thought that I could steal the idea and use the Matchbox Super King DAF flatbed truck as the basis for a post war pontoon carrier. After all, bridging assets are always useful, and having a couple of pontoon trucks would make a nice addition to my wargaming 'tail' elements. The pontoons are naturally enough from the Airfix Pontoon kit, or one of the many Hong Kong clones of that set.

If I stack the pontoons this way, I will need to fill in the hollows on the bottom of the pontoons.

The DAF trucks came in a rather 1970s green colour, so I removed as much of the original paint as possible by soaking in a bath of cheap Dettol, followed by using a wire brush head on a Dremel, to remove 85% of the original paint on the first truck. This was followed by an undercoat of grey primer spray paint, followed by a coat of Vallejo Iraqi Sand, and lastly a brown wash. At this point the first truck languished as I hadn't quite decided how to attached the pontoons.

I am considering cutting up some of the pontoon decking to add to the load.

Two years later, I acquired a second truck. This one I disassembled and bunged through the dishwasher with some extra wash tablets for extra paint stripping power. This loosed up a great deal of the paint, and I wire brushed off some more, to result in a good 90% removal of all the original paint. I then spray painted it a sandy/tan/earthy colour and applied a brown wash. This was a much simpler process, and I have been subjecting the majority of Battle and Super Kings I acquire to this process in order to prepare them for repainting.

1/72 Esci/Italeri Figure for scale.

I still have a great deal of work to do before these are complete but I am happy with what progress I have made so far. The final cargo load for both trucks, and the means of securing the load still have to be determined, but I have a couple of ideas I am planning on experimenting with.

Of Magnets and Mine Rollers

Recently I have found that while I have been able to spend quite a bit of time making and painting models, I haven't been putting much of anything up on the blog - despite having every intention of doing so!

In an effort to correct this, I thought I should share my latest effort - the Trumpeter 1/72 T-55 with KMT-5 Mine Roller kit.

The finish model, painted green with a wash of brown.

I built the kit with the intent of using it as a test bed for an experiment with magnets. I have seen lots of other gamers use small rare earth magnets to allow for variable weapon fits on their wargaming models, so I wanted to see if I could do the same with mine rollers.

The installation of metal rods in the hull.

Part of the inspiration for this project was remembering that i had read that the French had purchased surplus former Warsaw Pact mine plows (some sources say ex-Russian, some ex-East German) for use with their AMX-30 tanks during the first Gulf War.

Holes to allow the magnets to recess into.

This made me think that if I used magnets to attach engineering gear, I could potentially use it across a wide range of tank platforms,without needing to reduce the number of gun tanks in the collection.

The rods were later replaced by pieces of thin metal plate.

The use of magnets would also make storage and transport easier, as engineering attachments are often prone to break at the point where they attach to the tank. Using this system would reduce stress at that point.

Magnets glued onto the attachment points on the rollers.

The initial concept had me using pins rather than metal plate inside the hull. Once I switched to using plate, the connection was significantly improved.

A test of the assembly. Additional tests lead to the use of plate before gluing on the top half of the hull.

I am now going to repeat the process on other tanks in order to have a wider range of platforms to attach the rollers to. At this stage I am planning on converting a T-62 and a T-72, with the possibility of a Leopard 1 and an AMX-30 to follow.

Completed model with detached rollers.

Of course, I am already thing of ways to improve the idea. One possibility is to reverse the location of the plate and the magnet. The magnet would be placed inside the hull, while the attachment would have the metal plate added to it. If this worked, then there would be no need to make holes in the glacis of the tank.