As I'm putting the finishes touches on my T-55 diorama, I've started the very basic steps of preparing this M60A3 from Takom for detailing. My plan for this one is to get as detailed as I can without additional aftermarket parts. If I don't already own it in my spares bin, I have to scratch build it. Yes, I have a 3D printer, but there seems to be an idea floating around that using 3D printed parts are somehow less satisfying than scratch building. Time to see if that's the case!

The good news is Takom's M60 isn't bad in the details department, though you can see I've already made some corrections. Chiefly this has been the addition of casting numbers and symbols. The kit includes molded casting numbers, but they are a bit large and too "clean" compared to the original. I had a sheet of Archer casting marks in my decal folder, though they were intended for M4 Sherman variants. That said, some of the generic marks proved useful, especially the General Steel Casting Corporation's foundry mark which was behind the rear tow pintle. Takom's foundry marks are not entirely accurate, either, so I suppose I'd rather have the casting marks at least look right if they aren't going to be 100% accurate either way.

Initial cast armor texture was the standard Tamiya putty and TET mix, dabbed on with a large, round and stiff brush. Certain places will get another round based on my reference images. The M60's armor was quite rough in some places so I don't feel like I need to hold back, much. I'll do that after I scribe in the grooves for the weld beads. These tanks' welds were fairly nice, so they won't be very prominent, but as you can see Takom's molded weld detail disappeared under the first layer of texturing.

As always, thanks for looking!

Hey everyone! I've been chipping away (ha!) at the paint and weathering on mt T-55 build. So much work left to do, and I've been sort of shotgunning various parts to keep interest and focus instead of trying to tackle one whole thing at a time. As a result, I've been working on the turret and the lower hull but haven't touched anything in between!

As always, thanks for looking!

Hello everyone! Seems like I'm on a roll getting the various pieces of this diorama ready to be emplaced. This little car will be towing a small trailer full of ammunition to the T-55 during a lull in fighting. All I have left to do is paint the T-55 and two figures + random objects and bits of scenery. This morning I finished up Trumpeter's UAZ-469, which was pretty standard Trumpeter fare. Let's get into it.

The Build

Trumpeter seems to have three tiers of quality, Very Good, Terrible, and Middling. The UAZ could have been terrible, as there is quite a high parts count and some tricky sub assemblies (and never mind that soft skin vehicles are a pain to build and paint anyway!) but I'm pleased to report that it went together pretty well.

I had one snag, which were the rear bumper guards which Trumpeter supplies as PE parts. I would have been happy had they made the part a single length of PE that must be bent into shape, but no, they decided that we needed several cuts along the sections to be folded, which led to a wonky bend that was too angular to match my reference images. I'm okay at PE, and even with the right tools, annealing the parts, patience and planning, I still couldn't get them into a neat curve. So I did what any reasonable person would do and balled them up and threw them away. I decided to design my own guards in SketchUp and converted them to a printable STL file which I printed out on my Saturn 4. While I was at it, I though the front tow hooks looked a bit soft in detail, so I designed and printed out a set of those as well. The rest of the build was fairly standard. I skipped the engine because it won't be seen and my plan already called for detailing enough things that would end up hidden in the end.

I painted and detailed the interior first after installing and masking all the windows. For this I took measurements and drew out the masks in GimpShop, then imported them into Cricut Design Space and cut them out. They were a perfect fit and I didn't have to spend ages tracing around small details with a hobby knife. I used AK Real Color Russian Protective Green 4BO for the interior, but I lightened it with a touch of US Interior Green because things will get pretty dark in there once it's closed up. I used some 3D decals from Quinta Studios (I know, I know. This kit and accessories was purchased in 2021!) to replace all the dashboard details. I rebuilt the various transmission shift levers with .3mm wire and a blob of UV cure epoxy resin. I did this because the figure I wanted to use would not fit with the levers in the way of its legs. The seats were painted with AK 3rd Gen after a white base layer to emphasis shadow and contrast. Speaking of seat, I didn't like how my figure sat in the kit seat, so I designed one and imported it and my figure STL into SateLite. I used a Boolean Operation to remove the parts of the seat that the figure interacted with when sat properly on the bottom cushion and back rest. I printed the seat and was happy to report that everything fit as intended.

I painted the canvas top separately because like almost all vehicle canvas roofs in injection plastic, the details were so-so and I needed to focus on creating shadows and highlights. Once primed, I gave the whole roof a once over in AK Real Colors Buff mixed with Portland Stone at about 70/30, then applied AK's Dark Brown Wash over the whole part. I applied it thinned about 50/50 with white spirit and let the enamel settle into the crevasses. This would be my shadow coat. Next, I mixed up Buff again with Portland Stone, this time at 60/40 and thinned it way down. I misted this over the canvas roof from a "straight down" angle. Then I added two drops of flat white and sprayed on the highlights.

The car's body was done in AK RC 4BO darkened with Olive Drab. VMS Gloss varnish went down and I applied the decals from Star Decals. These were meant for another Croat T-55, but there's nothing wrong with a little creative liberty. I applied a few more layers of gloss varnish over the decals because they were quite thick even after Tamiya MarkFit Strong, and then a final layer of satin. Basic weathering was done by mixing up a light gray to simulate the grime from driving on snowy roads and I sprayed this lightly over a couple coats of AK chipping fluid. Once it was chipped to my liking, I mixed Lamp Black and Ground White oils to match the chipped layer and refine everything. I was pleased that I was able to color match the initial sprayed layer exactly. At this point I permanently attached the roof and removed the window masks. The fit of the roof onto the car isn't great, and I encouraged it as much as humanly possible without serious surgery. I found a hard top STL for this model, but it's fit was even worse so I just filled the largest gaps with PVA glue so they weren't totally open.

I used AK Snow Sparkles and Snow Sprinkles to simulate frosted glass. I'm like... 60% happy with how that came out. I think there is a lot of potential with those products, but the learning curve is steep! I think the frost is my least favorite aspect of the finish, and if I had to do it again I'd probably just do a grime wash on the glass and call it. I once again used my Cricut to cut out a window wiper mask for the front windshield, stippled on some thinned grayish oils and did the frost effect over that. I used AK Snow for the deposits of snow on the windshield base, the bumper, and spare tire and gave it a dusting of Microballoons. I thought about doing a few runs of Tamiya Clear to simulate melting snow, but I figured since the engine was running, it'd create enough heat to evaporate any snow melt that may happen. I replaced the vinyl tires with DEF Model resin examples and gave them the same treatment as the rest of the car, and that was all she wrote!

I started both the UAZ and the T-55 at about the same time, but past the barest of assembly steps, the UAZ required paint so I figured I'd knock it all out in one go. Comparatively, the tank ought to require far fewer steps, though it will be much more work!

As always, thanks for looking!

Hello everyone! I just finished up this figure, who will become the driver of a Trumpeter UAZ-469 which is a piece of the larger diorama I've been working on. Admittedly, this is not my very best work because he's going to be 90% obscured inside the jeep. I mostly wanted to practice painting US woodland camouflage. It has been a while since I tackled it and the remaining figures in the diorama will all be wearing various bits of it.

Cheers and thanks for looking!

Hello again! I figured since I had posted an update on my Croatian T-55A I would also include an update as to what else the diorama contains. I wanted to display "Marina" similarly to one of the more recognizable photos online without copying the scene 1:1. I decided to portray Marina tucked away using a house as cover somewhere in the mountains along the Croatia/Bosnia border. As you may see near the end of the slideshow, the whole base has a gravel road where a UAZ-469 will be driving. I'm aware that the Zastava AR51 would be more fitting, but a little creative liberty never hurt anyone. I also wanted more practice working with snow, so the final scene will be much more wintry, as you can see in my sneak peak photos at the end of the slideshow.

The Haus

I've built a few houses before, and initially set out in much the same way as I usually do: carve a block of stryofoam into the right shape with a hot wire cutter, then scribe the details onto the foam. After cutting the house shape, I decided that I did not want to carve bricks individually, nor did I want to make a million bricks out of cut foam. Instead, I designed and 3D printed the bricks. Having been to Croatia and Bosnia, I was very familiar with the regional house designs and construction materials. This house is specifically modeled after a house I stayed in for two weeks.

The house was clad in sheet styrene, and the basic structures for the roof beams were built up. I used PVA glue when attaching the bricks to the cladding, which took forever, but ended up looking very very good. I used AK Interactive Concrete as a mortar between the bricks. I applied this liberally with a spatula then used a wet paper towel to wipe away 90% of it. What was left was dead on for cement mortar.

I 3D printed some windows, the door, the electrical box, the TV antenna, the lamp, and the roof tiles. The antenna cable was made with lead wire, and I used packaging plastic to make the window glass. The blown out window drapes were made with a paper towel soaked in diluted PVA glue. Once it began to set I installed it and teased it into shape. I poked some holes as well to simulate the machine gun round impacts continuing from the wall across the window.

The bricks were painted with AK Inetractive 3rd Gen acrylics; a mix of medium rust, orange, and red which was wet blended to give the bricks some variation. I used filters of thinned reds and oranges to pick out individual bricks, then went over the mortar with Africa Dust enamels from AK. I used Streaking Grime to dirty the bricks and add detail in the bullet impacts, and Damp Earth to integrate the bottom of the house into the base. The roof was done with AK Real Colors Hull Red and a few drops of Orange to get a terracotta look. I was worried that this may be too similar to the bricks, but this is how most of these houses actually look, and the roof will be covered in snow so it doesn't really matter! I painted the wood roof trim in various dark browns and the window frames white. I was going to chip these all to hell, but then I figured that these houses were not terribly old back in the 90s and until the war started would be reasonably well maintained, so I just gave them some grime. I picked light blue for the door because I wanted a nice pop of color, no other reason. The electrical box lights were first painted with Vallejo Silver, then with AK RC Clear Red, Yellow and Green, and then I added a drop of UV Cure epoxy resin. The colors don't mean anything in particular, I just thought that they "looked" right for an electrical box! I'm not a tradesman so I may be way off base, but I like it. The lamp was painted British Racing Green and then given several coats of VMS Gloss varnish. I wanted to replicate the typical enameled metal lampshade you may find in Warsaw Pact nations. That was pretty much it!

As always, thanks for looking!

Hello everyone! Since my AMX-30B2 Brennus build, I've been very busy plugging away on what may become my most time-intensive build to date. I don't want to spoil too much, but this Croatian T-55A from TAKOM is just one small piece of a much larger picture. You eagle eyed folks may have noticed this kit has a lot of added resin bits and besides getting to feel superior for having a bunch of multimedia on my kit, there is a good reason! Let's dig in.

The Kit

I have a hate/despise relationship with TAKOM. You see, they produce a lot of kits of subjects that aren't typically covered in 1/35th scale and the CAD images they release make the model look so appealing. Then I spend my $60, open the box and am immediately reminded why I loathe this company. The jokes on me, I guess, because I've fallen for their schtick more than twice. I'll run through the issues in bullet format so I don't take up 10,000 words complaining.

- Instruction sheet was misprinted, missing the first and last steps.

- Incorrect parts callouts and sprue locations.

- Tiny, half-assed color and marking sheets.

- THE WRONG šahovnica decal. This is actually insane. Takom used the old crest in their decals with the white checker first where it should be the red checker first, as plainly obvious to anyone with an internet connection and eyeballs. Not to mention the rest of the Croatian decals are the wrong shape and size.

- Wrong tracks. This T-55 used OMsH tracks while the kit supplies RMsH.

- Wrong sprockets. The supplied sprockets are too wide for the correct OMsH tracks.

- Wrong roadwheels.

- Soft details/simplified Croatian T-55A specific parts. I get how there are only a few images of this particular T-55, but TAKOM either guessed or tried to split the dif by molding parts that could be anything if you squint hard enough.

There is probably more, but we'll say the evidence above is enough to justify my hatred of TAKOM.

The Build

So, Croat T-55s were captured Yugoslavian Army T-55s, which were Polish export T-55s. I say that to say that there are small differences between a Polish, a Russian, or a Czech T-55, etc. TAKOM gives you new sprues to cope with these changes, but drops the ball on most of it. This means that if you want an accurate Croat T-55 you need to get busy. I am no rivet counter, but I wanted the basics to be correct upon first glance. First thing I had to do was surgery on the sprockets to remove the center guide and narrow them by about 2mm. I used T-Rex OMsH tracks to replace the kit plastic, and tossed the road wheels into a fire and 3D printed a set of the correct pattern with the added bonus of them showing wear on the road wheel rubber. The fuel lines from the external fuel tanks were routed incorrectly in plastic, so I printed new fuel tanks and used lead wire to run the fuel lines correctly. Thanks to my recent visit to NAACC, I had some very good references.

On the opposing fenders, the pioneer kit is supposed to be layered on top of a molded plastic cable and shackle part. These parts don't fit, and TAKOM expects the modeller to weave the cables through the shovel's handle with reality altering majiks to make it work. Fuck that. I cut everything apart, spun my own cable with .03mm copper wire, built new tool brackets from spare PE and plugged all the locating holes on the fender. I think it came out much cleaner, and better looking. I also recreated the exhaust shroud because this was one of the parts TAKOM shrugged and said "good enough lol". I used aluminum foil, folded over 3 times, and a graphite pencil to trace the shape of the original part enough so that I could refine it to look like my references. I also recreated the metal bracket attaching it to the fender with .5mm wire. I also replaced the too-thick headlight guards with a 3D printed article.

The Instructions would have you install the unditching beam, the rearmost external fuel drums, and the snorkel equipment when the reference photos of "Marina" don't show any of that, and it's highly likely these items were removed by the Croat soldiers upon liberating the vehicle from the JNA. I scratched some brackets for the unditching beam and used spare PE to make the straps. I also did some basic housekeeping, like thinning the front and rear fender plastic so create convincing warping from either being made of rubber or dents on the front fenders in accordance to my references.

For the turret, I replaced the lump of plastic TAKOM called a coax machine gun with a brass tube that I made conical with an old airbrush needle. I replaced every plastic grab handle and tie down cleat with copper or soldering wire. TAKOM's clear parts a mess on this kit, so they forgot to give you three commander cupola vision blocks. I blanked these out and hope no one will look that hard. This T-55A was equipped with a caliber .50 machine gun instead of the typical Soviet style anti-aircraft gun, but TAKOM's excuse of weapon was worse than early Tamiya attempts. I 3D printed a .50 cal set from Faustus Models, which is superb. I then had to fix the mount, since the reference photos of this tank aren't the highest resolution, TAKOM just guessed as to how the weapon was attached to the original mount. I cut the mount up and used brass rod, copper wire, and styrene stock to rebuild it to look like it may actually have worked. I used a turned aluminum gun tube from Aber so I didn't have to touch TAKOM's part, but the T-55A tube did not fit into the mantlet hole. Interestingly, Aber's T-62 gun does. Instead of using the wrong gun tube, I did some Dremel surgery on the mantlet to allow the right gun to fit, and then back-filled the hole with black CA that I carefully sanded back to the appropriate shape.

That about covers it, guys. To get to this point probably took around 170 hours, not including everything else I've done for the larger diorama. I aim to get the model to prime time later today, and so I should hopefully have another update with a finished model within the next... month?

As always, thanks for looking!

Hello everyone! I have just completed my diorama featuring Tiger Model's 1/35th AMX-30B2 BRENNUS. I talked about the model last time so I won't get in the weeds with the tank. But I will get in the weeds with... the weeds!

This diorama depicts a tank on a dry, dusty track somewhere in France near one of the ubiquitous canals that wind through the countryside. I spent a lot of time on Google Maps trying to get on the ground views of these canals and the one common denominator was how much vegetation there was along the banks and the presence of water birds.

I printed up some seagulls in various poses to add. If I had to do it again I would probably go with a single stork, but hindsight is 0/20, as they say. I ended up with about 50 extra birds all said, because if I was printing 3 I may as well print 100. These little guys were so delicate at 1/35th scale that I destroyed an awful lot of them just getting them off the supports. I also 3D printed the boat. My initial plan was. to use the whole boat, but it left the diorama crowded and if I made it bigger there would be a large empty space, so I had to cut it. I love having things cut off as they exit a scene as it gives me the impression that there is a world which exists beyond what I've made. I like that so much, I also "cut" two of the retaining rocks in half. Here is a mistake that I'm sure you've noticed: I backed the cut off rocks with wood veneer, but forgot to do this for the boat, so I had to paint the cut section black. This wouldn't be a problem if I did a styrene veneer like I usually do, but I just had to get fancy, didn't I? While I was designing and printing stuff, I made a little nameplate and painted it in the Tricolore and added some rusty chips and grime.

For the vegetation, I reached deep into my stocks of paper plants, resin plants, real dry vegetation, static grasses, sea grasses, and sea foam trees to try to make the bank of this diorama as lush as the photos I saw. It was tricky, though, because if I added too much vegetation I would obscure the front of the tank and that's just bad composition. The opposite side of the road was done in a similar manner, but I was able to cram the plants in there much more densely because it is a smaller space and wouldn't obscure anything. I painted the vegetation with passes of Park Green, Light Green, Yellow Green and some custom mixes. I wanted there to be a uniform color pallet, but each plant should have a lot of variation in it to distinguish it from its neighbor while helping it blend it. Does that make sense?

The road needed to be immediately recognizable as one of those which is covered in silty dust so when you drive along it you raise a huge dust trail. I painted with the same colors I used on my predusting layer on the tank, then used my custom enamel and pigment slurry to further refine the colors until the tank and the ground matched. I wanted the canal bank to accurately reflect deeply sodden soil so I went with a mix of dark browns highlighted with khaki where appropriate. I made sure to give the bank a treatment of satin varnish to telegraph being damp. I painted the retaining rocks with the wet blend method, using white, gull grey, and green grey, and this was also what I used to paint the seagulls! I like that little bit of continuity.

The figure is from H3 models and is quite wonderful. I repainted his face twice, because each previous time I went to heavy on the shadowing and highlights and he ended up looking like a clown. In the end, the version that I was happy with is maybe a little less highlighted than I wanted, but sometimes you need to know when to quit. Those of you with sharp eyes will notice that the figure is actual a German Bundeswehr tanker and not French! Yes, I couldn't source a French tanker in time pre-made or as a 3D file, but after some research the French uniform is staggeringly similar to this German's. Plus, it's a fun easter egg because the AMX-30 was the result of a failed joint Franco-German MBT initiative. I painted the beret dark blue, as is traditional for French armor soldiers and gave him a brownish green set of coveralls.

Last thing I did was to pour the resin water. I've done resin pours before, but have never really been happy with them. After a lot of research and discussing things with u/Doc_Quixotte, I thought I was as prepared as I was going to be. Unfortunately, I had a bit of resin creep up the side of the bank. I was able to save this by brushing on more satin varnish and adding some floating debris. The resin I used instructed not to use acrylic paint to tint the resin, so I puzzled on how to get my water the right color. What I ended up doing was to brush some Vallejo still water, which you can tint with acrylics over the resin. This created just the effect I was looking for. After that was cured, I stippled on some gloss gel medium to simulate little wakes and eddies in the water and it was all done.

This was a very fun project and it came together relatively smoothly, but after working on it for a month and a half, I am ready for the next thing. As always, thanks for following along and if anyone wants to see more of my work it's all cross-posted to r/DocRoboScaleModels. Cheers!

Hello, everyone! I wanted to share this mid-build update for my AMX-30B2 project. The tank is now complete and ready for the base. This was my first experience with Tiger Model and overall I was very impressed with the kit's quality, especially the included metal barrels. Since I am self-restricted to not buy any new models this year, I had to build this pretty much 100% out of the box except for what little bits and bobs I was able to scrounge from my spares box.

For the finish, I wanted to do a relatively clean but dusty tank that has been out on exercises on dry, dusty, hard packed dirt track. Since the AMX-30B2 never saw foreign deployment and never fired a shot in anger, I thought it'd be appropriate to depict the tank in France on summer maneuvers. For most of my career on tanks, unless we were out for weeks on end where there was the chance for inclement weather to create mud, the tanks would end up quite dusty from dirt tank trails, but not very muddy. To achieve this, I sprayed the base and NATO 3 color camouflage freehand (since the AMX-30s had a discernible feathered edge between camo colors) and then sealed that in with VMS HD Gloss varnish. I didn't post-shade because honestly I figured the next steps would obliterate any subtle tonal modulation I could have done.

I sprayed AK Heavy Chipping Fluid over this in two coats, then sprayed a mixture of Buff, Deck Tan, and Iraqi Sand lightly over the whole tank. I concentrated the dust mix where dust would normally accumulate and kept it very light everywhere else. Then I used a stiff brush to chip away about 75% of the dust coat. I made a slurry out of AK Dust Effects and VMS Spot-On Pigments (Texturized) and brushed this over the model, using the pre-dusting as my roadmap. The AMX-30B2s I have seen in my reference images were retired examples on display and were quite beat up, with highly chipped paint. I wanted to depict a tank in active service twenty or so years prior to their replacement, so I kept the paint mostly fresh.

Final thoughts on the Tiger Model AMX-30B2 are that it's an impressive kit, on par or maybe slightly exceeding Meng Models in some places. The individual track links were fiddly, and took come coaxing to get into place. The decals were nice and thin and strong. I nearly botched the "Eckmuhl" decal by folding it in half after I'd applied MicroSol but I was able to save it. Try that with a Takom decal!

As always, thank you for looking and I hope to return soon with the finished diorama. Cheers!

Hey everyone! I've seen a few posts from beginners who are frustrated at something not going their way and I figured I could offer some motivation and a couple cents worth of wisdom. Every now and then I clean out my box of misfit toys and take a moment to remember what happened that made me give up on them. These builds all went wrong, and were abandoned for one reason or another, but all failed so tragically that there was little point in keeping them for anything but paint and weathering mules. This line up represents about a year's worth of failures. Anyone who has done this hobby for more than a few weeks has a similar pile of failures, of ideas that never planned out, of mistakes that killed a build's mojo. Personally, I have no hard feelings when that happens. It's a bummer to lose whatever cash was invested in the kit, but aside from that, it's all plastic under the bridge. What these are not is something to be ashamed of. Each failure taught me something, even if it was just when to toss in the towel. Each implosion of potential reminded me that the hobby is supposed to be fun, not just when everything goes right but even when it all goes sideways. I can't tell you exactly what went wrong on some of these, but I can tell you I had fun screwing it up. Sometimes the failure motivated me to go back and get it right on a duplicate model. I botched that M114 so hard it made me go back and make one of my best dioramas.

If you're new to the hobby and you bungle something bad enough to feel like it's unsalvageable don't get discouraged! Sometimes they can be saved, sometimes they live on as a lesson learned. Either way, for every gold medal build there are probably a dozen in the bin. Pull the next one out of the stash and keep going. ✌️

Edit: I think a fair few of y'all have the wrong idea regarding my post. This post is for beginners who have people make them feel bad for quitting a project which has stopped being fun. There are a lot of folks in the comments doing just that. There isn't a skilled craftsperson, artist, or maker walking the earth who hasn't quit something that wasn't working and started over. That is part of the process. Yes, mistakes can be fixed. Yes, having patience and solving problems is 90% of the hobby. Yes, it may be something worth working on at a later date with a rugged spirit of tenacity, perseverance and all that ham, but it is also incontrovertibly, 100%, Grade-A Okay to say, "Nope, this model is no longer fun. Time for something else!" If you are a beginner and have had this thought, you're not alone. Even the most popular YouTube model makers have a box of crap they stopped working on and have no plans to ever revisit. It's part of the hobby, friends.

Hello everyone! I am back with the penultimate update for this build. The RyeField Models Stryker M1128 MGS is complete, and all that needs to be done is to make the base and paint the figures. Easy work, right?

Some quick notes for finishing: I used VMS Spot-On Pigments with texturizer and Alkyd binders wet and matte for the mud. It was applied as a total coverage and the I used VMS Weathering Carrier to remove the excess. The snow was from AK, using all 3 products (Snow, Snow Sprinkles, and Snow Balloons). The technique is to apply the snow sprinkles, then the snow, and top with the micro balloons. Since I was going for a melty, first thaw of spring look, I used tap water to blend the sprinkles and snow and used the micro balloons sparingly. I wanted the snow to appear to have melted, refroze, and melted again. The snow itself is pretty hard to photograph since the more light you have the more washed it it becomes. Hopefully you'll trust me that it looks the part!

I used holographic nail foil from my wife's nail kit to replicate the polarized glass on the vision blocks and the optic sensors. It looks great, but cutting it to size was a hassle. I should have done all this during the build phase, then once it was fixed with Tamiya Clear, masked it before painting... but I'm not the sharpest bulb in the kitchen.

Minor details like the extra tow shackles and whale tails were added around the vehicle to make it look more lived in. The fuel and water cans are from T-Rex and are very nice, if you thought about picking up a set. The spent 105mm shell was from AFV Club, and I wish it was milled out to be hollow, but I think I angled the cartridge so you can't really see the neck.

All the tie-down straps were made with Tamiya tape. I find PE straps unforgiving!

I forget where I got the spent .50 brass and links... maybe Master Model? But they were painted and glued using AK Sand and Gravel Fixer.

And that's the model all done! Thank you, everyone, for looking and for your encouragement.