For the last post of the year: the Tamiya T-62 and the Verlinden set that comes with it.

It’s old shelf-queen as well… sitting in a box since 2004. Time to finish her royal highness. (Or, as it turned out later, a royal pain in the neck.)

I did not have any concept for this build, until I finally got that elusive STALKER figure I’ve been searching for for the last seven years. (This was an object lesson: even though you are buying stuff you don’t need, hence increasing the stash you have in your closet, certain things, like resin models are a must-buy when they are available. Once they become out of production, you’ll end up trying to snatch them up on Ebay, and beg on online forums if anyone has a leftover set somewhere.) Bringing these two together I have decided to do a STALKER style diorama with a burned-out, rusting tank. I’m not entirely sure what destroyed the tank; a catastrophic explosion was one option, since the Verlinden set allowed it (theoretically), but for reasons listed below I went with the simple “burned out engine compartment and abandoned” tank instead. One of the reasons was the lack of heavy fighting in the Chernobyl exclusion zone that would cause a tank to explode. The other, less glamorous reason was the difficulty of inserting the resin turret ring into the Tamiya upper hull…

This Verlinden set caught my attention way back in 2004, when my focus shifted towards armored vehicles. Back in those days, children, you could actually buy stuff on ebay from other people, as it was not the exclusive playground of professional vendors. That was a long, long time ago. You could even buy cheap models back in those good ole’ days from fellow modellers! (I know, heresy.)

Anyhow, I really wanted this Verlinden conversion; after all, it featured the interior of the T-62, it was full of metal and resin; what can go wrong, right?

Little did I know. I should have suspected something was awry when an American gentleman essentially threw this kit at me- I got it for less than 10 dollars (with shipping). Ten dollars of PE and resin; quite a lot of it, actually.

What you do not get a lot of, however, is the instructions…

There was a very quick reality check that I should set my sights lower than this diorama. One prominent issue is the disparity in skills, the other is, well, the conversion/base kit itself.

There are several problems with the Tamiya kit- it’s an old, motorized, inaccurate model, and quite simple at that. The Verlinden set looks incredible- but has the same inaccurate turret, and, quite frankly, takes superhuman efforts to assemble. The instructions were abysmal, the gun barrel was 90 degrees bent, the fit in cases was horrible; after a while I just threw the towel in, and decided to use whatever I can, leave out everything else. I also decided early on against trying to be accurate… So yeah; this model is not going to satisfy any rivet counting tendencies you or I might be harbouring. Let’s just say it’s an “impression” of a T-62 rusting on the field.

Now, don’t get me wrong: I’m not trying to belittle this conversion set. I will constantly bitch and moan about the difficulties that I ran into, but I think it is useful to be aware of them if you decide to pick this set up. Never once I felt frustrated during the building state; I accepted that if something does not fit or makes sense, I just move on, and ignore the problem. It is incredible set, but you really, really need to be good and extremely dedicated to bring out most of it. It was a learning process for me. I realized what I always knew: I do not like to spend time on challenging builds that are challenging due to poor instructions, poor alignment, and fit. I thoroughly enjoyed MiniArt’s D7 dozer, even though it was a difficult kit. It was a challenge in complexity, and not bad engineering. I never felt I was suffering because the designer wanted to throw a curveball at me, or did not think something through, so I did not mind the effort I put into it. In this case I just simply gave up on a lot of things. Someone who has better skills and more patient can bring out much more of this kit than I can.

That being said… one thing that really, really irked me about the instructions was the frontal mudguard. It shown the original Tamiya part with the plastic mudguard left on when it described what to cut off, and never once indicated that PE replacements are provided. It took me quite a long time to actually realize that it can be changed to a metal one, but by that time the hull was assembled. Beh. The other big issue was the fit of the engine compartment. You need to saw off the back of the hull (it was quite an intense few minutes to get myself going with the saw), and the engine compartment/back hull needs to be glued to the original plastic one. Well, it’s a couple of millimetres wider.

As glue I mostly used epoxy glue, because it is stronger than cyanoacrylate; and I used green stuff as putty to increase the strength of the bond even more.

The mudguards were attached with superglue first, then reinforced with epoxy glue; they are very stiff, and hard to bend. (I did some “battle damage” using a cutter, and it took me considerable effort to cut and bend the metal. Not sure what would cause damage like this in this particular case, but I always wanted to try it, and here was the perfect opportunity.) Same with the tool boxes: the tops were bent and damaged.

The interior has some issues as well: the back firewall is missing, and it’s quite visible even if you peek through the hatches; same with the driver’s compartments’ floor. I’ve used some Evergreen plastic to fill these areas out.

I’ve left several parts of the transmission out -so that the rest can be visible, and added some fuel lines to the engine. The exhaust pipes are made out of PE which is odd.

I thought about depicting a tank that exploded and threw the turret off; the plans, however, died in their infancy. For one, the Tamiya hull had to be cut so that it could accommodate the resin turret ring. I did not feel the resolve to start cutting a large, circular hole. I did not wish to invest in the necessary tools, and doing it free-hand… well, that’s above my skills.

The other main problem was the confusing turret interior layout. The instructions are horrible showing what goes where, and not many people have built and posted photos of this set, so I could not find good reference photos, either. Now, I could have researched the interior of the T-62 using the few black and white photos, and then painstakingly recreate it, but I have shrunk from this challenge.

The turret stays on. I added the gun (but left off most of the components of the gun), bought an aluminium gun barrel (as I did not wish to depict a tank that can only fight in the corners due to the 90 degree bend in its gun), and called it a day.

As for the gun. Normally burned-out tanks have their gun sagging down, as most of the mechanisms holding it in balance are destroyed during the fire. Well, the incorrectly shaped, shallow Verlinden turret and the massive gun breach actually guarantees that the tank does not have any room to depress its gun. In fact it cannot even keep it level- it has a quite steep elevation. In other words this T-62 can only shoot at the stars, because sure as hell it would not be able to depress its gun at anything lower than the sky.

The different vision ports, etc, were also a bit problematic to fit into/onto the turret- the holes were generally larger than the parts themselves. A bit annoying, really. The last problem with the turret: the Tamiya hatches. Russian tanks have quite an elaborate interior hatch structure, which are not replicated on the Tamiya model; I was not sure how it was supposed to be depicted using the Verlinden set. (No instructions, remember?) After a little thinking I just glued the seat pads onto them, so they look like a traditional, WWII hatch with padding. I know it’s not accurate, but as I said: I realized I need to compromise if I want to finish this kit in this century.

I’ve decided -again- not to bother trying to assemble the machine gun from the 30 odd resin and PE pieces, or use Tamiya’s plastic one- after all, the weapons would probably be removed from the abandoned vehicle. Same with most of the storage boxes and tools.

The roadwheels provided by Verlinden have a nice burned-look (no rubber left), but the holes are actually solid. I’ve opted not to open them up; time and sanity saving measures. With a rotary tool it would be reasonably fast, but I don’t have one in the UK, and it’s not very healthy to work with resin dust, anyhow. Talking about roadwheels… I wanted to reposition the swing arms for the suspension, but it was almost impossible to simply cut them off the hull; Tamiya made sure they are very solidly attached to the lower hull. This is important because torsion bars would lose their flexibility once the fire weakens them, and the whole tank would just “sit” on the ground. Well, this one will not.

Painting was done in several steps. First, to check for seams I painted the whole of the bottom hull with different shades of rust- this was also to be a nice base layer for chipping.

Once I was satisfied with everything came the interior- using hairspray technique. AK’s Heavy Chipping fluid and Tamiya’s white were chosen. Once I was satisfied with the amount of chipping, I waited a day and sealed the paint with some varnish. I used some oil washes to do filters and some streaking, but overall I was not unduly worried about the interior, since I decided by that point that it will not be open to the elements. I did add some leaves and some dirt, though.

Once I tried the top of the hull on I realized that about 0.5cm of the interior’s walls are on the top- and they were not painted and weathered. So back to the rust/white chipping. Unfortunately they do not look uniform. (Apart from the seam between the upper and lower hull, there are color differences.)

Well, this is where we are now. The assembly is essentially over, and now it’s “just” the painting and weathering. It’s going to be quite a learning process; the first ever rusted tank I’m building. Keep tuned in- it’s going to be an interesting ride.