Leman Russ Kartvelian Variant, Part 3: the devil is in the details

Here is the 3rd installment of the building of the Leman Russ Punisher Kartvelian Variant.

Before I start, entries for the Bishek 2nd Logo Contest will have to be submitted by Jan 16, that's this Saturday. Email me at: scwarhammer@yahoo.com. We already have a couple of entries and there are real prizes (5 resin bases, A Leman Russ or Chimera), so don't be shy. One of our contestants is 10 and drew his design! The readers will pass judgement at the end of the coming weekend.

Anyway, building a GW Russ is not hard to do and doing everything straight out of the box works great most of the time. But with a tiny bit of extra effort you can really personalize your vehicle. I just want to show you some of the things I did to this vehicle. Mind you, all of this is common stuff that you can find online, in the Forgeworld Modeling book or the GW Painting tanks book.

First off: I cut the lid of the turret stowage basket in 3 pieces and opened up two of of the three compartments.

In one of them I put some ammo, in the other the crew hastily stuffed a camo net, which doesn't really fit if it is not neatly folded up..The net is made from a piece of cheesecloth.

My tank didn't come with an extra piece of turret armor so I cut out some plastic card and rivets and made it.

The top of the turret has an opened lid, on which I added some rivets. I know that is not too realistic, but it will paint up great. I also added rivets to the flat surface around the entrance. The metal part is from an old Leman Russ a accessories blister. I also added handles to the stowage compartment and a little antenna to the side there. Real basic stuff.

This part has these little nubby things sticking out (see above). I drilled holes in them so the crew could use them as hooks for hanging stuff.

Onto the back of the tank. Ignore the back door, more about that in a bit. I built another stowage area that is slightly larger then the original GW piece allows.

In it I could add some Gerry cans and a wheel. Make sure you glue little hooks so everything can be tied down. The wire is floss.

here are some bullet holes

shrapnel damage

extra water, we are in the desert after all..

Now the back. I mentioned in earlier posts that this Russ variant has a back door and a smaller engine. Here is the back:

I scraped off the symbol on the back of that door, never liked that much.

The crew had to do some field repairs, so I used some power cable from Dragon Forge and made it look nice.

I put the exhaust up top and built it myself.

Drilling out a hole in a two piece component like the exhaust above of the bolters below is really hard and annoying, therefore it is highly recommendable to cut off the end piece altogether and replace it with a bit of plastic tube to create a nice hollow end that looks believable. On the bolters I cut the piece slightly diagonal.

And this model is ready for priming

All this is very basic but it looks great and will paint up a lot better. The more you can work with on a model, the better your end result will be.

Hope this inspires!

Mike