Confession time. I’m not a great fan of etch brass! I don’t mind simple flat pieces used for mesh grills or instrument panels etc, but large pieces that require many folds and manipulation, just not my cup of tea! This part here has that problem. This is the platform for the crew access to the turret bins. After a lot of cursing and frustration, I finally managed to fold and assemble both pieces to a relatively acceptable standard. Thick superglue was used to attach the parts to the upper hull.
A piece of rubber material is used to represent the gun mantlet cover. It fits quite neatly into the mantlet through the use of tabs and is secured with superglue.
Aber’s beautiful turned aluminium gun barrel fits into the kits mantlet easily with just a drill required to slightly deepen the locating hole. The gun muzzle shroud also fits perfectly around the barrel after the removal of the internal locating tab.
The turret components consists of an upper and lower parts which are an excellent fit, requiring little work to eliminate the resulting seam.
The large PH.8.B infrared searchlight is a large and imposing piece of equipment on the turret. The internal surface of the searchlight was base painted with AK’s base black followed by their chrome paint. The clear lens was masked with Tamiya tape and using a sharp Knife trimmed to fit and then glued to the searchlight with Gator’s Grip acrylic glue.