Construction
The fit of the parts was very good as you might expect from a modern Trumpeter kit and so a blow by blow account of the assembly is not really required. However, a few points should be noted which may make life a little easier.
As usual I deviated from the kit instructions straight away. This was done in order to get the main structural elements of the kit together before adding any of the smaller more delicate parts.
I found that care needed to be taken with the gun barrel. This was provided in two halves. As the shape was quite complex careful cleanup of the central join was required in order to preserve the circular cross section. When dealing with assemblies such as this I find it all too easy to end up with an oval cross section and to overcome this I have begun to use Flex-I-Files. These are also very useful for cleaning up the joints that can exist when the two halves of an aircraft fuselage are joined. These seem to make the job much easier than it would be using ordinary wet and dry paper.
Luckily there are a number of preserved T-10 / T-10M tanks in existence and several sets of ‘walkaround’ photos are available on the internet. Using these I added a few details to the kit. The first thing that I noticed was that the surface of the outside of the cast turret was very rough indeed and that this feature was not captured on the kit parts. I used Mr. Surfacer stippled on with an old brush to replicate this. In retrospect I could have done this much more heavily as under a coat of primer and a few coats of paint the texture on my model is nowhere near as rough looking as the real thing. Some of the welds also seem to have been far rougher than those depicted in the kit. These were roughened up by applying Mr Surfacer to the weld with a cocktail stick and texturing this with the back of a scalpel blade before it set completely. These vehicles were not things of beauty!
There are no plastic alternatives for any of the parts on the etched fret and while I have an aversion to etched brass I actually ended up adding even more brass to my model. I replaced the grab handles on the turret with brass wire. I found this easier than trying to eradicate the mould lines on the delicate plastic parts. I also replaced part H12 with brass tube. Actually I have no idea what this part was (perhaps a pennant holder?), but it seemed from photos pr preserved vehicles to have been tubular rather than solid as provided in the kit. The tow cables were supported by hooks along the sides of the hull that are not supplied in the kit so these were added using thin wire bent to shape. I also replaced the tie-down points on the back of the turret with thin wire rather than use the parts on the etched fret which have a flat cross section.
Some vehicles had a piece of metal welded to the back of the turret. I presume that this was a rain deflector. I represented this using a piece of ‘L’ section Plastruct bent to shape. On reflection, I’m not sure I should have added this to my model. Not all vehicles seem to have had these and if it was indeed a rain deflector it would actually have deflected water into the grilles on the front of the engine deck. I can’t see that filling the engine compartment with water every time the weather turned a little inclement would have been in any way helpful to the endeavours of the Russian Army.