T-72 and Advanced Modeling Syndrome Part 3 - The Final Chapter

Well, the "Final Chapter" maybe until I get to the painting and detailing, but certainly "the final chapter" on the actual builds! No sooner had I gotten the last of the turret stowage box details on the last of the 15 T-72 turrets (from Part 1 of this T-72 descent into insanity) when I turned the turret around, looked at the simplified smoke launchers and mused, "what am I going to do about you?" Fortunately the next day a solution presented itself - the great chaps over at Breakthrough Assault posted an article on how they'd updated their Warsaw Pact tanks with a host of relatively easy to do improvements!

At this point instead of 1.0mm styrene rod, I've been using 3/64" (1.2mm) and sanding it down for the smoke dischargers. The photo below shows the result before final sanding. At this point I have some 1.0mm on order which will better match the size of the kit smoke dischargers with less effort.

I'm using 24 gauge brass wire for my smoke launcher wiring, which I think gives me a better scale effect, and is easier to work with than trying to bend thin styrene rod. I've also moved the machine gun mount facing the rear as that appears to be correct based on what I'm seeing in the references as well.

As I indicated, I've pretty much finished up the stowage boxes - though they'll need a little final sanding and filling around the edges. I'm planning on priming them first to make sure I get the all of the gaps filled properly.

As you can see from the photo above, all of the fronts are ready to go with photo-etched plates and final details added with strip styrene.

So there you pretty much have it. All of the final details are going on my NVA T-72 tanks at this point, and the next step will be to prime and paint them. Unfortunately I have a few other projects I need to work on outside of miniature building over the next couple of weeks. so progress is likely to slow just a bit until those are done. My goal is to have everything ready to go for the next online Campaign!