Project #1 - Assesing the damage

This is the M1A1 as I got it home from it's long stay at the hobby shop. As you can see the tow cables are missing on either side of the turret. The missing side pod came off while I was examining the model. Overall it's in pretty good shape, but lets look at those problem areas in a bit more detail...



The side pod was broken off while assessing the model. Care will need to be taken when mounting it back in place to avoid showing a glue line.



Here we see where, in an effort to touch up the paint where the water stains were, some overspray found it's way onto the amunition boxes.

In this picture we see that there was a little overspray with the darkening color on the left side decal. This picture was actually taken after I began to lightly sand off the overspray from the decal area only.

Project #1 - Repairing the Tamiya M1A1

A few years ago, I decided to take on my first armor model. I chose the 1/35 scale M1A1 by Tamiya since (not being an armor expert) I knew I could find plenty of reference material for. I pretty much built it straight out of the box with no additional detail parts although the kit comes with a nice array of details.

After completing the kit, I took it to a local hobby shop (Andy's Hobby Headquarters) where it sat on display for a little over 2 years. At some point during that period, something fell on it and broke off the tow cables on either side of the main turret. There was also a leak in the roof that caused some water damage to the finish. The owner (who is a friend of mine and an excellent modeler in his own right) touched up the finish but the tow cables were never found.



So this repair job will be two fold:

1. Adding some after market tow cables - Eureka XXL 35015:



2. Touch up a few places that were oversprayed during the paint job repair.

Welcome to my workbench

Hello,
First off I should introduce myself. My name is Don Brent, I'm 44 yrs old and I live in Phoenix, AZ. I've been modeling in one form or another since I was 9yrs old (so, around 35 yrs). I'm not really what you'd call a specialist since I enjoy almost all types of model building from model airplanes (R/C and static) and model rockets, to ship modeling and even model railroading (check out my other blog at: http://shasta-northwestern.blogspot.com).

The purpose of this blog is simply to be a showcase for the various projects I'm working on as well as a way to share my experiences (both good and bad) with other poeple in the model building community. I certainly do not consider myself a "master modeler". You won't find me spending 1500hrs super-detailing a 1/32 F-4 Phantom for instance. I do consider myself a competent model builder in that I am usally satisfied with my results and am able to enjoy the models I build (flaws and all) and most importantly, that I enjoy the time I spend working on a model and the experience I gain from each project.

So welcome to my workbench... Pull up your current project and let's do some building!