Emhar A7V
Well, this is certainly something of a record for me. From start to finish in less than two weeks - unheard of! I am a notoriously slow builder; if the pyramids had been left to me to construct there'd be a lot of very annoyed mummys lying around the sands of Egypt right now.....
What a great kit. Parts fit is excellent, which is a good thing as you wouldn't want to be doing a lot of seam filling around all those rivets. I did very little to this kit in the way of extras. The front and rear flaps had missing rivets added and hinges scribed in, the cannon was replaced with a scratchbuilt one as the kit's was hopelessly out of round and I added door handles from .010" plastic rod. The guns are meant to move but the method seemed a bit dodgy to me and I'm not in the habit of playing with my toys anyway so I glued them in place.
The kit can really only be finished as "Mephisto" straight out of the box as each A7V was different and the kit has all the features applicable to this tank. Humbrol paints were used and I replaced the wonky Eiserne Kreuze decals (see in-box review) with some from Pegasus Models. The rest of the decals were excellent - some of the best kit decals I've used. I thought the white may be a bit translucent but this was not the case at all and the decals were very thin with excellent adhesion. A bit of Micro Set snugged them right down over the rivets. Even the large cross on top of the grill went on beautifully with a bit of slicing and judicious amounts of decal solvent. My only complaint was that the white backing for the devil did not extend to his horns and fingers making them almost disappear when applied so I had to overpaint these to match the rest of the figure. I also managed to add his nose and beard with black paint.
Weathering was done with brown and gray pastels and I decided to have a go at making some mud for the first time. The main attribute of a WW1 tank seems to be not how effective a combat vehicle it was but how much real estate it could drag along with it so I figured a 'clean' tank just wouldn't do. A quick look through my kitchen cupboard to see what the wife had left behind yielded a savoury combination of icing sugar and dried dill. Mixed with some Humbrol Brown enamel and plastered all over the tracks and running gear it does the job. This had the added benefit of covering up the seam line running down the centre of the one piece tracks and also makes a delicious topping for cakes and muffins. Mmmm..... chocolate.
And there you have it - a big Lego block on tracks. Hats off to Emhar for producing something I thought I'd never see as an injection moulded kit in the manly scale. Bring on the Whippet.....
Back to 1/72 Armour Main