A really really nice Merkava 3 BAZ with Nochri Dalet.

Unfortunately I got another year older this march . But that is overbalanced by the fact that I have the greatest friend in the whole wide world. And they got me one heck of a set of birthday presents . I am blessed now to be able to enter and build the stunning Meng Merkava 3 BAZ with the Nochri Dalet mine roller, and crew it with some beautiful figures from Legend, and Blast . Then I will finish it with my first ever set of Life Color paints specifically for Israeli armor, and pigments for Israeli dust, dirt, and mud ; and also I will be using my first ever set of AK washes and pigments. I can almost hardly wait to try those pigments for the tracks/rusty stuff. Especially that one metalizer. In my practicing on stuff it gives a great steel effect much better than what I had been using.

Ooooh Nice , I am really looking forward to your build Gary , I like the Blast crew figures , look at that guys left thumb , its HUGE .

Jenny

yes Jenny. It is a huge thumb. He is a specialized IDF emergency hitch hiker , in case they ever run out of gas

Gary

G Cooper wrote:
yes Jenny. It is a huge thumb. He is a specialized IDF emergency hitch hiker , in case they ever run out of gas

Well I am sure he gets a big thumbs up for that

Jenny

Gonna be a great build!!

Jack

This should be a good one Gary

Simon

Lots of sweet stuff there!! Yeah yeah yeah

OK. How ya'll doin out there . I been doin as good as I can lately, cause I got me a really nice new kit to put together, and here it is. I started this where I think every armor kit ever made starts. With all the roundy parts . And here they are.


I think that there are like 64 or 65 pieces in there for all the wheels and springs and stuff. And I was thinkin about replaceing those springs with some scratchbuilt ones for a half a minute. Then realised that they are going to be practically invisible down in there when I am done with it, so I went with the kit pieces.


I also decided that I would have a mix of both solid steel wheels, and rubber rim wheels to give a bit of variation.


And a new cable to replace the kits cable crew access step thingy.


And in the Merkava book I got I see that they don't acctually store any track links on the back of the hull where Meng tells you to put two of them, So I deleted them and put two hook on each side where they were supposed to go.


And here is a fuzzy photo (unless you want to see the hull interior braceing) that shows that for some reason I made the crew rear door workable. I don't know why, cause I'm pretty sure I am going to have it closed. (mostly because I don't want to have to build an interior


Here is a closeup of a steel wheel.


And here is a rubber rim wheel. And on each of them I drilled in the three tiny holes that are in the outer face of each wheel with my brand new set of fantastic drill bitses


And this is a truly amazing piece of engineering. It is a one piece unit both front and rear molded in just one piece. It's reallly amazing when you hold it in your hand and look at it and think what they had to do to be able to do this

Well that is is for now. Next I get to start to work on the rear stowage rack thingys.

And the sekrit clue for today is . . . . 20 hexamagons and 12 pentamagons on a circumalar thingything


Gary

That is a very nice looking kit!

Are the hexamagons bolt heads? The circumular thing...turret ring?? Other than that I got no idea

Cheers
JT

G Cooper wrote: And the sekrit clue for today is . . . . 20 hexamagons and 12 pentamagons on a circumalar thingything
Gary

Well it is pretty easy except it is a roundy thing , not circumalar , it is a soccer ball . If you woukd have said it was roundy everyone would have guessed it

Jenny

Looking very cool so far!!

Jack

I usually manage to get in an hour or two each night, sometimes more when my feets still feel like feets . Some of the stuff I do I really wish I didn't, cause it is things like the little bits that I lose when they spring out of this dimension and go somewhere else .


Sometimes I wonder if there is another universe somewhere that has pieces of models that just appear out of nowhere and go flying across the room


Just because I had the lead foil I decided to do a new set of the rubber mud guards on the front.


Well of course I did both sides


And I thought that I could improve a little bit on the rear stowage bins if I reworked them just a little bit. This is another one of those things that you really need to have the complete unabridged sailors cuss words dictionary handy, cause you will end up using every one of them to finish one of these things


I will also scratch up the heavy fabric liners with the straps to go on the inside of these. I will also be raising the level of the front that the chains are holding the bottom at so it is more level


And this is my first attempt at redoing the armored side skirt mounting bracket springs. I think I will change the design just a little bit on the production models though for reasons of better fit


So that is all I have managed to do recently, so that is it till next time.


Gary

Amazing work Gary, serious attention to detail.

Simon

Looks great Gary!!!

Jack

Thank you Simon. And thank you Captain Jack.


Gary

Gary you are doing some freakin awesome stuff here!!

Hi Ya'll:

Well It's June now, and that means that the May mini madness is over and it's time to get back to some other things. And my Merkava is one of those things. It's not much really, but I hope to get rolling with this one.

First is my idea of a new set of side skirt spring suspender thingys.


And a beginning on an all new (and hopefully somewhat improved) main gun barrel.


Well, like I said; it's not much this time. But it does feel real good to be back to work on it after just a short break of one month .


Gary

Looks great Gary!!

Jack

That does look good!! Lovely detail work again Gary, really nice!

Thank you Capt. Jack.

Thank you J.T.

And now for something completey (well only sort of ) different. I have begun the work on the turret main structure.















All I can say at this point is that it has been, and still is a lot of fun, but this is not a kit for someone that is a beginner .


Gary

Still pluggin along with this one. So here is what I have managed to do in the last couple nights.

First was to go over my Merkava3 book to try my best to figure out which of those seems should actually be on the turret, and which ones are not supposed to be there.


And once the putty stuff was on in (hopefully) the right places, I started on the rear stowage basket and the ball & chain armor.


I am going to replace that lower plastic tie down bar around the bottom of the basket to a brass one like what I have done on the top.


And I also managed to build the complete mine roller assembly., I still have to do a bit of putty work around the lifting lugs on it to make it look better. In fact I was thinking it would be easier to just remove them and putty everything nice and smooth and then just drill the points out and put in heavy copper wire. But I don't know just yet.





Also I will probably be puting a little bit more weld beads on the front of the mineroller to match the little bit I did on the hull attatchment portion of the thing. Well that's all for this time around. Next I think I will go back and finish up the putty work and also the turret basket and last bits of ball & chain, then on to the detail on the top and sides of the turret.


Gary

The mine rollers look neat Gary. The ball and chains are actually rather good for plastic, are you thinking of replacing the chains?

Simon

Oh the rollers look really sweet  , I cannot wait to see more work on this 

Jenny 

That is nice! The rollers, ball and chain, the whole project - marvellous!

Cheers
JT

Just a tiny update on what I have been doing on my Marvelous Merkava.

Lower and upper tie downs have been added along with the new tow cables and the eventual retaining chains added. Also you can see the new tie down straps I have done for the MG ammo cans.


Some new grab handles on some really nice detail of the inside of the loaders hatch.


And a little scratch building with some brass strip and Grandt Line nuts with a tiny bit of wire to make that commanders sight look just a little sharper.





And some tiny bit of work just barely visible on the commanders hatch.


Still a tiny little bit at a time working to a finish. I
But right now the barrel is my most biggest challenge that is holding things back. I guess it is just a simple matter of to stop listening to the voices in my head that tell me I can't do it, and just tell them to shut up and listen to some Led Zeppelin instead and just get it done.


Gary8)