Two details merit special attention – the commander’s hatch & cupbola, and the pintle machine gun. The hatch on the original has 8 view ports around the cupbola. To create this effect, I traced the outline of the viewports on a square of plastic, and cut away the unnecessary bits with a hobby knife. It takes a steady hand!
The hatch itself is a wheel cover from a KV-1 kit, and the hinge is that same light gauge wire. Cutting out circles is troublesome, and what I have to do is cut away as much as possible with the hobby knife, and then sand the edges off to get it round.
The machine gun started life as a bit of armor plating which had a little notch in it that looked like an MG breech to me. I cut the piece in two and glued the halves together to make the body of the MG.
I used a barrel of a .30 MG from an old Stuart tank model. There are 5(!) machine guns in the kit. Apparently, two of the MG were not used in combat – not sure what they would be used for, but since most of my models are for gaming, and not for display, there’s no need for parts which won’t be used in combat, so they became barrels for my pintle MG. The trigger guard is a leftover KV-1 piece, and the post, once again, is light gauge wire.
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