1/35 Academy M48A5/K Patton

It has been a while since the last time I posted any works on my blog. I have been super busy with work and recently got back from a long vacation in Thailand. Although I have been building models of sorts during the past few months, I haven't really gotten around to finishing any of them, with the exception of this tank. So, most of my unfinished models are just sitting on my shelf in their boxes waiting to be taken out and completed.

To my knowledge, this kit was first produced in 2003 and two variations which are the R.O.K. Army version and the U.S. Army version can be built from this kit. I decided to try and build a USMC Vietnam War era M48A3 version but realized later in the build process that I got so many things wrong! Aside from some pin marks, the kit is in excellent condition with almost non-existent flash and easy to build. Most of all, it's cheap too! Cost me about US $16 to buy one. I believe this is the cheapest M48 in 1/35 scale on the market. Most M48 kits are about double or triple the cost of this kit.

It took me about a week a build this model. It's not a difficult kit to build but the weathering process has taken up quite a bit of time as I had to wait for the enamel wash to completely dry each time I applied a layer.


Photos of the building process :

Basic building of the kit is almost completed. 

Only the Korean Army version has side skirts so I cut the skirts away and attached only the top "frame" part. 

Cutting holes in the commander's cupola to fit in a crewman. I ended up not using this part as I went with the U.S. version.

Scratch built the muzzle brake to give it a Vietnam War era look but later realized that the whole gun itself was different from the one used during that time, As far as I know, M48s originally came with a 90mm gun but the A5 variants were upgraded with a 105 mm M68 gun. Oh well...

I saw a tutorial on Youtube which uses paper clay for making sandbags and thought I should give it a try. Plus, it's cheap too (50 cents per pack).

Rolled the clay till it had a thickness of about 6mm then cut them into 1cm lengths and shaped them into rectangular form.

The next process was putting the sandbags on the tank, pushing them into shape and position with an old piece of cloth to avoid finger prints and to give the sandbags a fabric texture. The clay tend to end up with small cracks so using paper clay isn't the best option but the cracks can be removed by using a spatula dipped in water.

The clay was left to dry for a day. I labelled the sandbags with numbers thinking of removing the sandbags for painting and later gluing them back on in order to figure out which went where but realized this was a dumb idea as I later painted the sandbags and covered up the numbers. 

I used an IPP 1200 Gray Surfacer (Korean brand) to prime the kit. This is the first time I've actually used a primer and the results were great.

Mr.Color 309 (Green FS34079) aibrushed onto the model as the basic color with some post shading.

To give the model a very worn, dirty and muddy look, I used Humbrol's Dark Brown enamel wash, airbrushed Mr.Color 22 (Dark Earth) in certain areas to give the model a dusty look and also dipped a brush in the same paint and used my airbrush to blow air onto the brush to splatter paint onto the model. I also added mud by making a mixture of powder carved from a brown colored pastel stick, water and wood glue. The mud was applied by using a brush and airbrush splattering technique. The final stage of the building process was spraying the model with Mr.Color 182 Flat Clear.

The searchlight cover was made with Tamiya Epoxy Putty.

And here are photos of the finished kit :