I haven't had anything to report on this model for some time because I was slogging through the building of the individual track links. The originals are a stunning shade of eggplant purple, but I mistakenly laminated them to the wrong thickness and had to start over with scanned duplicates. There were 64 of them, but I didn't end up using them all. Whether this was due to poor fit or poor technique I'm not sure -- I think it was a little of both. Edge painting was such an awful task that I stopped work entirely for about a month and switched to one of my other hobbies (the good news is that in the interim I finished a rather nice hand-knitted lace shawl, which had also had its problems). So over a combination of winter holidays, I finally finished the links and glued them in place today. I had horrible visions of having the spacing come out wrong enough that the last space would only be large enough for half a link. As it turned out, the link spacing as I built it is too far apart, but it was possible to fit a continuous loop on each side (with one more link on one side than the other). But it finally looks like a real tank, and I'm pleased to say it's complete. I do plan to bring it to Army Heritage days in the spring, and to the IPMC in the fall.
Final thoughts: This was Maly Modelarz's 12-1986 offering. I accomplished my goals, which were to build an early Maly model, and to build a tank with individual track links. All the things people have said about the awful paper are true, although as noted above it is waterproof and bird-dropping-proof. But it cracks badly when creased, even when submerged in water for a while. I think it might have done that when new, and age has not improved its disposition. Fit was, um, mostly OK but with occasional printed marking mismatches. I still like the forest green and purple color scheme. And I did manage to complete it in less than a year without abandoning it completely. It's definitely not up to contemporary standards, but I feel good about completing it.
Last edited by Amccombs3; 01-16-2017 at 04:27 PM.
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