Tamiya Leopard 1A4: Like Going Home

 

I’ve neglected this blog for far too long, and have been so busy in recent years with my writing career that modelling has taken a back seat. I've completed only two models this year (though worked on at least five others), the first being the Dragon 1:72 Jagdtiger I posted about six months ago. Recently I got to build one that’s been on my to-do list for many years, Tamiya’s 1979 35^th scale tooling of the West German Leopard 1A4 (35112).

The Leopard 1 is still in service in 2025 with some sixteen armies around the world, with new upgrades on offer from many firms, so it’s far from a period piece, despite Australia having retired our Leos in favour of reconditioned M1A1s (not a universally popular decision) many years ago.

Okay, Meng’s much newer kit is far superior, but it’s also correspondingly expensive, and I do enjoy vintage Tamiya for its own sake. The kit is straight-forward though there are one or two bits that can bite you if you’re unwary. Construction follows the standard Tamaya pattern, running gear being suggested to be assembled first, though the wheels form a subset that can be built and detailed separately from the rest and added late in the process if you work that way—I do, as it happens. Upper and lower hulls are large single piece toolings, dressed with smaller parts.

The drive wheels housings are compromised by the kit sharing tooling with the popular early motorised version. I say compromised, they are inherently weak and need to take a lot of force when the tracks are joined and tension thus comes into play. This has never been a problem, however, with superglue making a suitably strong bond.

When I began this project it felt like going home. Muscle memory would just about build it, especially as I built the Flakpanzer Gepard AA tank version back in the 90s, about my third armour kit ever. Construction proceeded without much difficulty, though there were details I wish I'd spotted. The co-axial MG in the turret is not moulded as a proper gun barrel, merely a protruding rounded shape, and I could have at least drilled out the port for appearances.

The tracks took a lot of work. One thinks that one-piece vinyls should be child's play, and they are, but the detail is very repetitious. There are 672 rubber pads—that’s four per link times 84 links per track times two. After a sprayed base coat of rust/dirt browns, every single pad was brush painted rubber black (Tamiya XF-85) by hand, rather a daunting proposition. They were then treated with a Tamiya dark brown weathering wash to create depth, and oversprayed with an ultra-thin glaze of buff (two drops to forty drops of thinner) to create a dust coat. Lastly they got a few touches of MiG powder pigment to suggest fresher rust here and there, and the guide horns were drybrushed metallic. For all this effort, the effect doesn’t really show up in pictures—I might as well have not bothered... Fully half of each track is also behind the side skirts, so I could have detailed only the middle part and saved the effort!

The wheels were masked with a combination of rubber solution and disc stickers, then sprayed rubber black for the tires. I used the template method for the faces of the wheels, a 15mm circle template fitted nicely.

The main paintwork was a mixed shade for German Army Gelbolive, a formula I found at Armorama. XF-51 Khaki Green plus XF-57 Buff plus XF-74 Japanese Olive at a ratio of 4:1:2. This seems a very good match for the original. I made a batch darker with the addition of some black as a shade coat for the underside and behind the running gear, then another batch lightened with extra buff as a fade coat to mottle/pattern the upper surfaces. With all this done, I sealed the surface with Micro Flat. Where the decals would go I splashed with Micro Satin to bring up the lustre and improve adhesion, then resealed with flat over the decals once applied.

The kit decals were quite old but worked very well indeed. They took a while to part from the backing sheet, but snugged down surprisingly well and their finish was very close to that of the paint. They were slightly out of register, so when it came to the crosses, I took some from a Supercsale sheet that were within half a millimetre of the correct size, and these, surprisingly, were glossier and needed more attention to blend in.

The pioneer tools were a fair job in their own right, with a sprayed metallic, brush painted wood tone and hull colour on the clamps, Micro Flat over the hull colour areas, brown oil wash to create a patina on the metal and a darkening effect on the wood.

Finishing techniques included Flory wash in the engraved detail, MiG pigments for dust and rust, and drybrushed metallic for abraded areas, plus the usual suite of oil techniques, being dirt spots and chipping, edge profiling and rust streaks.

I had the advantage of a research source showing the very same vehicle as the kit depicts—a 1984 partwork whose first issue featured a centre spread of the Leo by the talented Kieth Fretwell. On reflection, the kit might have actually guided the illustration, which even shows the wading -kit tower on the commander’s hatch, which is included in the kit as optional parts! I did not bother rigging a radio antenna, as photographs are quite contradictory. Many Leos are photographed without radio masts at all, others have stub antennas only. If I get a definitive source on this I can always add it later.

The Leo looks good, was a fun build—I wish I could have spent a little longer on it: I could have caught some problems before they happened. But it’s a good addition to the modern armour collection. I look forward to doing Revell’s Marder IFV in the same scale, using the same pre-NATO-camo Gelbolive.

If and when I replace my studio lights, I’ll take better photos.

Thanks for looking,

Mike

Production-Lining Your Art

Most of us build more than we can finish in the short term, we all have a variety of projects on the boil at once and many of us move among them at whim, building or painting as the fancy takes us. That’s the marvellous flexibility of the hobby, really. Of course some end up back in their boxes on the shelf because we’ve lost patience with them for some reason – obstinate fit, inaccuracy, waiting for parts or decals, whatever. The only kit I’ve put aside in recent times was a Hobbycraft Corsair, and it’s rather put me off the brand.

But eventually you need to clear that bench, get projects to completion, on display, and move on to new territory, though sometimes models have been in play for years. I found myself doing this recently, with a Zvezda (ex-Dragon) BTR-70 that had been unfinished in the box for about three years after being started as a ‘need-to-build-something’ project that I had thought would be a quick build, only to find the tiny Dragon parts tended to snap on the sprue, and the need to replace some with shaped wire rather consigned the beast to the shelf for a long time. Recently I got around to building a Tamiya StuG IV which has been in my stash for at least ten years, I got it from a second hand dealer in Japan, it’s the edition with all Japanese instructions (not that that’s a problem, Tamiyas really only go together one way and the diagrams are obvious.) Add to the mix the Testor edition of Italeri’s Sd.Kfz 234/2 Puma recon vehicle and I had a trio of 1:35th scale armour all clamouring to be finished more or less together. (You might have spotted them in the previous post, if sharp-eyed.)



So the solution was to do them production-line fashion. Henry Ford knew what he was doing, and while it depersonalised a craftsman into a repetitive technician, the hobby can withstand that at a small scale. Given that all three models were finally into their full paint jobs, I could tackle the finishing phases all of a piece. Each model received its fade coat, highly thinned paint misted onto the horizontal surfaces to create the impression the paintwork is faded by the elements. Then I did the oil filter weathering on them all, which was a process of washing the acrylic paints over with enamel thinner carrying dissolved artists’ oils to create tonal variety and the characteristic patterns of rust streaking. Then the pinwash to bring out details by capillary action, and tiny amounts of thicker paint to establish areas of open old rust; and finally brighter rust shades where rust is newer. The next phase is drybrushing in enamels (I can’t do it in acrylics, they simply dry too fast for me to keep up with the job and the task of endlessly cleaning and refreshing the brush) to profile edges and raised detail, making them ‘pop’ from the darker background of the paint and washing.

Then onto external fittings: tools and jerrycans on both the German subjects, all of which need to be painted and weathered before mounting, and a couple of fittings for the BTR. Next step decals – all three models could cross the bench together. Then onto the dust phase, Mig pigments brushed on in strategic locations for that touch of environment adhering to the beast. Final fittings, delicate radio antennas are often the last thing I mount, and of course the tedious process of painting a sharp division between wheel rims and tires, though that was eased somewhat with a new tool I’ll be reviewing here before long.



So there you have it – the same finishing techniques applied across the spectrum of three models in widely varying schemes, two wheeled vehicles, one on treads, different eras, three different manufacturers, but all responding to the same techniques for a satisfyingly dirty, beat-up appearance that whispers to the viewer’s subconscious that these vehicles have seen plenty of hard service. And all walked through the process from overall painting to completion side by side over the space of about a fortnight.

Now, I wonder if I should production-line build from the beginning in future? It certainly speeds up a heavy build schedule…

Look for retrospective reviews of these kits right here in the near future!