Takom Leopard C2

After knocking off the jerry can racks I decided to make new ones using brass completely instead of plastic as the others just fell apart. Superglue was pretty useless in the first place due to the very small mating areas so this time I thought I would have a go at soldering.
Brass sheet was cut to size for the bases (10m x 5mm) with the corners rounded off and the strip around them (1mm). Using Blu-Tak to hold things in place some flux was applied to the areas to be soldered;

I had trouble getting the solder off the coil onto my soldering iron but after a suggestion by my good modelling buddy Markus Lack I flattened out some solder and cut it into small strips for greater control (which worked beautifully);

The parts were cleaned up using a fibre glass pen and some wet and dry paper then glued to the back of the turret;

Hopefully these will look better under a coat of paint.
I suppose I should have done this in the first place as superglue never really works that well with brass and plastic, especially when you have such small areas to work with. With a bit of luck I won't knock these off again :o)

Takom Leopard C2

I've stuck on a few more parts, YAY! On the vehicle I want to model the jerrycan holders on the rear of the turret basket are empty so I attempted to make new ones from scratch using styrene strip and thin brass sheet;

They didn't look too bad until today when I broke them off. I'll rework them but use brass for the bases instead of plastic and instead of using cyano I'll solder the sides on for strength.
The barrel is now ready to fit and although I purchased a Leopard Club item I found the separate resin pieces that make up the barrel were not concentric so I'm sticking with the Orange Hobby item I bought originally. I did use the bore sight mirror and mount from the Leopard Club barrel and stuck it to the end of the Orange Hobby one as it saved me making one from scratch;

The tie down loops on the turret basket are moulded solid in the kit so these were removed and new ones made using thin copper wire;

15amp fuse wire was used for the top and bottom rails on the platforms either side of the turret basket. I *was* going to use the kit parts but I managed to break a couple when removing them from the sprue, the same for the grab handles on the turret sides.

Takom Leopard C2

I was going to use the kit barrel and add some detail to it but decided on using an aftermarket item instead from Orange Hobby that I had got for my Meng Leopard 1A5, also there is no rifling inside the kit barrel ;

As you can see it comes with two small frets of etch metal....omfg it is TINY! After the best part of 1 1/2 hours I managed to put the first two straps around the barrel;

Very frustrating! After a good couple of hours I managed to get the rest of the etch on, the four clamps proving verrrrrry tricky as the folds required were small and very awkward to do, luckily there are two etch sheets as it was very easy to lose some parts to the carpet monster;

Regarding the four clamps I replaced the rods that connect each end with sprue as the etch is obviously flat. The Orange Hobby barrel is actually for a Leopard 1A3 so I need to make the boresight mirror and mount for the end of the barrel from scratch, I would have used the kit one but it's too small.

Takom Leopard C2

In their infinite wisdom Takom moulded all the mounts for the turret spaced armour separately and although the bigger ones were OK the small ones are very fiddly. You get 34 on the sprue and you need 16 per side so after pinging three to feed the carpet monster I could see which way this was heading so ended up making a load of new ones using 1.5mm and 1mm styrene rod;

To get the alignment for these mounts I taped the side armour to the turret then used a pencil to mark where they go (don't bother using the Takom instructions for this as they useless). I had already glued two of the larger ones in place as these had locating pegs;

After a couple of days away from the bench I looked at the mounts I had made and after deciding they were crap I cut the kit ones off the sprues and after cleaning them up a different way (I didn't use tweezers this time) I managed to avoid pinging any more into the ether. I only had to use one of the home-made ones and this was put in the middle where nobody would see it.
Because I had coated the turret previously I had to use superglue to attach the parts;

The spaced armour was then glued into place and the turret has been set aside to dry.
I don't really have much more to do now so hopefully the build will be completed soon.