Merad

Weekend update - finished painting and clear coating all the road wheels. On to work on detailing the hull. This is the glacis plate. The headlights were just empty boxes so I filled them in with putty to try to give the impression of a reflector inside. The shape is a little weird though, I think I will work on it some more once the putty has cured. Also made some bulbs with drops of UV resin. On the real thing you can't really see the interior of the headlight anyway (reference) but it's a fun little detail to add. While the putty was curing I moved on to the rear deck, which is about 75% complete now.

I took a break from Spitfire painting to work on some road wheels. If you build this kit, I think you'd be better off painting them before assembly. I couldn't think of a good way to mask the rubber tires, especially the inner edge, so I've been brush painting them with a few predictable slips. Not too worried about it since they should be easy to hide with weathering, but if you paint before assembly the rubber pieces are totally separate parts. I've noticed in some reference pics (example) that the pins that hold the tow hooks are usually attached to the hull with a chain. I've been looking for some fine jeweler's chain to replicate it, I'm leaning towards the one in the middle. Also I found this youtube channel that posts lots of tank porn with many vids that are great references of dirty Leo's in the field: https://www.youtube.com/@tankchris/videos

I got the main stencils done. There are a few dozen fastener markings that still need to be added, and taking these pics I noticed overspray on the wing roots, so that needs some touch up...

This build has been in progress since March, but stalled for a while. It's my first large scale build since returning to the hobby and I went all in on the aftermarket. Cockpit is Quinta Studios, with a few pieces of Eduard PE, and HGW belts. Added Eduard PE flaps. I've read that RAF pilots were trained to retract flaps as soon as they left the runway so you wouldn't normally see them extended on the ground. We'll just pretend they're getting maintenance or something like that. The build was smooth overall except for the wing to fuselage fit. I think this was my fault, but not sure what I screwed up. The fillets were just a bit too narrow to seat in place on the fuselage and I had to do a good bit of sanding and scraping on the right side to make them fit. After priming I realized that the right fillet had collapsed a bit - I guess I took too much material in working on the fit. I didn't take pics of the damage, but the fillet was sitting a good 2-3 mm lower than the side of the fuselage. I used green stuff putty to fill in most the sunken area and Tamiya putty to fill in the top layer. It took about 4 rounds of sanding and priming to get the edges even and the shape reasonably correct. Finally yesterday and today I have been painting. All MRP paints - I marbled the top camo with RAF light earth and light green, then finished with dark earth & dark green. The camo was done freehand with the airbrush. I'm not unhappy with the result, but if I had it to do over I think I'd mask it. The bottom was marbled with white, and then the white side got some additional marbling with earth yellow before a top coat of white, and the black side got additional marbling with haze grey before a top coat of "black night". Going to put a gloss coat on tomorrow so the paint has some protection, then this weekend I will be trying out those 1ManArmy stencils.

On the topic of track painting, does anyone know what color the metal parts of the track would be from the factory? The instructions say to paint them "rust", which definitely feels wrong. This pic is the the best I've found where they aren't completely covered in dirt/mud. I'm think that looks like NATO Green with a healthy amount of dust ground into it.

Possibly! The track parts came on 4 large sprues, about 75 cm x 50 cm. I have a large 30" (76 cm) Paasche spray booth, so they would've just barely fit. The assembled tracks are about 1 m long but at least you can fold them up to work in sections. This Leo is so big it's going to present more than one painting challenge. Edit: The tracks aren't actually on the tank yet, in the first pic from my post I held the final link together with blu tack just to put them on and see how they look. All of the wheels are also dry fit so I can take them off for painting.

Tracks are complete. I used an 80 grit sanding stick to scuff up the pads and took some random chunks out of them with a hobby blade. I think looks overdone in the photo but it's more subtle in person and hopefully will be even more so after paint. Rear panel of the body is together and on the chassis. Probably can't tell at a glance but 30+ parts went into detailing it. Working on the top of the body now, which gives us the chance to see just how big this big boy is going to be (Extra Thin for scale). Last but not least the track support rollers got painted and clear coated with a touch of black wash. I think I'm go ahead and start painting the tracks and road wheels since there is going to be so much painting to put on this thing.

I have a couple other 1/16 in my stash but this is the first I've actually built! It's a fun change of pace from from working with "tiny" 1/32 or 1/35 parts 🤣

Amazing work, the engine and cockpit are stunning. This is actually the kit that drew me back into modeling after I stumbled across some guys on Youtube building it back in 2019-2020. I decided last year that I had to have it. Paid more than I care to admit to get one from Ebay. It's going to sit in the stash for a while longer though until my skills get better!

Hey folks, first post here. I got back into the hobby about 6 months ago and this is my first truly large scale build. This is a newly released kit, I had it on preorder and it came in Thursday. It's probably going to be an out of the box build, haven't seen any aftermarket available yet and the detail on the kit is so incredible that I'm not sure I could improve it much with my skills. I'll be doing Bundeswehr markings - the only downside of building the Leo is that they're all basically identical (I read that they're painted by robots). I'm now at the super fun track assembly step. 😅 Honestly it's not been too bad, about 2 hours Friday evening got all of the track pins off the sprue and cleaned up, another 2.5 hours last night got half of the track links off the sprue and about 1/4 of them assembled. The tracks are so big that they go together easy! Finally a few close ups of some of the amazing detail on the kit. Pretty decent looking weld seams IMO, able beautifully crisp bolts and casting marks.