PART ONE - BUILDING THE CHIEFTAIN
Takom’s Chieftain was the second 1:72 scale kit from this company that I had a chance to build. The first one was the T-54B developed by this Chinese manufacturer for Ammo, which was undoubtedly one of the best if not the very best braille scale vehicle that I’ve ever built. That was also the main reason that I eagerly started the work on the Chieftain Mk.10/11, even though I was aware that it may be difficult to create an attractive model from it due to rather dull painting schemes available.
At first sight, the Berlin Brigade urban pattern looks tempting, but it is actually too good in its role, disrupting the shape of the tank and being even more effective on a fairly small model.
Since it was difficult to make an eye-catching paint finish, I had to resort to putting the model in an original setting. In this case, I went for a classic TV theme…
ASSEMBLY
As the kit actually includes two complete models, one of each of two variants: Mk.10 and Mk.11, my first step was to select the sprues needed for the Mk.10.
Construction started with the lower hull. Unfortunately, it turned out that this kit isn’t done to the same standard as the T-54B, and almost every part required careful cleaning up and removing the omnipresent flash. Furthermore, one often needs to test-fit the adjacent components in order to determine the true amount of the excess plastic – just like in a short run kit…
Most of the mounting apertures required enlargement, although sometimes it was easier to reduce the size of the pins.
As some of the bogies were quite similar to each other, I scratched their numbers onto their inner surfaces in order to avoid mixing them up during assembly.