A different TongDE M60A2 Starship build

[tank_me]

I don't have the TM, just reference pics and a MERDC book I picked up off Amazon. There is some artistic license in it as I said as I decided not to mask it. It's close though - call it field applied... ;) . The crisper lines are from the Iwata HP-CS. It works so much better than my old Paasche Talon. It does take a lot more finger control to get the fine lines, but since I laid the lighter sand color down first I was able to crisp up the lines with the darker field drab color. Then I went back over any spots were there was a little too much blending of the colors and fixed them. The Iwata tip doesn't get all clogged up like my Talon did. It is also a lot more forgiving for mixing the paint. It seems to work better than the Talon with both thicker and thinner paint.

Overall, I'm happy with how it turned out. I did find a pair of spare motors in my stuff that were all wired up with caps and leads so I swapped them in for the stock motors as like others have posted the gears were square cut. For some reason the two small screws toward the back of the motors seem to have stripped out on both gearboxes. I think I'm going to rig up a motor bracing system between the motors using the bottom screw bosses to secure it. I don't like the idea of the gearboxes only being supported by two screws each.

Paint used was the 3rd gen AK MERDC set that has an entire paint set to do all the different MERDC schemes. I find AK paints to just be...OK. I actually much prefer Tamiya, but sometimes it's harder to find the Tamiya paints that match and frankly I hate mixing paint to get a match especially when I'm laying down a lot of it. Mixing a little to match a small paint repair is fine. I saved some paint by not spraying one down as a base coat. I just primed it and rough sprayed the sand color in approximately the locations it needed to be. I cleaned up the lines with the field drab. I may have 1/4 bottle left in the sand and field drab colors. The camo does take a long time and care to get looking right. The NATO 3-color is a little more forgiving and on the M60, the lower hull is just solid green so I think when I build the M60A3, it will get a NATO camo. ;) I do have most of the parts printed to do an M60 Slick and that will probably get the standard one color olive paint similar to the other M60 build seen here on Hobby Squawk (think it's Rich's).

[RichJohnson]

Yeah the slick 60 is mine. I’m curious, what parts did you print for a slick 60?
im selling the profile m68 gun and spotlight that Rubicon and I got JVM3D to make for us. Www.richardskohnson,net/id28.html
this web board doesn’t like the link and says my site is not secure but it loads fine everywhere else on all browsers, just clicking in it from here gives a warning.

It took me a lot of trial and error to get ak to spray well. My solution was to use laquer thinner to reduce it with for spraying. Right from the bulk can from Home Depot, though I use AZ products not CA stuff.

[tank_me]

I had some Tamiya acrylic thinner I used with this gen3 stuff and it seemed to spray better than using my homebrew reducer. I may try switching over to lacquer paints to see if they wear better.

As far as the Slick goes, I'm using Inkor's files. He has it mislabeled as an A1 version, but the M60A1 uses that narrower "needle" turret. His files seem to use the older style M48 turret with the older 105mm gun like the one you sell. I printed the gun, but it split on me while trying to remove the supports. I may reprint it and use custom supports.

https://cults3d.com/en/3d-model/various/m60a1

[SoCalBobS]

Rich, if you think the turret can be adapted to the TD chassis, it might be worth seeing if JVM3D has a printer large enough to produce it in resin, I'd go halves with you.

[tank_me]

Rich, if you think the turret can be adapted to the TD chassis, it might be worth seeing if JVM3D has a printer large enough to produce it in resin, I'd go halves with you.

I printed it on a 256/256 bed as one piece which is not that big. There was quite a bit of room left on the bed when it was printed. I could give you a better measurement as I know resin printers have typically smaller beds. The rotation gear on Inkor's turrets are typically smaller than HL gears, but it's not that hard to print an adapter in a slicer.

[RichJohnson]

Inkor's files are not high quality fidelity. I bought the leopard 1 round turret 3d file pack because I am building 6 more tamiya leopards but am missing a few bits here and there. i had jvm review the file pack to look at printing it and they warned me it would not come out much better in resin than my pla printer because the surface was very lined and rough. And his files are locked and not editable.
The turret will not fit the TD as they are their own weird size I found. Also a different gear than henglong too.
If you want the TD turret its probably best just to go to DKLM and ask to purchase just the turret.
I sent in a request to get my slick 60 in that I wanted a basket of parts mixed and matched to make it, or if they would not do it, I wanted an a3 with an additional round turret from the IDF tank and its bits. They accomadated my custom build request and it only cost me a little more than a normal a3 tank.
I would suggest going this route rather than try the 3d with inkors stuff. I will go post a list of I ordered on the slick 60 thread.

[tank_me]

Yes, Inkor's files do require quite a bit of post processing (IE: sanding and filling) if you want good results. I will say that by default his M60 upper deck is better detailed than the TongDE, but requires some TLC getting rid of layer lines. It's all a matter of where you want to spend your time. You can by Inkor's files for cheap and spend time on making them nice or you can spend more on a TongDE and spend less time making it nice. I did like the detail parts from DKLM RC for the M60 even though I didn't use all the parts and I modified some of them to make them more realistic. What I do like about Inkor's files is that he makes a bunch of vehicles no one else makes and he's open to suggestions for new ones. Someone suggested the T-29 the other day and he was considering it. He is releasing the Tortoise soon and I WILL BE PRINTING THAT BEAST... :) I love odd tanks which is why I don't own a single Tiger or even a King Tiger. I don't have anything against those tanks, I just don't have any desire to own them. Someone did post a VK72.01 in 1/10th scale. Now that is a tank I would build.

[RichJohnson]

You and I think a lot alike. Very few of my tanks came out of a box but even those 3 are custom and rare. The hooben Merkava, leopard 1a5 and the slick 60. The rest of my stuff is all very custom. I’m about rarity and uniqueness and quality over quantity.

[Rubicon99]

You and I think a lot alike. Very few of my tanks came out of a box but even those 3 are custom and rare. The hooben Merkava, leopard 1a5 and the slick 60. The rest of my stuff is all very custom. I’m about rarity and uniqueness and quality over quantity.

Uniqueness is an understatement, more like museum quality. Photos don't do Rich's custom tanks justice. The littlest hand made details, right tone of paint for the time of service and on and on. And then he takes them out and drives the S*** out of them too.

So when Rich says he likes a someone's work it's a huge compliment.

[tank_me]

Uniqueness is an understatement, more like museum quality. Photos don't do Rich's custom tanks justice. The littlest hand made details, right tone of paint for the time of service and on and on. And then he takes them out and drives the S*** out of them too.

So when Rich says he likes a someone's work it's a huge compliment.

Thanks. I've been quite envious of his DKLM M60A3 for quite some time. From what I've seen, Rich and I are similar in that we both have experience restoring real vehicles as I think he owns one or two. I have expensive other hobbies as I have a small gun collection (and used to shoot some competitions for fun), I like to do some high performance track days in my Miata, and I have a passion for motorcycles. Those are in addition to my tank obsession of course. I have recently sold my last motorcycle so I will have one less hobby going forward. Working at the museum and doing restorations is what reignited my interest in tanks. I know our museum was passionate about making sure our restorations were done right and historically correct. I strive to make my builds at least plausible, functional, and fairly realistic from a historical view. I'm going to stop trying to make them perfect so that they actually get finished.

I remember being a kid paying with tanks in Germany when my father was stationed there. My father would take me to all the Armed Forces Days at various bases and I have pictures of me sitting in the cockpit of a Chinook wearing a flight helmet with the visor down, behind an M60 MG sitting in the door gunner seat of a Huey UH-1, and standing on the top of an Abrams. Then I drooled over Tamiya catalog tanks until I discovered girls as a young man. I didn't touch another tank until the early 2000s when I found an M5 Stuart at Walmart on clearance. It was at that point looking for details on the M5 that I found the volunteer program at the museum. Being an Army vet with a job in Military Intelligence, I never had any hands on experience with tanks until volunteering at the museum.

Unfortunately I love quality AND quantity, but I do suffer from a little ADD when it comes to tanks. I see that new tank and it's like...squirrel... I also suffer from a little "detail paralysis". I keep finding more and more little details to add and then the tank never gets finished. I get into a build, find a problem, hit a wall and then lose interest for a while in that vehicle until I figure out the problem. It just takes a long time for me to circle back around to a stalled build. I prefer to build them and I don't like the painting process, but this one was nice because I could see it transform from a non-uniform jumble to a uniform camo pattern in a few days. I didn't allow myself to get bored with it.

I have all the parts I need to finish it and all the reference material at this point. With this tank I decided to gather everything up front and decided to finish it to a decent level of detail in a reasonable amount of time, but not go overboard. Louis over on RC Tank Warfare is doing an excellent M60A3 with an amazing amount of detail, but he also doesn't battle his tanks nor does he drive them hard. I'm going to press on with this one as it would be a shame if this pretty tank languished on the shelf waiting to get finalized... :)

Derek

[RichJohnson]

Hah you should see my shelf of half finished tanks. Detail paralysis lol….

[tank_me]

Hah you should see my shelf of half finished tanks. Detail paralysis lol….

You haven't seen my "shelves" of half finished tanks...lol I think the only tank I have that is in it's original form right at this moment is my Haya Chieftain and HL T-90. That's only because I didn't want to add to all the current projects.