T34 engine trouble #13

The base – Part 1.

I’ve used the same basic-base idea as was used in the previous panzer III ausf. N scene. A square photo frame was built up with some 2mm balsa sheet. As I need a slightly larger ground surface this time, I added the balsa to the outside of the only frame I had available.

The inside of the balsa was built up with expanded polystyrene as used in packaging of electrical items. A sheet of cork was used to top it off. This has the advantages of having something more solid than the polystyrene to attach the cobblestones to, and also provides a flat base for the T34. There’s nothing worse than floating tracks on a vehicle that’s supposed to weigh in excess of 30 tons.

I needed a background to the tank and something that wouldn’t be overpowered by the T34. I decided on some city wall to give an urban Russian feel. Rather than just some flat wall, I wanted to add some architecture, and have used the cork method as made popular by Carlos Elias Llop. Sandwiching more polystyrene between poster-card sheets, and building up some details using poster card and cork sheet, made up the bulk of the wall. Hot glue was used for this for speed.

Individual cork bricks were cut up measuring 2 x 3 x 6mm. Each brick was glued in place using thinned carpenters glue. The wall section will be kept separate to the base to ease grouting later, when filling in between each stone. The corkboard/polystyrene skeleton was cut roughly to imitate bomb damage.

I have been admiring the work of Carlos for many years on Armorama, and the details used here are ideas I have ”borrowed” from some of his buildings. More than 1000 bricks in total were used to build the wall.