Belgian Leopard Progress

It's going rather well at the moment with the wheels & suspension made up and a start made on adding details to the hull. The wheels all have very nice bolt detail and should really look good under some paint. Likewise the suspension parts are good although they all suffer from excessive seam lines especially the bump stops. However some file work soon sorts that out and very little will be seen on the finished model anyway.

The splash armoured protection fillets on the hull are very poor suffering from the dreaded Revell sink mark issue and really thick seam lines. A shame this as the inner faces have mesh cast in which is totally eliminated due to sink marks. Lucky it's not that noticeable with the turret in place. They also need some blending in along the hull sides as there's a massive gap. 

The front track guards also need some work to bring that area up to spec and I've started by adding some panel lines using a fine saw to separate the various parts including the rubber mud flaps. The tread detail on this is pretty smart too. 

I've also quickly test fitted the turret, I always do this early on in the build so I can get a feel for the look of the model and check for any problems in fit. The turret looks good dimensionally but that cast texture! It's far too rough for a leopard turret which are in fact quite smooth. The texture here wouldn't look out of place on some Russian armour.
A quick blast with the sanding stick confirms it would take ages to sand smooth so I'll use Mr surfacer to level out the texture whilst leaving just a little variation in the surface of the turret.

And finally the tracks are waiting to be built. This set comes with a few links which are slightly angled for a better fit around the sprockets & idlers. The details on the links are excellent as ever from Friulmodel and should be a doddle to build.