Leopard 2A5 – Assembling and painting
This jewel of German engineering has always been one of my favourite vehicles. So, when I saw this model during an expo, I bought it immediately! Thus, in this post I will show you the phases of assembling and painting of my model of Leopard 2A5.
The kit is the very good Tamiya no. 35242. It depicts version A5, the first one introducing the new wedge-shaped armor on the turret that clearly distinguish it from the previous ones.
Box content
In the box we find four sprues (one for the hull parts, one for the turret ones and two for the running gear), plus the lower hull and the turret (divided into two halves), all in olive green styrene.
There are also a couple of well detailed black vinyl tracks, a transparent styrene sheet for the glass parts, a nylon thread for the towing cable and a piece of plastic mesh for the turret bins.
Finally, we find a decal sheet, a piece of cardboard with insignia that need to be cut and placed on the turret rear and, obviously, the instructions.
I bought as aftermarket the barrel in turned aluminium, brass and resin (RB Model no. 35B47) and the dedicated photo-etched set by Eduard (no. 35340).
Assembling
As for all my previous Tamiya kits, also for this one the assembling proceeded smoothly. You need only to check the PE set instructions to understand where to replace the plastic parts with the brass ones.
For the barrel, even without instructions I didn't find big difficulties assembling it, just check some photo references on Internet. Though not visible in the photos, I also reproduced the crossed fiberglass texture on the bore evacuator, using a coarse grained sandpaper.
I will mount the side skirts after painting the wheels.
Painting
The camo of this model is the classical NATO three-tone pattern. After having covered the transparent parts with masking fluid, I sprayed the primer and preshaded the shadows with black.
Lastly, I painted the details, applied oil washes (Raw Umber and Mars Black), filters (red, blue, ochre yellow and buff) and finally a dry brush with red Naples yellow.
Figure
The figure camo is the so-called Flecktarn used by German armed forces. It consists in a grey base covered with spots of four different colors. I didn't colored the lower legs in order to have a better grip when painting. You won't see it anyway in the final result.
and, finally, a dry brush with red Naples yellow oil color.
This is the (almost) finished model, waiting for a satin varnish protective layer.
