Rescued Russ

The Russ arrived and is in pretty good shape.

A picture from the eBay listing

Looking at it, the paint is fairly thin and there are no great globs of glue on it. These are the two major problems when trying to rescue a vehicle - thick paint and glue obscure the details. A number of the pieces hadn't been properly trimmed from the sprue, but cleaning that up isn't difficult.

A more serious problem was the assembly - a lot of the pieces were misaligned, not glued in to the slots provided. This meant there were some gaps but, more importantly, the track units splayed out at the bottom. Some scoring with a sharp knife and judicious application of force separated the tank.

Another problem was a gap between the track links. This is a known issue with the Russ; you need to split a long section to have a gap at either the top (if using the track-guards) or at the bottom (if not). The assembler did neither, instead leaving a visible gap on both sides.

I cut out the tracks, removing them between the gap and the track-guard, and removing the track-guard section too. I also had to remove a wheel so I could reverse it to get a "clean" side to glue the tracks to.

You can also see a removed sponson here.

A bit of clean up and the tracks were glued back in.

I also removed the sponsons, cleaned them and the sockets up, and glued them back on square. I used some WeldOn4 solvent glue, which is my go-to plastic glue - but used more than I normally do and let it sit for a while to soften up the plastic. Then, I set them in place and held them in a vice with gentle pressure. This gets a nice tight bond, with a thin bead of plastic squeezing out (which can be trimmed off later).

I also cleaned up (and even removed) some of the damaged locator rails from the track units, to allow the chassis to sit squarely there.

Two things I have learned doing this;

1) It is simply not worth it just to save money unless you are really cash-strapped. I bought this model for $10 inc. shipping - you can get a Leman Russ for $42.08, brand new, on sprue, with free shipping from a dozen places (and it has the turret!) I could have assembled a dozen Russes in the time I spent so far - unless you really need to save $30, it isn't worth it just for the cash.
2) The process is super fun and more than worth it. As I remarked when assembling the Tornadodo; if your goal is to get the most hobby hours for your buck, then kits that require a lot of work are your friend. A rescue is also additionally satisfying because, well - you are rescuing a model! You are "upcycling" it or whatever the funky new hipster thing is - it feels good to do this.

Anyway - that is where I am right now - comments welcome!

=][= Danforth Laertes