This is the Quality Castings IS-3 (JS-3, ИC-3). The IS-3 was mass produced near the very end of the war and as far as my limited research can tell they were never used in combat although some Russian sources state that they were used against the Japanese. This sexy tank sports the same 122mm cannon as the IS-2 and was later updated and modernized and saw action in Korea I believe as the IS-3m.
I bought five of these tanks at $8 a piece. The package arrived and the packaging itself was terribad. All five tanks and all parts included arrived in a plastic bag that was stapled at the top. That's it. The barrels were bent worse than any BF barrel could ever be and so were the corners of the tanks i.e mudguards. Heres four of the tanks and all parts on display. Note that each tank comes with a little figure who sits on top of the turret with his legs inside the hatch. I could not be bothered to dig these out of my bits box.
I labeled the parts so you can see what you get. 1- Hulls. 2- Tracks. 3- Fuel cans (4 per tank). 4- MG ring mounts. 5- Hatches. 6- DSHK AA MG. 7- Turrets. The hulls and turrets have some slight variations in them in terms of stowage modeled on as seen here.
As you can see everything is white metal and although it make look crude due to my bad photography, these actually paint up very nicely and are pretty easy to put together. One of my beefs is the peg and hole method of attaching the turret. I accidentally dropped the turret more than a couple of times while looking at the tank because it slides right out.
I am working on one tank and I cut down the peg and glued in magnets which works much better.
Now for some pics on the tank I am painting. I chose standard Russian Green for this one just like the tanks that were on parade in Berlin after the war. I do not think it looks good on camera but from a foot or two away looks pretty good. This was my first time ever doing line hilights and may be the last. I need to stick with light drybrushing I think. Darker pictures are without flash in white lamp light. Light pictures with odd olive color on tank are with flash. I hate that flash alters the color so much which is why I am including so many pics.
Finally it comes down to what really makes or breaks this product for me. Uniformity. These are advertised as 15mm models and I'm sure they are. But BF products really don't seem to be 15mm. I've read that the vehicles are pretty spot on but that infantry are 18mm and aircraft are 12mm or 1/144. I bought these tanks to use as centerpieces for my army but unfortunately they are just not scaled with BF products which appear to have their own scale which I will call BF scale from now on. Here is the QC IS-3 pictured with BF IS-2. Through my research, I think the IS-3 should be as wide as the IS-2, not as tall as the IS-2, but LONGER than the IS-2. The QC IS-3 just does not fit with my army and I may end up fixing this tank's paint job and sell it and the unbuilt ones and then pray that BF does a late war monsters set some day.
Overall I think the QC IS-3 is a fine product. It has quite a bit of detail, is easy to paint, and is easy to build. Unfortunately it just does not scale well with BF products and because of that I will probably not being buying anything else from QC. It is a shame too because they also make T-54s and Jagdtigers among other things. I found out about QC products from this website http://oldglory15s.com/ but purchased them from this next website because they were $2 per tank cheaper http://www.warweb.com/.
I will be doing another product review shortly. I have a 1/100 scale Fw-190 on the way from Armaments In Miniature which should be here either today or Monday so stay tuned for that. The Spetsnaz will be done when I finish them :p .
Later!
No comments:
Post a Comment