I like to build by sub-assemblies, so I started the model by assembling the wheels, which consists of six support rollers, 14 road wheels and two drive sprockets.  Next came the four drop tanks and the rear panel on which I left off the gun support for ease of painting.  The auxiliary tanks have a noticeable seam which was dealt with Tamiya Putty and sanded without great care, since the tanks were jettisoned when emptied to be salvaged later on, so they were rarely in top shape.   

I skipped the part where they make you attach all the wheels to the lower hull to after the beast was painted, but I did attach all the suspension arms.  Instead, I mated the two hulls together and attached all the accessories on top, save for the drop tanks, the spare tow hooks, the saw and the spare track links.  The turret was my next area of concern.  Tamiya provides you with two benches, but no mention of them are made in the instructions and since the kit has no interior, they are best left off.  I glued everything on the turret, that is all the hatches (which I closed since I didn’t wanted to use the figure), the periscopes, and the gun mantle, but I left the machine gun support off to be glued after the painting.  The two gun halves were glued and maybe it’s just me, but I applied a heavy dose of Squadron White Putty to it, sanded it smooth and primed with Testor’s Combat Grey (small jars), after which I inserted it in its mantle.  The mantle fit is good, but not first class.  What I did is that I applied some cyano to the sides where the seam is located and sanded it lightly.  You get an effect similar to a weld line.

 The mighty JS-3 was now ready for its trip to the paint shop.

 I picked Testor’s Model Master Russian Armour Green for the job and went on to paint it with my Aztek A470 airbrush.  I was in for a big surprise.  When I started to shoot the paint, I immediately noticed that it wasn’t covering the olive-drab styrene very much.  I checked my paint mix and found it adequate.  I kept on ‘til the underside was all wet, as were the bottom of the suspension and the top of all the wheels which had been glued on a lengthy strip of 3M blue tape along with the tanks. 

 When I returned to the paint shop to give the top of the tank a coat, the same thing happened again, with the paint mix being adequate again.  GRRR.  I checked in my paint inventory and found out that Testor’s Model Master RLM 82 was a close match to Russian Armor Green.  I recoated both the top and the bottom with it and I finally had something worth of the Red Army, but the wheels and the tanks were in a poor shape.  I decided to paint them by hand with RLM 82.  It still covered the plastic like a hen would cover an ostrich’s egg.  Stalin was getting mad by now, since the tank he was promised wasn’t out of the paint shop yet.  I decided to try out something : I brushed some Model Master Light Grey on the back of a road wheel, then coated with RLM 82, but to no avail, the grey showed through the green paint.  Reluctantly, I hand brushed all the wheels one by one, but I didn’t paint the inside of the wheels, since it wouldn’t show too much after the model would be complete.