Gluing tons of parts together

My friends, I apologize for the delayed update, but I've been busy getting ready for the holidays, and most of the workload on the Karl was gluing details to the hull. 

Interestingly, pretty much everything in the kit looks in scale, so it would become a very accurate model even if you'd build it straight from the box (except the really bad rubber tracks). And when this is the case, you spend most of the time cleaning up parts and gluing them to the model. No brutal modifications anywhere. 

I made a huge mistake while gluing the support frames for the mortar - I glued them backwards and I only noticed it when trying to attach the walkways! It was extremely frustrating. I had to take a step back and think for a while about a possible solution. In the end I was able to carefully rip them off with little to no damage, glue them in the correct position, fill the resulting gouges in the plastic, reapply the weld detail, and attach the walkways properly. 

The Eduard PE set is not very extensive and it tries to replace details that look perfectly fine in plastic while ignoring other, more important aspects (typical Eduard if you ask me), but it gives you tool clamps, and that's all that matters in the end :D It also comes with very ugly PE chains - I remember this Eduard style chain all too well from the past. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to find spare chains from Voyager or Aber that would be long enough, and the smallest real chain I have is still very bulky. But I think they'll look acceptable on the finished model. 

Some parts, such as the ladders, have very obvious seam lines. Actually, it looks like the two-part mold was misaligned, so it takes a lot of time and effort to clean those up. Also, the engineering tools from the kit are rather ugly, but I was able to replace most of them with leftover spares from other kits. 

The most exciting part comes now - assembling the massive mortar and its cradle. The mortar also has some serious cast steel texture!