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After a short break, I am continuing the build of Zvezda’s 203 mm B-4 (M1931) howitzer.

From this point onward, unless stated otherwise or obvious from the context, all abbreviations use the Latin alphabet.

It was hot today, so at around 20:30 Nadya and Elena went out for a walk, while I carried on. Today it was time to assemble the loading “trolleys”—the shells weigh 100–150 kg each, after all, so loading requires a winch to lift the trolley holding the shell.

I completed steps 30a, 30, 31 and 32c—the last of these is assembling the shells.

Surprisingly annoying steps: the parts are small and need to be aligned very precisely using practically invisible locating pins, sooo… It was not much fun. Especially since the “lids” C38 are not glued on, but have to remain movable. I also managed to leave my fingerprints on the shells, although I still have two more to assemble, so hopefully I can glue those more cleanly. I think I may look for turned metal aftermarket shells, if any are available.

So, after 50 minutes of work, this is where I got to:

And to finish, a “macro” photo: