- Joined
- Apr 28, 2018
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- 11,084
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- First Name
- Jakko
From another thread:
I dug up the box and the diorama (these would be good to post in @rtfoe's thread about mothballed kits, by the way).
This is the main bit, the sectioned hull:
I cut the hull in two before assembling anything, and also removed the floor to replace it by plastic card because it was far too thick. Unfortunately the new floor appears to have developed a few bends due to spending almost twenty years in a packed box of sprues, half-built parts and accessories
The ammunition is Tamiya turned brass, as it’s much better than the Academy rounds. Here’s the hull floor bin I scratchbuilt, minus its side because I had planned the cut so that it just took the side off this bin and would show off what it’s for:
Here’s what it looked like originally, after the cut and floor but virtually nothing else:
And this is the diorama:
I made the mistake here of building the sides from plastic card first and then using polyurethane foam from a can to fill in the groundwork, which bulged the card along the sides The wooden blocks in the corners are for strength and because I intended to have some stuff there, the wood in the middle is to secure the tank halves to, like so:
It may look uneven here but that’s because it’s not pulled tight yet as it would be on the finished diorama.
Other details are that I added the longitudinal stiffeners that Academy forgot. I made them by printing out part of a drawing out at the right size, pasting it to a sheet of plastic card and then drilling through the holes with a table drill:
More detail bits for inside and outside the tank:
The machine gun ammo bags and ball mount are Jaguar, I think, and the engine is from some brand I don’t recall, but I bought it at Euro Militaire 2002, I do remember that It’s needed because the Academy engine is wrong in its proportions.
These figures would have been converted into the tank crew, all in action poses:
Not sure what the tank commander on the left is, but those on the right are Scale Line Marder crew in winter uniform, one of which would have become the loader, and the other two bags are from Royal Model.
Outside the tank there would be at least these three German soldiers:
As you can see, they’re only half-finished. A number of Russians would also have been there, but I’m not sure how many I wanted to do; possibly also a turret from a T-34, intended as looking like it had been blown off a tank that blew up.
I also built the wheels, obviously, plus some more internal bits like the transmission, but didn’t really start on the turret yet, let alone the outside.
In reply, I said I’d take some photos, so I now did
I dug up the box and the diorama (these would be good to post in @rtfoe's thread about mothballed kits, by the way).This is the main bit, the sectioned hull:
I cut the hull in two before assembling anything, and also removed the floor to replace it by plastic card because it was far too thick. Unfortunately the new floor appears to have developed a few bends due to spending almost twenty years in a packed box of sprues, half-built parts and accessories
The ammunition is Tamiya turned brass, as it’s much better than the Academy rounds. Here’s the hull floor bin I scratchbuilt, minus its side because I had planned the cut so that it just took the side off this bin and would show off what it’s for:
Here’s what it looked like originally, after the cut and floor but virtually nothing else:
And this is the diorama:
I made the mistake here of building the sides from plastic card first and then using polyurethane foam from a can to fill in the groundwork, which bulged the card along the sides
The wooden blocks in the corners are for strength and because I intended to have some stuff there, the wood in the middle is to secure the tank halves to, like so:It may look uneven here but that’s because it’s not pulled tight yet as it would be on the finished diorama.
Other details are that I added the longitudinal stiffeners that Academy forgot. I made them by printing out part of a drawing out at the right size, pasting it to a sheet of plastic card and then drilling through the holes with a table drill:
More detail bits for inside and outside the tank:
The machine gun ammo bags and ball mount are Jaguar, I think, and the engine is from some brand I don’t recall, but I bought it at Euro Militaire 2002, I do remember that
It’s needed because the Academy engine is wrong in its proportions.These figures would have been converted into the tank crew, all in action poses:
Not sure what the tank commander on the left is, but those on the right are Scale Line Marder crew in winter uniform, one of which would have become the loader, and the other two bags are from Royal Model.
Outside the tank there would be at least these three German soldiers:
As you can see, they’re only half-finished. A number of Russians would also have been there, but I’m not sure how many I wanted to do; possibly also a turret from a T-34, intended as looking like it had been blown off a tank that blew up.
I also built the wheels, obviously, plus some more internal bits like the transmission, but didn’t really start on the turret yet, let alone the outside.
It is doable with a hi-powered circular saw with one clean pass...just make sure everything is glued down properly and loose about 1mm of plastic.