Nice work on the hull damage, a good tip to reinforce the existing styrene too!
As for sponge chipping, I use kitchen sponges - the type on most common scouring pads. They're more than fine enough, it's more a matter of ensuring you blot the loaded sponge enough & dab it on finely.
Will keep that in mind! Do I dry the sponge a bit after dipping it in the paint, then dab it on random spots (in appropriate areas of course)?
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Time for another update! A collection of small things. First on the docket was to paint the inner part of the lower hull black, since it's completely visible through the engine grilles. The gray made it look really weird which is why I painted it black.
Then work began on the tow cable. I can't remember but I think this kit came with string intended to be used as the cable. Since I have plenty of twisted copper wire left over from my Cobra King build, I cut off the proper length and began!
However before I could continue, I had to re-add these little parts that broke off earlier in the construction stage. I had forgotten to add them back before painting!
With the tow cable pins back in place, I then dry fitted the ends to the cable and did a test fit of the full thing. My guesswork measuring from when I cut it was JUST right! Any shorter and it would have not fit!
Darth Vader can't believe how well this kit is coming along!!!
Next I turned my attention to the turret. See, the Schmalturm (even though it was not intended to be used on the Panther II) had the coaxial MG on the right of the main gun, and the gunsight was originally to be mounted on the left of the gun in front of the gunner. But for a reason I cannot remember, they moved the gunsight to the top of the turret directly above where it was first planned to be mounted. I'm not sure if the hole for the first gunsight spot was drilled and then filled, or not drilled at all. Either way it bothered me. Here you can see them both clearly.
Both of these holes just didn't look right to me, so I took action!
The first step was to locate something that would be suitable to pass as an MG... Luckily I didn't lose the half of the hull-mounted MG that broke off twice. I think the remaining half looks fine as it is, and the whole thing being put back together would look much too long. Therefore I repurposed the broken-off half! Note how similar they look here. You'd have to get close to notice the differences.
So the next step was to get it inside the turret and into its slot. The inside of the turret is bare, not even a breech. There is no intended mount for a coax MG. The MG itself was too slim to simply be cemented to the sides of its slot, so I had to get creative and make my own mount...
Once again,
Evergreen sheets to the rescue!
I cut off three small rectangles, each smaller than the one before. The first acted as the base upon which the MG and the other two pieces would be cemented. The top piece is shorter than the bottom in order to compensate for the angle of the turret front, thus allowing the MG to be mounted centered and not angled up or down. Here is the completed rig.
And here is the new coaxial MG! It looks perfect! I'm amazed at how close my guesswork was; I took no measurements of the angle. The only thing I did was open up War Thunder to see how far the MG stuck out, and based my entire rig off of how that looked. At first the angle was off, but I trimmed the ends down bit by bit until it was perfectly centered. You can also see the rig after being attached. It's so small! I used super glue in order to ensure a strong bond.
Then I turned my attention to the gunsight hole... There was nothing I could do about this except fill it in. I was cautious about this since I had already done the base coat, but it turned out better than I expected. Here is the putty before painting.
Here is the NOW-fully completed turret. c: Love it! While the filled-in gunsight does still have a visibly uneven surface in certain lightings, I can go over that with more paint later if needed.