Sd.Kfz. 7 half-track, post-war

[Jakko]

Because the left-hand mudguard over the track was bent on the real thing, I decided to replace it with brass. That was mostly a matter of measuring up the kit part and cutting a brass rectangle to match, cutting two notches to facilitate bending, then bending the outside edge down and adding the two bends to get it into shape.

The kit includes two sets of mudguards, one for the armoured cab and one for the soft-top. Here are both, plus my brass version:



I then cut the actual mudguard bit off the one for the armoured cab, so I could superglue the brass one in its place:



I chose to cut up the one for the armoured cab, so I can still compare to the original for details like the ribs on it that still need to be added. I annealed the brass first, though, to hopefully make it bend more easily later, which is why it’s changed colour.

Next, I glued the two mudguards to the floor and out everything in place on the chassis so I could align everything correctly:

 

[Jim R]

Hi Jakko
Good idea to use brass. Replicating damage in plastic is hard to do convincingly. Some use heat but I reckon that's a real risk.
Maybe a daft question but why brass and not something softer like pewter?
Jim

 

[JR]

Bit late sorry, most impressive work .You have a flair for copying the real thing and its great to follow .

 

[Jakko]

Replicating damage in plastic is hard to do convincingly. Some use heat but I reckon that's a real risk.

That’s what I was thinking, too. Even though I had a spare to practice on, I didn’t want to risk ruining the whole thing. It’s hard enough to replicate damage like this from a photo as it is, I prefer to do it in material I can bend back, at least to a degree, in order to make corrections. No chance of that if you heat the plastic part.

Maybe a daft question but why brass and not something softer like pewter?

Availability? I have some sheets of brass in a few thicknesses but no pewter. After I was almost done I remembered I also have aluminium sheet of about the same thickness, but by then I had the brass in shape so I didn’t feel like starting again.

Bit late sorry, most impressive work .You have a flair for copying the real thing and its great to follow .

Thanks I like building models of real photos, even though it’s always a bit of a struggle, the end result is usually very satisfying.

 

[Jakko]

Here’s the basic structure of the cab:



I removed the seat cushions, as those were clearly nicked from the vehicle (see the pictures of the real thing) but had to guess what it looked like without them. As a result, I put in some plastic card for the rear wall, where I had cut away the back cushions, and replaced the part with the seats by some plastic card.

The cab sides are plastic card with some strip glued on for the bent-over edge, because Dragon only provides one type when there were three in the real world, and my subject had the rounded one rather than either of the two with a cut-off corner.

I also bent the mudguard with my fingers and pliers into a reasonable approximation of its damaged shape on the real vehicle.

It still needs a lot more detail, much of which Dragon simply omitted or got wrong.

 

[Jakko]

Nope, that is not a picture from before the previous two Additional information that turned up with thanks to help over on Missing-lynx, proved pretty much all my assumptions about the seating area to have been wrong, so I took it all off and am going to start again almost from scratch.

 

[Jim R]

Hi Jakko
Three steps forward and two back The cab looked good even if it was wrong.
Jim

 

[Jakko]

Yeah, and this after making the dashboard based on photos, only to then discover I put holes in the wrong places so I can start again with that too … very productive day for modelling

 

[adt70hk]

Great work Jakko.....outstanding attention to detail as always.

 

[Graeme C.]

Great work indeed Jakko, shame you are having to re-do some of it, but you will sort it.

 

[Jakko]

Thanks, and yes, it will get sorted — all I really need to do is make a new back panel, cut a bit from the front part (the very shallow T-shaped panel) and add some stuff between them. Oh, and add various details, of course, but I had to do that anyway

 

[Tim Marlow]

Bit of a grind that, but never mind Jakko. If you’d left it alone you would never be satisfied. This way you’ll know it’s correct, even if most of us would never know better

 

[Jakko]

That’s the whole thing about this modelling lark, isn’t it? It doesn’t matter if anyone else spots it, what matters is that you’re happy with it. And I wasn’t with these parts because Dragon has made a mess of it by taking shortcuts they need not have done.

The Trumpeter kit appears to be much better, but makes a different mistake in the seats: it has a cut-off right front corner that (as far as I can tell) is only correct for the Sd.Kfz. 7/1 and -/2 that carried anti-aircraft guns. But correcting that is far less of a job than correcting Dragon’s parts.

Which requires this kind of work:



The sides are my previous effort which I could salvage, the rear plate is entirely new and the front one has had a gap cut into it, because the driver’s seat cushion was far thicker than the one for the passengers.

The edging around the side and rear panels appears to have been square cross-section tube, rather than strip as I has assumed, so I replicated it with three lengths of 0.25 by 0.75 mm strip. Partly, because I didn’t have 0.75 mm square rod, but more importantly because three strips are far easier to bend into a curve than a single, square one is. For the side panels, I first glued one strip along the edge, carefully but securely, and once it had dried, glued two more along the inside.

 

[Jakko]

And here is the cab assembled from those pieces plus a few more:



In place on the chassis:



Earlier this afternoon, I realised that the passengers’ seat must have been removable: the fuel filler cap is underneath it. I think I’ll drill that out, because I doubt there would have been much petrol remaining in the tank

 

[Jim R]

Hi Jakko
Sorted!

 

[Tim Marlow]

Wot Jim said

 

[Jakko]

This bit is sorted, sure Now the dashboard, other interior detailling, the engine, the load bed supports, the spare wheel carrier, the radiator and probably a few other bits still to detail. I was looking at my stash yesterday night to see what kits I have that I can just build that don’t need any real extra work, don’t have tons of photoetched bits, aren’t earmarked for major conversions, and similar … and found none Well, other than stuff like 1:76 scale Matchbox tanks.

 

[Graeme C.]

Coming together nicely, the details that are normally hidden really add to this build.

 

[Jakko]

There are some more details to come that are normally hidden, but which you probably won’t expect me to have to build at all

 

[Jakko]

Here’s parts for the load bed:



It needed new supports on the underside, which I made, based on the drawings in the Nuts & Bolts book and the instructions for the Trumpeter kit. I made them from some plastic strip cut on my chopper tool, which is ideal for this kind of work, as you can cut various bits all to the exact same length quickly and easily. Then I just had to assemble them into channel sections with a bit sticking out the side. They’re not well-detailed, but because they’ll be mostly out of sight, that doesn’t matter.

On the side panels, Dragon has missed nearly all of the details on the inside, so I added that myself from two sizes of plastic strip plus punched bolt heads.