Catch up with PART FIVE here
I just realised that I haven’t posted an update on this. Lost a couple of days to doing things like the bi-monthly GST return and then ran out of glue ( it’s a half hour drive to the nearest hobby shop ). I have to admit that I’ve got no more zimmerit added as I may have got bogged down in adding little details after I spent time on the schurzen.
Ah the schurzen. Academy obviously never built one of these kits as the schurzen quite simply will not fit if you try to assemble it as shown. I had to completely rebuild the front two hull mounts and reconfigure several of the rest so that the rails could be mounted straight and parallel to the hull. All of the mounts got thinned down by at least 50% and they still look overscale to me. The side rails were cut down lengthwise and had a new section added to give them more of an ‘L’ profile. It took quite a bit of time just doing all the schurzen mounts and rails, but it’s done. Well, I still have to do the side skirts which will be separated, thinned and some minor damage added but the worst is over with.
I’ve sorted out the commander figure. He’ll sit a little further back into the cupola than shown so that the fur coat he is wearing is bunched up around the cupola ring. I’ve started adding filler so now have to rescuplt, sand, refill, resand, etc till I’m happy with him, including redoing the hand holding the Stg.43 so that it grips better and adding binoculars. I realised that there will be a 5-6mm gap in front of him so I scratchbuilt a vision port to go there. It won’t be easy to see but it’s there for the truely anal ( aka “me” ). I’ll paint the interior of the cupola and add a vision block ( with clear blocks for all the rest ) after everything else is done.
I may have got sidetracked adding tool clamps, redoing the headlight and firextinguisher ( that had to be resized and relocated to allow the schurzen mount to be fitted ), adding the headlight cable, cupola hatch latches, the rear cable mount hooks, and lots of rivets and bolt heads. I also detailed the jack block, added details to the tool mounts, added internal latches and hinge detail to the schurzen, and scratchbuilt two ‘S’ shaped Ausf. D-G style cable hooks ( the Ausf.H and J had the ‘W’ shaped ones ) and their mounts for beside the fire extinguisher. All that took up a lot of my time.
I was donated a metal and brass 7.5cm L48 Armorscale barrel suited to a May production Ausf.G ( thanks again to Andrew ) so I’ll be adding that, but for now the gun is lose as I find it easier to remove it when handling the turret. I was going to change the MG34 barrel but finally found a good clear photo showing it to be the armoured version so added the groove to the existing one instead.
Other than that I added the hubcaps to the roadwheels, built the early Ausf.G style sprocket and idler from the Tamiya sprues and built the Ausf.G style aerial which I will leave off till painting time. I discovered that the schurzen mows down the aerial but reference photos still show it in that position with schurzen so I’ll leave it there. Photos did show that it is often in a 40 degree forward angle and many of them look like they’ve been bent several times. Not surprising really.
So that’s what the last week was spent on. Still to go is the rest of the zimmerit obviously, some bolt and rivet detail on the final drive housings, the left side turret shurzen, the side skirts, the commander figure, and a lot of clean up of excess glue and filler. I’m tossing up on adding a row of jerrycans to the front of the turret roof as per a photo I have. I may just assemble them and then sit them on there for a few days till I decide if I like them there or not. Last to do will be the tracks for which I’m going to use just a set of the Academy individual link Pz.Kpfw.IV links with a bit of cleanup added.
So hopefully by the end of this week I’ll be ready to move on to painting, then it’s just waiting for the right weather.
