Tamiya Pz4 Ausf H

[CygnusX1]

So this is my first build after coming back to modelling after an extended break. It's pretty much Out Of The Box as I didn't have any aftermarket bits for it, and I didn't really want to spend a lot of dough on this kit either.

It's this kit:

Tamiya's 35054 Pz4 Ausf H from 1975.
I've had the kit in my stash for a considerable time and I thought I'd give it a go.

First of all, the parts. Yes, this is a Tamiya kit, but there's flash, mould release lines and ejector pin marks on every part.
Yep, you read that right: flash, mould release lines and ejector pin marks on every single part... even some of the really small parts. So clean up was going to be a... chore.
I'll just give an example:


This is the rear part of turret armour. The ejector pin mark is highlighted; right in the centre of that detail... which seemed to be the overall theme in this kit. But more on the turret armour later...

First off the hull. It's a 1975 vintage hull that was originally one of Tamiya's RC models, just with all the RC bits taken out, but the battery box still remains in the bottom of the hull. It's also got holes a plenty that needed filling, and the sponsons on the upper hull part closing off:
Lower hull:


Upper hull sponsons closed off and other holes filled:


I used a mixture of plasticard and epoxy filler for the hull.
The build then progressed reasonably quickly with the wheels and running gear; a very quick note about the wheels; they have polycaps supplied (yay!) but they don't fit (boo) - the caps in the road wheels need a little trim to make them sit right in wheel, and the caps for the sprocket and idler don't fit at all - they're just too big, and no amount of... hacking... I did would make them fit. So they went in the bin. I put a small amount of filler into the sprocket and idler and fitted them to the axle stubs and they seemed fairly sturdy. After another round of sanding and general removal of ejector pin marks, flash and mould release lines from the wheels (some of the roadwheels were so bad it's almost like they had an extra tyre on them...) they fitted on and were all level.

Brining the lower and upper hull together was pretty easy, except again there's a lot of filling, sanding and cleaning up to do, mainly around the rear plate.


This pic shows where I had to use filler (plasticard, epoxy putty etc) but the most annoying gap to fill was the hull wide gap between the upper and lower plate; a strip of plasticard was used, then sanded and any small gaps filled with epoxy. I replaced the majority of the hull fittings and tools with newer, cleaner items from my spares box; eg the jack supplied in the kit is two parts, and looks like it was a jack that had melted.

Moving on to the turret: the turret comes supplied as a complete moulding with only the roof (incl. the cupola and other details), side doors, gun mounting and turret basket to be fitted. The same applies here; every part has some sort of clean-up required (some a lot more than others) and by this time I was getting a little bored with endless rounds of filling, sanding, reshaping, scribing etc etc. So on the turret armour plate that I gave as an example of the ejector pin marks earlier - I just cut that detail off and replaced with a bit of thin plasticard (sorry, I don't know the exact thickness of the card, except that it's 'second thinnest'. All my plasticard got mixed up in a bundle and thrown in the loft years ago, and hence it's all a jumble and all the dimensions of what they were got lost... ) and some bolt detail from the spares box:



Same thing on the turret basket/bin/bustle; some detail was lost due to ejector pins or flash, so I just removed the rest and added it back in using plasticard and bolts from the spares box:



The turret armour plates also had some weird plastic... melting? I don't know what it is, but it looked weird, and made the armour plates an inconsistent thickness and they weren't smooth either: pic for refrence, and this is on the outside face of the armour, which would be seen...



Actually fitting the armour plates was a game in and of itself. The mounting brackets supplied don't have any positive attachment to the turret, and a couple of them appeared deformed as if you attached one arm of the bracket (the top for example) the bottom arm would be left hanging in space. Moving it so that it attached to the turrent resulted in the top arm breaking off. The turret armour plates also just butt together resulting in a very weak joint. After (finally) getting the rear armour plate attached and all four of its hanging brackets arms attached to the turret, it was obvioius that the rest of the turret armour wasn't:
1. long enough to make it to the front of the turret
2. didn't fit on the hanging brackets properly
3. that the front plates of armour were deformed - the triangular sections at the front looked as if they had melted...

I considered scratchbuilding the turret armour and hangers from scratch... which I considered for about 30seconds before deciding that this panzer had sapped enough energy from me, so I yanked off the armour that I'd fitted and consigned it all to the spares box and then cleaned up all the various glue marks and so on that had been left on the turret.
The main gun goes together pretty well (although there's the now usual clean up to do on all the parts - particularly the muzzle brake) and there are a lot of small delicate parts that make up the frame for the spent round catch bag (which I managed to break off a couple of times whilst messing around with the turret armour) and after a few other parts submitted to the glue, it was finished.
All told I guess that the work on the turret and turret armour took about 12 hours of my time.

Defeated by tracks.
The tracks are typical 70's vintage and made from some weird vinyl that:
1. looks wet and has soft detail
2. resists all glues (yes, even superglue won't bond it)
3. is possibly the strongest material on earth
I melted the track ends together as advised by the instructions (after the obligatory clean up of flash and ejector pins etc) and then started to fit them - they went on easily enough, and then to make the sag in the top run I drilled a few fine holes into the hull and then used some short brass rod to sit across the track and push it gently down and then superglue the brass rod to the hull. Job done.

Or so I thought.
After returning to the model the next day I found that the tracks had essentially returned to being straight, and knocked the brass pins out of alignment. So I used a slightly heavier guage of brass rod, and re-did them. It was whilst I was doing some clean up of the spare parts and making a tow rope as the kit supplied one was absolutely horrible, I noticed that the tracks had sprung back to straight again. So this time I drilled a larger hole, and lined it up with the hole on the other side of the hull, and used one long brass rod that went right through the hull and out the other side to keep the track sag in place. This seemed to hold reasonably well with some thick gap filling superglue. So I put it aside and didn't come back to it until the next day.
Over night the tracks had returned to being 'straight' - and the brass rods that I'd put through the hull (they were 1mm dia) were all bent out of shape.
All of them.
So I said the correct words, removed the bent brass rods and left the track as it was. The track had also pulled one of the rear idler wheels to about a 30degree angle - so I fixed that as well.
It doesn't look at all right (I suppose it could have come straight from the factory) but this Pz4 had seriously sapped a lot of enthusiasm by now. I attached my scratch built tow cable (using a couple of ends from the spares box) and called it 'done'.





Anything in the pics that's not the same colour as the main hull comes from the spares box, or is plasticard/filler. There's a lot of it....
Apologies for the quality of my pics; they've come from a phone and I'm not the best photographer... so yeah.

Now all it needs is some paint. I'll post some pics of that when it's done.
If you made it this far, then cheers for reading.

[jmurphy18]

looking good so far. Great build

[digger303]

Certainly some trials and tribulations with those tracks, but your doing great.

[CygnusX1]

Paint

I started by priming the whole thing with Ultimate black primer, then laid down some colour.
The base is Tamiya XF60 dark yellow with (literally) a couple of drops of XF2 white added. Then I sprayed on the camo scheme using XF65 field grey (which is more green than grey) also with a couple of drops of XF2 added. I don't really work to ratios, I just eyeball it until I'm happy with the shade.




looks a bit stark here; this is just primer, base and camo

I gave the upper hull a coat of gloss in prep for decals.
The kit decals are pretty poor - the balkenkreuz are out of register (not by much, but it's noticable) and the registration numbers are designed to go on the turret armour which is slightly bigger than the turret sides, so the spares box came to the rescue (again) with some turret registration numbers and some balkenkreuz. I don't know who's decals they are, or what kit they're from, but they seemed to go down OK, but took some time to settle using Microsol / set combo.



I painted up all the metal parts using XF1 black, and drybrushed them with some enamel steel coloured paint from Xtracolor. I progressed on with a couple of oil based washes using Raw Umber of differing strengths. I think I over did this a bit - it looks a bit strong in places mainly the treadplate on the fenders and around some of the other smaller details. I used a few more oil based washes of various colours and a little bit of drybrushing here and there. I did some chips with XF63 German Grey using a sponge (again, I think I over did this a bit in places) and then 'filled in' some of the chips with a very light rusty coloured pastel, most of which got removed as I just wanted to hint at rust. I then painted the running gear with a dark earthy tone made up from XF52 Flat Earth and XF1 Black; no real ratio, just eyeballed it until I got a tone I liked. I sprayed this on the entire lower hull, wheels, track and misted some up the front and rear of the hull. I drybrushed a bit of XF60 onto the wheels, put some of the steel enamel drybrushed onto the sprocket, idler and track, gave it a coat of dullcote or matt varnish and called it "done".

Finished:










Before and during painting the tracks managed to break off both rear idlers at seperate times. I repaired them both using 5min epoxy - they definitely won't break off again. However, the track run is 'wobbly' and looks offset and it probably is - by this time I'd had enough of track related problems so got it together and called it done.

Hindsight: I would of and should of replaced that horrible, appalling track with some Friul's, and I should have scratchbuilt some armour plate and hangers for the turret. However I didn't want to spend £30 on some track for an old kit that was going to be my first build back, so that's on me.

I give the whole kit out of the box a 5 out of 10 (the tracks need to go in the bin, and the parts are covered in flash, ejector pin marks and mould release lines on every part and there are some fit issues). If Tamiya are still selling this kit, then they should really stop.
I give my skills a 5 out of 10 too; I need to brush up (no pun intended) on my airbrushing and general painting skills as there's some wobbly lines here and there.

If you made it this far, thanks for reading.
Oh, and next on the bench is going to be something with wheels.

[digger303]

Still great

[CygnusX1]

Thanks for your kind words. Much appreciated.

[Grant5760]

Great looking build mate

[Gregwatters]

thats a great effort there a good job done despite the fight with the tracks

[onemac]

Great build thread and superb end result - looks like you've retained your skills despite the break. I've not ventured into the Fruil tracks yet but you never know

[CygnusX1]

Thanks all for your kind words. It's much appreciated.

I've not ventured into the Fruil tracks yet but you never know

Friuls can be a daunting task if you've never used them before, and they are expensive.
However, I think they're worth it. There's no other aftermarket track supplier that I'd use over Friuls.

Although Model Kasten do run them a (very) close second, but just try getting hold of them here in the UK.

[Donkeywalloper]

You did a great job on this Cygnus, and not just that, a very good write up with honest comments.
The main thing is that it looks ace and you nailed the Camo
DW

[nikita0zhuk]

Very good work!
You can also use graphite powder for tracks, it is very cheap and easy to make and looks very realistic.

[CygnusX1]

Thanks for all your kind words guys, it's much appreciated.