Global Scale Modeller

Well. I was thumbing through the stash, all five of them and I came across this one which I'd forgotten I had. I bought it a while ago from Model Zone just before they shut down and managed to pick it up for about £25 or so, a bargain! At the time it was a little beyond my skill level and to be honest it still is, I've just learnt to care about it less! Whilst I've always preferred the big guns of the Tigers and Panthers, I've always had a soft spot for the Panzer IV's and especially the many variants, of which this is one.

Usual fare with the box art and I'm a big fan of how Dragon box up their kits with some great pictures.


Boxed crammed wall to wall with endless sprues of plastic.


My favourite, the Dragon card of goodies which sadly seems to be lacking in many of the more recent kits. I must confess, I'm not a huge fan of Magic Tracks, but as they go, they are a better solution than most.


The infamous Dragon instructions - queue the scary music, dun dun dahhh!!! Confusing, yes, riddled with mistakes, yes, but after a while you do get to love them. Well, when I say love, it's more a getting used to them.


Some of the camo schemes.


As with most tracked vehicles, the instructions begin with the wheels and this kit is no different.


The only real mistakes on this section is where it asks you to put bits on one side when if fact it should go on the other. However, as soon as you dry fit the part, its quite obvious that it should go on the opposite side, so there's no big dramas. The one bit that did have me cussing like a trawler-man's rude uncle was part E5, the tyre part of the wheel.


The sprue map seemed to indicate that it was on a separate sprue.......


But this wasn't the case, they are actually separate in a bag with the gun mantlet.


On closer inspection of the diagram, maybe that is supposed to be a bag rather than a sprue, but it sure looks like a darn-tooting sprue to me!!

Anyways, after much scraping, sanding and cleaning up of parts, you are left with the following.


And once thrown onto the lower hull.


Next up is the fenders and the PE armour plating comes in four separate sections. This is quite a nice touch as you can show some damage if you prefer. However, I decided to leave it intact as these are actually located under the rear deck and are pretty much tucked out of the way.




Front glacis with gun transport lock.


Rear plate, which was quite tricky as there are virtually no locating holes. There's not a lot of parts to locate though and everything is quite apparent as to where it should go.


Keeping to instructions (well, as best as you can bearing in mind it is Dragon!), the rear deck is next. Word of warning here, there are some holes that need drilling and whilst the instructions do depict this step, it is quite well hidden and I did miss it the first time. I only noticed once I had checked the underside of the deck and saw that there were indentations to locate where the holes should be drilled.


It builds up very nicely though.


Dry fitted onto the lower hull.



It's all starting to take shape now, so I decided to dry fit the turret into place, just to get an idea of how this thing hopefully should end up.




Well, that little lot took me about an hour! I'm kidding!! I started on Monday and have been chipping away at it here and there. It's a great kit and in true Dragon fashion, it is packed with some great detail. There's some minutely small parts and the instructions are quite confusing, but with a little forward planning and much dry-fitting, it all goes together really well. Next up is the turret roof and the gun.

Until the next update, thanks for taking a look.

Kit looks very nice,i search for the price on that one its still 58 euro here
I have to say you buy it for a very good price!!

i'm in for the next stage(miss this one in my collection)

greetings
Razzie

Very nice work indeed. I purchased this kit last month so I will be watching your build very closely.

Nice clean build so far. Look forward to seeing more.

razzie43 wrote:Kit looks very nice,i search for the price on that one its still 58 euro here
I have to say you buy it for a very good price!!

i'm in for the next stage(miss this one in my collection)

greetings
Razzie

Thanks Razzie, yeah thought this was a bargain when I saw it and that was the main reason why I snapped it up.

d6mst0 wrote:Very nice work indeed. I purchased this kit last month so I will be watching your build very closely.

Great buy, its a fantastic kit!

arkbuilder2012 wrote:Nice clean build so far. Look forward to seeing more.

Thanks AB, your wish is my command, just about to post up the next bit!

Well, I'm plowing on through this build and the next stage was to build the turret top. I decided to build it with the hatches open, as the gun breech has some great detail. It will mean painting up the interior, and even then you'll only get to see a snippet of it, but I guess it's worth it. The hinges on the hatches were a little fiddly, but I found that if you attached the main sides of the hinges to the hatch first and then fixed on the springs, it made it quite a bit easier.





And then on to the gun. The barrel is a one piece, which is a nice touch, but the moulding seams are quite noticeable. No worries, a quick rub down with a Ultimate sanding stick and all is good - I even sanded down the barrel as well!!!




Some really nice detail on the gun breech.


Fixed on the rear of the turret and the end is in sight for the build part and then onto paint and weathering - yay!!







Still really enjoying this build and it's a great kit. There's some fiddly PE coming up that is stupidly small, but in all the reference pics that I've looked at so far, I cant actually see these bits on the tank. Plus, once the mesh armour is attached, you're not going to see them anyway. On the other hand, I will know that I chickened out of doing the PE - drat, I hate this great moral dilemmas, should I, Shouldn't I!?!

Still, I'll have a ponder on that little conundrum and all will be revealed in the next update. Until, then, thanks for taking a look!

The kit is shaping up really nice. What color will you use on the interior?

Really nice progress. Cant wait to see more.

Awesome build! How much was the kit?

Lovely big boxy beauty. Looks great, good skills Sir.

great work

d6mst0 wrote:The kit is shaping up really nice. What color will you use on the interior?

Thanks d6mst0, I can never remember the proper name for the colour, but I'll use the creamy off white - Lifecolors do an Axis tanks interiors set and I will use this.

tferedo wrote:Really nice progress. Cant wait to see more.

Thanks tferedo, just about to post an update!

Jscale32 wrote:Awesome build! How much was the kit?

Thanks Jscale, if memory serves me right, it was reduced to about £25, just over 50 NZD I think that works out to.

Stokesy44 wrote:Lovely big boxy beauty. Looks great, good skills Sir.

Thanks Stokesy, it's a brute of tank alright!

mick wrote:great work

Thanks Mick!

Right, time for a quick update. There's not a lot to look at, but I did manage to get a ton done, but it was a lot of the little fiddly bits that take an age. Talking of which, I managed to get most of the cage armour built and boy-o-boy was this a shag and hassle! It wasn't actually that difficult, the thing that made it a problem was that the mesh itself was all bent so that once you had bent and attached the PE, this too became bent. (Have I used the word "bent" a bit too much in that sentence! ) No matter how hard I tried to flatten the mesh, it still remained slightly kinked and not even some very vigorous rubbing with a wallpaper seam roller did the trick. Still, not a major problem as this armour, being on the sides of the tank, would have taken a bit of a battering.



Dragon did supply a neat little jig to help bend the PE, which you can see to the left of the destructions. It comprises of a little "gutter", for want of a better expression, and a convoluted "T" piece. The flat piece of PE sits in the gutter and once the T section is pressed down into the said gutter, hey presto, a perfectly bent piece of PE. A godsend for a ham-fisted brute like myself that normally struggles with PE.



Job done and just the lower attachment points to fix into place. This will take some thought as the instructions show that the plastic part locates through the mesh via two small lugs that then attach to a piece of PE on the other side. Unfortunately the mesh is way to small to actually accommodate the lugs, so I will probably have to shave these off and glue it directly onto the mesh. This will take some careful measuring and copious amounts of dry fitting to ensure that it marries up exactly to the hanging points on the side of the tank.



Anyways, that can wait till later, time to break out the AB - wahooo!!

Interior colour is courtesy of Lifecolors Axis Tank Interiors set. Still needs the appropriate weathering and detailing etc.




And this is what you will actually see once the lid is in place - might see if I can leave it removable, as it's quite a good fit without any cement.


While I was at it I got the base colour down on the lower hull so that I can fit the wheels and running gear. I can then crack on and get the Magic Tracks done. I must confess, I do struggle with Magic Tracks and might just invest in a set of Friuls instead - umm, something else to ponder over.





Getting there slowly but surely!

Thanks for taking a look!

HollywoodModelling wrote:Looking stunning just a hint.. The steel road wheels would not have rubber on them, so you might want to revise the black on them.

Thanks Dude, I had completely misses that. I had taken the image from the box-art and could have sworn the front wheels had rubber on them, but it was just shadow - doh! Mistake corrected, so thanks again!

A bit of a delay between posts, but there has been work going on, honest! It would have gone a lot quicker if I had just built the whole thing and then painted it, but as I wanted to paint up the interior, it had to all be done in sub-sections. Ho-hum, I'm sure it will all be worth it in the end. I had also noticed that I had missed some PE detail on the turret, about a dozen attachment points which comprised of short, no longer than 2 or 3 mm's of PE that had to be bent to form small semi-circular "handles". An absolute PITA and they are really only visible with the aid of an electron microscope, but they still have to be done!



My error with the steel road wheels has been rectified, thanks again Hollywood Modelling! And the base colours have been applied.





Plus, the gun has been weathered and dirtied-up.




Next, the hanging rail for the mesh armour was attached. I figured that the easiest way of doing this was to glue the attachment posts to the turret first and then fix the rail in place. I was worried that if I did it the other way round, the slightest error and the whole thing wouldn't fit onto the turret properly. It was a tad fiddly, but I'm glad I did this way as it turned out to be quite straight forward.




With a bit of paint


I very gingerly placed the mesh armour on to make sure it all lines up okay, and it is all starting to take shape.



It is going epically slowly, but a lot of this stuff can't be rushed as you need to make sure that glue has cured and paint has dried before moving onto the next step and for an impatient beggar like myself, it's a nightmare. I'm not too happy with the cam pattern, starting to wish I had done the "stripes" a little wider, but I still have to apply the rest of the washes and filters in order to blend the colours better. And there's no delaying it any longer, I really must push on with those Magic Tracks!!

Thanks for taking a look!

great work on the side screen's & camo