Trumpeter 1/35 Sturer Emil

[TheNordus]

Introducing my next build: the Trumpeter Selbstfahrlafette L/61 (say that ten times fast!). I'm on a quest to build at least one of every German WW2 AFV to see service, and I picked this one because it was cheap (only about 20 euros!) and my local hobby store had a set of Friul tracks for it sitting on the shelf for about 20 euros as well. The kit has relatively few parts, and it's almost like a Tamiya kit in that regard. There haven't been many problems with fitting so far, although there's some interesting building going on here, for example the wheels all have four parts, and you have to glue together the rubber rims leaving a pretty hefty seam line on them. Usually you'd have the rubber on one part and the back of the wheel on the other, for example.



Here's a picture of the Friul tracks and the kit-included rubber tracks. The rubber tracks have really nice detail, although the guide teeth have some pretty major flash on them and they're twisted all to heck. Interestingly the Friul set also comes with metal drive wheels which seem to be exact copies of the plastic ones included in the kit, I wonder why?



I couldn't help myself and I decided to paint on the chipping colour as my base coat for the interior before taking these photos. I have built this tank in 4 segments: the bottom hull, the super structure, the gun platform (the part that has the seats for the commander and gunner, it's dry-fitted on the lower hull in this photo) and the barrel for the 12,8 cm gun, including the mantlet. Also on the front hull is the gun breech which I painted in "dark aluminum" by Vallejo and sprayed on a coat of gloss paint to get a really nice contrasting piece to the dark grey interior.





Here's the super structure. The interior is very well detailed, I just hope I won't have too much trouble with painting the grenades on the racks! I decided to leave all the crew's equipment such as SMGs, bottles, etc. off to paint them separately.



And finally, here's the gun breech. It's very nicely detailed and I was happy to find the contact points for the elevation wheels to be really solid, so there should be no trouble with them bending or snapping off even when I chip the colour later. I find that these items are the kind that tend to be easily broken and lost. Due to the construction of the gun breech itself it has got some really unfortunate seamlines that I'm hoping I managed to hide. The barrel was a standard two-piece affair. Nothing special.

Right now it's Independence Day here in Finland and I'm partaking in a (long) Weekend build on a Finnish forum where I'm building a Panzer II Ausf. C by Tamiya, so it might be until next Monday before I can update you guys on this one. I've also bought a set of Miniart's German SPG Crew Riders so I can build a Diorama around this tank, but I'm still waiting on them to arrive. It's a real shame that not all open-topped AFV kits come with a crew.

Thanks for checking this one out, all comments and feedback are welcome.

[TheNordus]

Guess what arrived yesterday?



That's right! The figures! (And a set of Friul tracks for a Tiger 1...)







I wasted no time getting to work with these. The driver obviously won't be showing, and there doesn't seem to be any spot to put the sitting soldier on, so I'm going to have to do with just three crewmen. Unfortunately I also found out that the Sturer Emils were indeed not SPGs, but Tanks, and thus were crewed by black-uniformed panzer crewmen. I think. I'm not sure what to do about that, but I'm really happy about how this crew turned out. The only change I had to make to the figures so far was that I sculpted one of the figures to have a hand in his pocket so he wasn't just standing around with his hand in a fist.

[TheNordus]

I abandoned my "weekend build" of a Panzer II because I just got too into this one! Basic painting is now done, still need to weather this one, paint the figures and add the tools & other bits such as the back door and spare tracks.



Here's a very rare WIP photo of the interior weathering. I was following this guide Tech Tips: Weathering AFVs and applied generous amounts of earth tones into the fighting compartment using cheap artist's thinner. After the thinner evaporated, I brushed most of it off, moving my brush in circle patterns and trying to do streaking on the vertical surfaces. Unfortunately, I forgot to take a photo of this stage before I glued the superstructure onto the hull.



Here's a quick view of the interior. I'm extremely not proud of how the interior on this one turned out, I'm hoping the figures will cover most of my mistakes up.















Here's a series of the black-and-white shaded paintjob on the hull. I used Tamiya's German Grey for the gray colour both on the interior and the exterior. I also applied a filter of bluish gray for dark vehicles by Vallejo with an airbrush. I think it looks passable but I really want to get you guys' opinion on how this looks.









Here I've applied some layers of varnish (vallejo's matt varnish and Tamiya's semi gloss clear) and the decals, which were softened with Mark Fit strong. I'm using the frame to avoid getting pigment from the tracks stuck on my lovely white(ish) cloth. Oh, and of course I also built the friul tracks, painted and put some pigments on them and assembled the wheels. I added hefty doses of Vallejo's thick european mud between the road wheels to simulate caked on mud from the Russian steppes. I also applied some Tamiya smoke on the barrel tip to simulate the tip wearing. I wasn't very impressed by the final result so I added some black panel liner on top of it.



I also knocked off one of the headlights you could see in the earlier photos. I thought they would snap off if I put them on, and I was bloody right! I went to look at reference photos, wondering if I could get by without any headlights when I noticed none of the photos from the front show the tank with headlights! Instead they had weird lumps where the lamps should be. Turns out they're these, uh, things. I think they're covers for the flimsy headlights?

Overall I think this project is coming along pretty well. I want to build some sort of a diorama for this set too, but I'm not sure what kind yet. It might just end up being a simple display base.

Thanks for looking, please respond.

[Stokesy44]

Really nice work mate.

It’s an interesting vehicle and will look great with the crew. Is it some kind of hybrid or an original vehicle? I would have said it looked a bit like a pz 4 hull but not with interlocking wheels.

Curious

[TheNordus]

Really nice work mate.

It’s an interesting vehicle and will look great with the crew. Is it some kind of hybrid or an original vehicle? I would have said it looked a bit like a pz 4 hull but not with interlocking wheels.

Curious

It's based on the VK30.01H prototype chassis which was a developmental step along the path to the Tiger 1 tank. They added one pair of road wheels to support the lengthened tank, although the space between the last road wheel and the idler is still pretty large. It does have a lot of Panzer IV-like characteristics. The tracks are almost identical to Pz IV tracks.

[TommyKillander]

Brilliant work!


Tommy

[sthornton]

looking really good well done

[TheNordus]

Thanks for thine kind words, everyone.

I'm pretty sure this is going to be my last update before I leave for my Christmas break and a three week hiatus from my workbench. I think I'll go crazy or lose interest in modelling, either or. Very scary.

I've spent most of my effort since the last post painting up the crew, and I am still not a good figure painter. Maybe a mediocre one. I got a set of German Field Grey paints by vallejo which included a painting guide which I tried to follow as closely as possible while painting the uniforms.

I think I'll have to build a little base for this one (pictured here is the frame I'm planning to use) . My idea was to have retreating infantry passing by the vehicle, if I can find the right figures for that. Otherwise just a roadside resting place will do. I should also weather this up a bit but I'm kinda unsure about ruining the pretty good paint coat I've got going on here.







I don't dare show real close-ups of my figure paint jobs as they are not very good, seriously. I painted the faces using vallejo's "dark flesh" and "sunny skintone" and some citadel acrylic wash. Even picked out the eyes this time. The figures didn't have almost any molded on insignia details such as german eagles or badges on their chests, so I didn't paint any on.







I had a really bad time with the tools on this one, the shovel broke and I lost the track tensioning tool. Thankfully I had a Dragon replacement part. The painting didn't go well either, mostly because I tried to do it at 3am and I was too impatient. I ended up scrubbing the paint off three times and re-applying it, and it shows.

[Quax]

It turned out great Nordus and I think the figures really make it come alive!

Paul

[Tomcat64]

Very nice work and a great looking result mate - very well done