Been trying to finish this one up for a few weeks now. Its Tristars Pnzr 1A That I picked up at amps back in September. One of the vendors had about twenty of these kits for twenty dollars each. What made them a bargain was that they came with MK tracks. Usually the tracks alone can run around 25 bucks. I also picked up an Eduard PE set at the Granite Con show for five dollars. You just gotta love the deals you can get at the shows! Even though the set was for an HiPM (never heard of them before) kit it worked pretty well with the Tristar kit.
Somehow I lost the pics showing the early stages of this build but most of it was straight forward. First thing I took care of was the MK tracks. These were the smallest ones I’ve worked with and they were extremely delicate. I ended up breaking about five or six of them but luckily they give you quite a few extras. The broken ones were later fixed and used for spares. There was no jig included as per usual with MK track sets but this was not a problem. I used a metal ruler as a straight edge making small runs of seven links at a time.
The lower hull and running gear went together without any problems. When I attached the upper and lower hull there was a small gap in the front which was easily filled with some squadron putty.I wanted to have the drivers visor covers open so I scratched some vision blocks to fill in the openings. I drilled out the main headlight and the two small ones on the fenders and made new lenses using my clear sprue technique that I used on my BA3 armored car which can be found here /forums/t/115084.aspx?PageIndex=2
The intake cover on the rear deck was made from brass sheet to replace the kit one which was to thick. The smoke launchers were detailed using some PE for the mounting brackets and chains. The box art shows a pull wire going from the launchers to a hole in the rear of the crew compartment. This was added using a piece of stretched sprue. A new jack block was made using bass wood and the PE bands and handle from the Eduard kit were added.
I mounted some of the left over track to the hull side and the left rear fender and added brackets made from plastic strip and resin bolts.
It’s now ready for its primer coat of flat black and then a base coat of pnzr gray. I’ll be doing the early two tone pattern of gray and dark brown as seen in Poland. I should have an update in a couple of days.
Thanks for looking and any comments and suggestions are always welcome
Your Panzer looks great so far, love the extra detail your adding. Especially nice to see your scratching some vision blocks…it’s a shame such a nice kit doesn’t have them.
You had to drill out the main headlight? Hmmm…it seems they fixed that(and included a clear piece) on the kit I built. But on the kit I built, I didn’t get any MK tracks.
Nice work on the little guy Steve, looking forward to seeing the two-tone official scheme applied. It’s one of my favorites and one you don’t see done enough IMHO for the Polish and French campaigns. [B]
The box seems to show brown over grey, but the hard-edged pattern is more reminiscent of the 3-colour Reichswehr scheme, which would also be used on Ausf. A.
Nicely done on the scratch building of parts that didn’t fit your standard. The cable for the smoke box is a nice touch! I’m looking forward to following this one.
The three-tone scheme dates to mid-1937 and the modifications this one’s sporting are later upgrades/additions done post-production by the maintenance units when the two-tone scheme was in use so it would stand to reason that the box art is aiming for the Dunkelgrau/Dunkelbraun combo. I agree that it’s showing hard edges when they should be soft but otherwise it’s a Poland timeframe in terms of the features it’s sporting. [;)]
Steve (Disastermaster) Byrden, agentg, Dave, M1, Tony, Terry, Dupes, Mike And wbill, thanks guys appreciate the great comments!
Bill thanks for the info to Byrdens question. My ref material on these early pnzrs is lacking [:$](something I’m going to have to rectify) I had thought about doing a hard edge but I figured that a soft edge would be more common this early on.
Okay Dupes todays update- paint.
I started out with a primer coat of flat black. This was followed by a base coat of Model Master Dunkelbraun that was darkened by adding some flat black. After that had dried I mixed some MM cammo gray with the base coat and gave the panels and flat areas a thin coat.
Using the box art for a reference I applied the cammo using MM Italian drk brw with a few drops of flt blk added. I do like the way this came out so I’m hoping this isn’t to far off from what would have been seen on some of these.
Now it’s on to painting the tools, road wheels, mg’s and all the little bits.
Tony Wayne Dave Mike thank you gentlemen. I only had two references for this type of pattern one was the box art and the other was a color plate that I had in my files.This was kind of a combo of both. Unfortunately the color plate was lost when my computer crashed[bnghead][co].
