Grille - Sd.Kfz138/1
WWII German Self-Propelled Artillery
1/35 Scale
Made from one cereal box and various household items. Plus a few trips to the hardware store for copper wire, mesh, washers, pencil lead, and lots of super glue.
Estimated 250-300 hours of work.
I prefer the ghostly grey paint scheme of the Aberdeen Proving Ground collection, as opposed to a historically accurate camouflage pattern. This is THE tank I saw in real life so naturally I wanted to build one just like it.
1280x720 HD slideshow was made with Adobe Photoshop and Final Cut Express.
hey thanks for the positive comments. It means a lot to me coming from you guys.
as for the track links: I’ve been making these cardboard tanks for about 5 years now and the tread keeps evolving. For the Grille I found a pretty nice screen/mesh material at the hardware store and cut it into thin strips. Easy.
The tedious part is cutting out 300+ tiny little wedges for the twin rows of teeth inside the track.
For the spare piece track on the front of the tank I used cardboard instead of mesh.
Another one of my models that you guys might like is the MARDER III
(This one was actually featured in the FSM online reader gallery in October 2009. However I find the slideshow much more interesting than a single photo)
I think it’s outstanding work… Paper models aren’t my thing (I’ve scratch-built a couple, a 1/144th Avro Vulcan and a 1/48 Piper Cub), but I know talent when I see it… It ain’t easy building a scale model airplane from paper with nothing but photos to work from…
So you could mark me down for the “Jealous” camp, Bish… That is, if I ever became a P.O.W… [;)]
Think I’ll stick with injection-molded kits in the meantime… Paper is definitely a medium that I’d have to relearn everything to accoplish…
Here’s a pic of me working on my Grille. Notice my awesome t-shirt.
My workbench is basically this blue tabletop resting on a bin of firewood.
A note about the Grille- There is only one surviving example remaining in the world. The next closest vehicle would be the munitionspanzer 38 t at the Patton Museum. However, both of these are believed to be in transit to new locations.
When I was photographing the Grille in 2007 I hardly even knew what I was looking at compared to now having built one from scratch. I feel like I now have every detail of that tank forever embedded in my memory.
