Hey, I sat down and built this Panzer 46 fantasy item in a few hours this evening. What a great little kit. Fit is mostly all good, and it winds up looking great. I’ll post more on this in the morning when I am less tired …
Looking great so far. Wish the misses would give me a little more money to get the 1/35th, but since I just spent $80 on Ebay I won’t be able to for awhile. Tiger33
Wow that looks great
ive not seen there 1,72nd kits mutch but im going to have to keep an eye on that one
pls post it again when is done . thanks
Looks good, Larry!
How’d wrapping that little PE muzzle brake baffle go? Looks tough!
Looks good, I’ve been looking foor one locally before I take the plunge and go the online or eBay route.
Looks good Larry . Now the questoin is what scheme is it gonna get when you paint it?
Looking good!
Thanks for the kind words guys. Ok, let’s see. Yes, it is really a neat little kit. It’s purely plastic and the fit is mostly really good. I did no puttying and I don’t intend to do any. There are some places where the parts wobble a bit where they go, but not too bad. The hull rear plate is tricky to get in – play with it and make sure you know how it goes in before putting the glue on – I did this and even then the glue started to set before the plate was finally wiggled in.
The side skirts come one piece, but you can leave them off – the side hull detail, normally covered by the skirt, is pretty nice. Personally, I like the look of them mostly off, so I x-actoed off one shirt and then thinned the edges to make it look a little more in scale.
Brian, that little PE muzzle cover is a pain, especially when you just want to finish the kit, like I did! I did the best I could. You can flatten it with plyers once it dries, as I plan to do.
The photo of the finished kit in the instructions has the sprocket in the rear! Weird, as it doesn’t fit there. Someone had to work hard to make it go in the wrong place. The line drawings in the instructions are right though.
Hey, the treads are soft vinyl and really cool. I like them a lot. There are also these two lovely vinyl crewmen, the commander is particularly beautiful, though the turret hatches are both molded closed.
A really neat feature – the wheels are molded as one piece, so none of that tedious two-part wheel construction that’s usually the case with late war German kits. Despite this they still look like two part wheels – the molding is amazing.
One thing to look out for is that some of the rear roadwheels don’t seem to touch the ground when they are attached to the hull, but you don’t have a lot of choice on this because of the way they go on, because there are two pins that hold them onto the suspension. Dryfit them, then you might consider shaving off one of the pins to get the wheel to hang the correct way.
Tiny piece alert – this kit is remarkably free of them, but note there are eight teeny little doodads that go on the turret sides, four on each side, perhaps to hold spare tracks on? They are an E-100-sized pain to work with, but they do go on with some care. Watch out, as they “disappear” very easily! [(-D]
I’m going to paint it primer red, then attach the side fenders, then put the camo on (green and dunkelgelb), then remove all the fenders but the one that’s being glued on, as you see in the picture – to represent the camo being applied after the fenders were attached. I kept all the fenders to get this painting effect.
This little thing was a blast to build. I love this kit. It looks great (Brian, now I can see why you like the E-100) and was mostly easy to build. It’d also be a wonderful introduction to PE. It even comes with Russian markings to represent a captured tank! I hope they do an IS-III so you can pose these Panzer 46 adversaries against each other. Very cool.
Now if only they would produce a Sherman or even a Pershing that is as neat a kit as this one is.
Looks good! I also have the kit at home. I am planning to build it just after my M-50 sherm. is done. The kit has a great fit, and it looks cool. I like how you cut up the side skirts and only put parts of it on. I am planning to do the same. I want it to look like it’s seen heavy battle damage, and possibly have a shell that blew of one of the skirt peices. How did the photo etched muzzle brake bend; good or bad?
Thanks – it was easy. I just ran my xacto along the crease line as I watched Star Trek the Motion Picture. Eventually the plastic wore down, and I got a nice neat cut. I excavated most of the styrene at the edge with the xacto, and as I got closer to the edge I used a file instead. The shape of the fender makes this a little awkward, but it’s not too hard. It really has to be done though, as the fender thickness is just way off scale (I assume, unoless these things weighed many tons each).
You bend it right around the plastic part of the muzzle, so it’s as easy as it gets when bending PE (if you know what I mean). The sheer smallness of it made it a bit awkward, but to be honest I was rushing a bit as I wanted to finish. Those with more time and patience wold probabably get an ideal result. If I’d been clever, I would have found something smaller than the muzzle to loop it around (like one of my files, or a small paint brush). You might want to consider that.
You also get six little PE grill screens. It’s modest and easy-to-use PE, so I think this would be a great start for those who are apprehensive about PE.
Dragon have some 1,72nd Shermans in the works and a Jumbo
I agree totally, They should start doing more allied vehicles in 1/72 now.[:)]
That would be awesome! [:D]
Larry: that E-100 is looking great! [tup] Keep us posted on the progress.
Larry, supposedly those doodads were mounting points for the jibs necessary to remove the heavy side skirts for in-field servicing.
And I know what you mean about the sprockets at the rear! Someone had to go WAAAAAY out of their way to do that! Maybe part of someone’s super what-if build! [;)]
Looking forward to seeing your finished E!
Roden does a really nice 1/72 scale JS-III Stalin. ExtraTech does a new Sherman series that Eduard also boxes. I’ve got the ExtraTech Jumbo and Eduard M4A3(76)W. Pegasus produces the Maus and has a Pershing in the works.
Just added one to my greatmodels order.
Great news.
Nice job, Larry. I tweezerpulted one of the little bitty side thingies right off the bat. Another I had cemented on, apparently not well enough, because it is gone now, too. Shouldn’t be too bad a piece to carve from a piece of spare sprue, though.
Great job.
Thanks. I lost one on the bed (I was watching a movie as I built it) and it took me twenty minutes to find it. Too late, I came to the same conclusion as you – it probably would have been better to just carve a new one.
I blackprimed it last night and will start laying the red primer on tonight, probably using Tamiya Hull Red. Should be fun.