Dragon Pz.Kpfw.I Ausf.B (kit #6186)

Modeling Subjects Armor
1

Hey chaps,

I hope you are all very well!

With the StuG build coming to end I fancied a nice straight forward, stress free build (does such a thing exist) [:S] so before I tackle this Dragon Panther G monster build (which btw the Fruils and Aluminium barrel turned up for today) I popped up the LHS and bought the lovely little Dragon Pz. Ausf.B (kit #6186).

http://www.modelsforsale.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=95754

What a lovely looking kit, very small compared to my other 1/35 builds but a couple of nice figures, well moulded plastic with great detail, lot’s of PE and indy link tracks which I’m looking forward to tackling as, unless they are Fruil, they scare me!

Anyhow, has anyone built this piece? What did you think? Is there anything I need to watch for?

Also, I’d love to see any build guides that people have put together-if you know of any, fire me one this way! I have found plenty of B&W photos but nothing colour except for rescued & renovated versions. Even colour photos of this model built by other people-I try not to use other models as a guide but a quick look can’t hurt!

Finally: A lot of my models are painted in German Grey so with this one I’d like to alter the tone of the grey slightly so it stands out from the monotone grey of the others. In a magazine review I read recently someone had built a lovely Tamiya 1/48 Marder and had used a combination of paints for his Grey. If you need any details of this article please let me know.

First off he laid down a pre-shade coat of XF-69 NATO Black. Then he applied the base coat which was a mix of XF-63 German Grey & XF-18 Medium Blue which looked beautiful! He then added a touch of white to the mix for the final spray to lighten the colour - it was perfect!

I’d like to do this, I have the paints BUT they helpfully didn’t give ratios of blue to grey etc and they didn’t say how much white he added to the mix at the end.

Can anyone give me a good starting point to work from please? I.e. 50/50, 2:1 etc…?

Many thanks guys,

ATVB

Ben [t$t]

2

hey ben, i havent built this kit personally but from my understanding, it is a jewl (sp?)of a kit. The painting of that marder your talking about is called color modulation and can look very good, here is a link to a video of it http://www.youtube.com/user/ScaleModelMedic#p/u/6/mRUlAr2ehWM and other pretty useful videos.

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I built the command tank version of it a couple of years back. The ONLY issue I had with the kit was the tracks. They were pre-magic tracks and the very delicate nature of the pz I track in that scale made them hard to remove from the sprues. In fact using a matte cutting blade to trim them from the sprue I still broke about a 3rd of the track links. I ended up having to buy a set of fruils in the end as there were not enough links left to work with. Maybe i’m just ham fisted but regardless, that’s was the only issue I had with it. The rest of the kit nearly fell together over the course of 4-5 evenings… It was a very pleasurable build.

Good luck with yours!

Kenneth

4

As Kenneth mentions, the main issue you will run into is dealing with the indy links. The tension on the sprue is such that removing them from the sprues can be an exercise in patience. They have a tendency to “zipper” right down the middle since they are so tiny to begin with…I had a whole row literally split in two with a single snip of the sprue cutters. You get very few spares in the kit so it doesn’t take too many before you’ve used up your reserve and then don’t have enough left to complete it. In my case I ended up using ModelKasten tracks instead of Fruils to replace them.

The kit still builds up nicely though for such a tiny vehicle.

5

Cheers guys,

I was reading a review of this tank, I think it was written by Cookie Sewell and he too mentioned the delicate tracks. He said he cut through the main parts of the sprue tree leaving just rows of track link to ease any built up tension contained in the uncut sprue. I’ll try this but if they prove too delicated I’ll get some Fruils. I prepped all the indy links for my StuG before I decided on Fruils and only managed to break a few so hopefully these should be ok too.

Re the paint: Thanks for the link FF, some good vids on there, I’ll enjoy watching them. I’m not so much after modulation as I’m very limited by my current AB with what I can do. I just wanted a different shade of grey. What should I be looking at mixing the grey to blue. I’m thinking 3 parts grey to 1 part blue?

Any suggestions to get me started?

Cheers guys,

ATVB

Ben [Y]