Never hera of R&J, but that looks a nice piece. Off to a good start.
Anthony, solid build friend. The track sag looks great.
Anthony, I’m so sorry–I meant to post a separate reply about your fine model and forgot late last night. It’s a really nice job! It’s quite the little bulldog of a tank! Nice paint and weathering, and the figures look great sitting in the turret! Thanks for posting some pics!!! [Y][B]
Bish, R&J has some really cool, affordable little pieces and some unique figure lines. Check em out!
Thank you Karl and Eric.
That interior will really spice it up as if it needed more.
Anthony: Very nice work there!
Karl: Ohhhhhhh love that ‘drop-in’ driver’s compartment. I have one of those kits- I think it’s a H model somewhere in my stash I picked up with the idea of doing a knocked-out tank like your ghost diorama. I haven’t worked up the guts to tackle it though!
Funny, I think the Panzer IV may be my favorite German tank- somehow it just seems to have more ‘character’ to it than the Panther and Tiger.
Thanks Karl, some nice stuff they have on there.
Gamera, if the PZ IV is your favorite tank, you’re surely not without a ton of options to choose from! YOu can spend a year or more building the various offerings and different marks of this model–not to mention all the sub-genres of panzerjaeger, SPG’s, etc…!
I have detailed the interior a bit more. I’ve added driver controls, an instrument panel, pedals, and some various rods and fittings to fill up the driver’s side and front area more. I’m going to get to painting this, glue it in, and then add some more details like rivets and bolts around the side of the walls.
Karl: Looks great, gives a solid impression of how cramped and tight the interior of a tank is. Looking forward to seeing all that painted up.
And lol, the Panzer IV is my favorite German tank, my favorite tank is the Sherman and I’ve built a half-dozen or so and haven’t touched the fifty zillion different versions of it and the SPGs, TDs, etc, etc, etc based off it’s chassis. No friggin’ idea when I’ll get to all those versions of the Panzer IV!
Hi Karl - just found this thread and will be following along. Not in my stash, but do have the earlier incantation of the 3in1 kit with all it’s errors, sigh. The Vorpanzer came out with some 40 corrections.
The suspension was designed to be workable, but I’m pretty sure I’ve read it’s not very robust, so you are likely right to have glued it solid. Great start, particularly the additions to the interior.
regards,
Jack
Thanks, Gamera. You could probably build for three years and you still wouldn’t have all the variants completed!
Jack, sorry to hear that you have one of the old kits. I read about all the supposed “inaccuracies” of that kit. Lots of little things to be sure; I’m not sure how m any of them were “nitpicky” or not. [^o)]
Personally, I have no interest in “workable” suspensions when they require such levels of complexity, but I can see where they would work of you’re a diorama enthusiast.
Thanks for looking in! [:)]
Nice kit and conversion set, Karl! Looking forward to seeing finished product.
looks interesting so far Karl, but less talk and more action man…
let’s see more progress man.
Just kidding man!
Thanks, Panzerjaeger and Phaisal!
More updates right now!! 
OK, guys–well, in between getting my stupid taxes together, I’ve managed to make progress on the interior—and thank dog, too, because I want to get moving on assembly, but I couldn’t do that until I get the interior finished.
A word on the interior painting: a well-known internet document states that the entire lower fighting compartment area should be a gray-green color. However, in every reference photo I could find–and I scoured the internet and my decent reference library–I found that the walls and floors of the driver’s compartment seemed to be that off-white color. I decided to go with that. Even if it’s technically wrong, in my world, it looks like the photos that I am seeing all over the place of white walls/floors. That’s good enough for me.
I mixed up that “Elfenbein” color from Tamiya White + a tiny dollop of Buff and one ant’s wet-fart of Yellow.The transmission and engine is craft store acrylic Folk Art #2500 “Greenscape”, with Wilder filter “Dark Blue Filter” on top, and then some lightening with the Greenscape+Tan to give depth.
I added some more bolts and detailed the front hull wall some more.
And that’s it for tonight! I’ll be getting back to the building as soon as I can. Thanks for looking in guys, and for following along! [:D]
Looks TASTY man!!!
Nice.
That looks really god in there Karl.
I don’t recall reading of the interiors being a grey green. Which is this internet document of which you speak.
I’ll third that, looks scrumptious!
Likely research from Hilary Doyle and Tom Jentz about the interior colours. There is some description of their findings here:
http://byrden.com/panzers/Colours/index.html
regards,
Jack
I’ll have to fourth that!
!http://www.sherv.net/cm/emoticons/shocked/shocked-smiley-emoticon.gif
That’s the stuff I like to see.
Thanks, guys! I appreciate the thumbs-ups!
Bish, the document, cited in several forums and places, is HERE. It states:
“In the lower interior of the tank, the grey-green covered just about everything. Transmission boxes and other modules, which were perhaps manufactured separately, were ordered to be delivered in grey-green. Torsion bars, levers, transmission shafts, floor panels (yes, top AND bottom surfaces) storage boxes, etc. were painted uniformly grey-green.”
So that has rather confused me because it seems to say that the whole lower part of the tank was painted in that color? The part about "floor panels’…unless I’m reading it wrong…?
I’ve found some color photos where the transmission seemed a more bluish color, so I went with that in my tank. [:)]