I’ve got one of the older Dragon early Jagdpanthers without the molded on zimm. I am wondering if there were any early ones that wouldn’t have had zimm?
I’m pretty sure they would all have it since they were first released in early 44. You could get away with the Late without zimmerit. Not sure of the exact date the Late appeared, but undoubtedly sometime in 1944 I presume.
Yep, all earlys and i think the Mid’s as well should be Zimmed. Might be your chance to try Zimming yourself, or theres always AM Zimm.
I’ve had this kit a while…I really don’t want to pay for the Cav zimm because I am going to purchase the new zimmed version soon. I am considering doing it myself for the practice but need to find some info on making a tool. The only putty I have is Tamiya white at the moment. I am not going to be able to procure anything else for a couple of weeks when I can either make an order or drive across the city to the only hobby shop.
I saw the new Monroe-Perdu paper zimm in person at AMPS last year,it looked good.maybe something to try.
I am not sure the tamiya putty would work for Zimm. Miliput white is a good choice. Tamiya make a Zimming tool if you can get it, but i am not sure if it is the right pattern.
Jagdpanthers had the cross-hatched pattern that was somewhat unique. Some of the Panthers had it too.
tiger, do you know if you would be able to do that pattern with the Tamiy tool.
It’s a simple pattern, just scribed "checker board’ squares and isn’t ridged or textured like you see on other zim patterns. On the one hand that should make it easier to create, on the other you have to do it by hand as it doesn’t require a stamp or toothed/ridged tool to create the pattern. [B]
And doing it by hand will give it an accurate uneven look. You could use a ruler with a knfe.
It’s the grid pattern to the right.
You can also (everyone take a deep breath), build it OOB without zimmerit. Not like the zimm-police will come out and disappear you in the dead of night.
I understand that you don’t want to put AM money into a kit that has been surpassed by a more up to date kit on your wish list. I also understand that you still see some value in the kit and do not want to risk messing it up by trying a new technique (do-it-yourself zimm).
I’ve got an AFV Club Late Tiger I kit. I’m not into Tigers so I don’t want to put any extra effort (read: money for AM) into the kit. I got it in a trade for a lot of kits. I understand the kit’s value so I don’t want to ruin it by trying to add zimmerit myself. I don’t want to buy zimmerit for a kit I’m mildly interested in. So I plan on building it OOB without any zimmerit. It is such a nice kit that I do not want to get rid of it and would rather build it than get chump change by selling it.
That is exactly what I am going to do. I was looking the kit over and the quality is really not up to modern standards. I don’t even think it is as crisp as the older Tamiya kits. So I’m not wasting time or money with doing the zimm. I need an easier build after tackling a beast of a Panzer IV 3 in 1.
I found a pic of a diecast Jagd that I am going to try and reproduce as practice for a Tiger I plan to build for a contest.
I figured I would not even mention it here. I didn’t want to stir the rivet counter nest, or cause any mild strokes.
At the end of the day its your build, and as long as you are happy with that all that counts.
When someone points out something that may not be historicaly accurate, or rivet counters as they seems to be called, they are really just trying to help. Its up to the builder to decide if he takes the advice or just says thanks very much but i am happy with it as it is.
Be sure to post some pics of the build, and we won’t mention the Zimm, promise.
True, it’s your build and you should be able to do anything you want with it. However, if you were to enter a contest, it might be a deal-breaker.
No, it wouldn’t. The judges are supposed to stick to the basics. How can you even know if an armor judge would know the difference between an early and a late JP and whether or not it required zimm?
I’ve judged armor before. I am mainly a modern armor modeler with some US WW2 stuff thrown in. Those are my main lanes, but I can judge a Tiger to see if it is built properly, i.e. parts aligned, seams filled, paint not dripping, glue marks, fingerprints, road wheels touching the ground, etc.
I can’t tell you if that panzer ausf. whatever served with the unit markings and in the paint scheme as displayed any more than a German armor only expert could tell if the bumper markings on an M1A2 actually ever appeared on an M1A2.
As a “known” Braille scale modeler, I often get banished to judging the 1/72 scale armor. Unlike 1/35 scale armor which is often broken up into WW2 German, WW2 Allied, Softskin, Modern, Open Topped, etc., the Braille scale category is a hodge podge of all 1/72-1/76 (sometimes 1/48) scale armor.
Therefore I’m required to judge Abrams, Tigers, Shermans, and whatever small scale armor kits are entered into the category. I can’t judge a kit more harshly because I know more about that vehicle than other kits entered.
A well built early JP without the proper zimmerit would do better than a poorly built early JP with a crappy zimm job. Now if the builder has pointed out in his kit description that he modified or corrected the kit or whatnot, those additions would be taken into consideration.
I seem to remember reading somewhere that contest judges generally don’t take historical accuracy into account as much as many perceive. At least not on small trivial things. I don’t really know if zimm is one, but I trust Rob’s comments until proven otherwise. Moot point on this one though. It is just a quick build to practice some whitewash work on. There is a show coming up in September that I want to try and put a couple of pieces together for but this isn’t one.
The kit is older and has some issues. It will be purely for my own enjoyment so blah to the zimmerit. My inquiry here was more to learn something about the historical elements and not really to determine how to tackle the model since I had honestly made up my mind before asking. I would love to do my own zimmerit with putty, but I just haven’t built up the courage yet.
Good for you for telling the zim to take a shove. LOL I wish I could do that with weathering. [:@]
I do believe that it might hurt at a contest, but I’ve seen more glaring errors get overlooked.
I figured as much. Your original post sounded (to me) like you were asking for absolution for the sin of not doing zimmerit. Basically wanting to build it without.
Building this model without zimmerit wouldn’t be an error in construction; it would be an error in historical accuracy. A construction error I’ve seen was mistakenly putting the drive sprockets where the idler wheel goes and vice versa. I think that was on a Matchbox Comet a while back.
There are probably more seasoned judges on this site (I really do not enjoy judging someone else’s hard work). When I’ve judged, I usually do a quick “first cut”. I look for major obvious construction errors like misaligned road wheels, gun tube seam (I remember seeing a gun tube on crooked with the muzzzle brake askew), missed paint coverage or a paint job that looked like someone just poured the paint over the model (i.e. real thick, either airbrushed, spray canned or hand painted). Once you do this, you can spend more time inspecting the remaining models to see what improvements the builder made, etc.
From there you’ve got to decide 1st, 2nd and 3rd. I haven’t judged AMPS before, but I know that they give each model an individual score, add up the judges scores and decide if that model deserves a medal (gold, silver or bronze). In AMPS, there can be as many gold, silver or bronzes in a category as deserve them whereas in IPMS there is normally only one first, second and third place in that category.
Now in AMPS, they do give bonus points on historical accuracy. If you stated in your build that you added zimmerit to make this kit accurate for the vehicle type and time frame, but that’s worth 0.5 points. Roy Chow (T26E4) knows infinitely more about AMPS juging than I do.