Hello!
This is my first Panther [:D]
I know all this will be old news to most of you, I’m just excited about my first cat.
So, I purched this bundle of old kits without boxes, just plastic bags with sprues, decals and instructions and out came the Panther. Since the experience is nill, this will be out of the box. Or out the bag…
The top armour plate piece was squached badly. The sides were bowing out and very curved, top plate sinking in. Don’t have photos of that, sorry. Had to bend the hole piece over a heat gun. Got the side and front armour plates straight but the top sank into the tub and had to be braced to level it.
Another hair raising moment was the main gun fitting. Originaly it was supposed to sit flush on the mantle. Decided to heat a metal rod (drill bit) the diameter of the barrel and press it against the mantle. That way I could insert the barrel into the mantle and better recreate the ilusion of 2 separate pieces.
And here’s the thing more or less put togheter. The right drive sproket was very crooked due to afore mentioned warpage of side armour and had to be pulled out and reglued or the track would not fit. Not a lot of putty was needed, mostly on the front plates, where the tow links go. That was a bad design…
Thank you!
For paint I used Tamiya for the Sand Yellow and Gunze for the Dark Green.
Next sprayed Alclad Aqua Gloss, layed the decals down with Micro Set and Sol, and finally sealed it all with Winsor&Newton’s Acrilic Satin Varnish.
The varnishes were idiot proof, the Alclad was straight from the bottle and W&N required just a few drops of water. Perfect finnishes.
The decals were tricky to transfer due to all the ports on the turret. 3 coats of Micro Sol were needed and still they are not perfect, but I can live with it.
Nice job! I love this kit and have had no troubles with any I have built. I would normally recommend sanding down that raised turret ring but you seem to have overcome that problem. I am currently converting one into a late Panther D with the later cast cupola.
This kit has been much maligned in the past, but many of those complaints were not correct. The rest of easi;y corrected. For example, one complaint is that the turret sits too high because of that ring. The obvious solution is to sand it down, resulting in a properly fitted turret. Another complaint centered on the number of lug nuts on the wheels as being late model not the early version in the kit. Great. Either replace the wheels OR do so research. The early Panther Ds replaced the early wheels with the later version, making the wheels in the kit accurate. Another issue was the barrel length being too short. However, my measurements are that the kit barrel is only 2mm short of scale, well within my acceptability. It looks right to me.
There are complaints that this kit is not scaled correctly, being too narrow and short, or too wide and high. Yet, when placed next to Tamiya, Dragon, Meng, and Takom Panthers, it really is scaled correctly. Still another complaint is that the turret sits too far back or too far forward. When compared with plans and photos of the real Panther, the turret is precisely where it should be.
The only issue I found concerns the vinyl tracks. They are stiff, difficult to sit right on the wheels, and border on being unusable. Like all other box tracks, I replace them with Friul Model metal tracks.
I love this kit! I have successfully built many of them and they fit right into my Panther collection. You are doing great on yours!
Looks good! Great job of conquering the issues with the damaged kit!
That’s interesting. Only Panthers I’ve built is Tamiya’s ancient Ausf A and two Nichimo kits that are probably almost as old. I guess I should try a modern kit one of these days.
PS: Whoops forgot, I did build the Dragon Ersatz Panther/M10 kit.
Yeah, it looks too long when one only has the chassis and armour assembled, and it looks far too tall with the road wheels dry fitted. But it all comes together after putting on the tracks. And yes, I did find the turret ring a bit high but somehow it’s not ugly enough to bother. Maybe the top deck sank in a millimeter or so. If you look at the first picture you can see the sprues badly warped, I suspect the previous owner had a big pile of these stacked through the years and they sagged under summer heat.
I have a tiger and a PZ4 from the same stash and hope those are not bent [:O]
The most irritating piece are the vinil tracks. Nothing sticks to these other that CA glue.
Paint and weathering just flows to the corners.
CA glue really doesn’t work on those tracks. It will eventually flake off. That’s why I use aftermarket tracks. By the way, Italeri is changing their vinyl to both individual link and length and link plastic tracks.
She sure looked beatifull… For a whole whooping day… [:'(]
Then one track split. Then one idler wheel came off wile trying to rescue the track. Then the other idler wheel came off. Meanwile the fa€#|"g tracks kept flaking off…
RIP Panther. She now rests on the Valhalla of scale tanks, the shelf of doom.
No more vinil tracks for me now I gess.
The model itself can be rescued. Remove the tracks and sand off the old CA glue. Drill a small hole in both the axle for the idler wheel and its attachment point, insert a small pin, and reattach using the cement or CA of your choice. The bond should hold. Get a set of aftermarket tracks and your impressive work will be saved.
Yeah, will probably do that. Will set it aside for a few weeks to get the weathering dry or I’ll rub all off with the fingers. I’m just a bit sad to look at it now, I gess.
I have an extra set of early Panther D D+S tracks from Dragon. These are cementable soft plastic tracks that look stunning. They are yours if you want them (no charge).
My offer for the tracks is sincere. I do not use “wrap around” tracks but these look good, they are easy to use, they are flexible, and they are cementable. They are yours for the asking.
Hi Bill! Sorry for the late reply and thank you very much for the offer!!! It’s very very generous! I’m at the other side of the planet, the shipping costs are very high I suppose. Send me a message with a PayPal account or any other means of money transfer so I can pay for the shipping please!
