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This is an Panzer Befehlswagen (Pz.Bef.Wg) III Ausf.K. It was made from a Esci 1/72 Pz.IIIM, with the turret from an Airfix Pz.IV.
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| The front of the turret has been remodelled and the Pz.III gun been mounted. I have also made some smoke launchers and antennas. |
The Revell Panzer III Ausf.M was built together with a Panzer IV Ausf.H in 2PD markings.
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| I wanted both kits built from the same unit with similar camo and side skirts. When I had decided on what to build I went out and bought the kits on a Friday, five days later they were ready. It was fun to do a really quick build for once. |
Slovakian Panzer III Ausf. N from Esci
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Attack StuG III Ausf.E This kit had hard plastic tracks and I mean HARD plastic. There were no lose links to be fitted around the sprocket and idler wheels. Just short length of tracks supposed to be bent around them, but that is very hard to do with that plastic. I had to scratch along the outsides of the track links to be able to bend them.
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| When I was ready with the chassis and got nice sagging tracks there was an unpleasant surprise. The top superstructure wouldn't fit on the bottom hull. The tracks were too close to one other. It turned out that the chassis is to narrow and that I got the wheels to close to the chassis. The rear of the chassis also is too low, it needs about 0.7mm plastic strips on the top so that the superstructure will have something to attach to on the sides. I managed to remove the whole track segment with wheels in one piece so that I can move them outwards and I also had to cut the chassis apart to insert some strips to make it wider. I would suggest gluing the wheels on with white glue or some other glue that don't permanently fix them and then glue the tracks on the wheels. Then it would be easy to remove the whole track and wheel section and make it fit after the whole hull/chassis is ready. |
| It is sad that the exhaust system isn't separate. It is moulded together with the rear plate. Another thing are the hatches on the roof. They are not straight, so I needed to make new ones. On the engine hatches there are some rectangular dents (air outlets?), well they are not separate pieces and they are not mounted straight either. On the positive side are that there are three helmets a rucksack and some blankets (or whatever) in the kit. Also, there are Ausf.A type of sprocket wheels and another type of idler wheels (might be Ausf. A as well) in the kit. These wheels have the outer part only, but it will be handy for a project that I have that was needing this type. |
| I made a very simple interior and an Esci King Tiger driver was added. The interior isn't correct but close enough. It will not be very visible when built. |
Esci StuH.42I was building a Revell and an Esci StuG III simultaneously to compare them. The Revell kit was to be a StuG with schürzen from Esci and the Esci kit would be a StuH with the swing type of schürzen that has the lower corner cut out. They were almost finished, only the schürzen's left so I started with the waffle zimmerit on the Revell kit when the project come to halt. It had been on hold for about a month when I found information on how the swinging schürzen was mounted, so I started on the kits again. When I was almost ready with the mounts I realized that I put them on the wrong kit. I had modified the Revell kit and it had the late roof in opposite to the Esci kits early type. A big sigh and a quick decision, lets change roof on the Revell kit. I had compared the kits before and was almost sure that the Esci roof would fit on the Revell kit, so I brought out a new Esci kit and started to fix it.
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After I had cut of the Revell roof and was ready to insert the new one I suddenly realized something that I should have thought of much earlier.
Those swing type of schürzen is a late variant and I should probably have mounted them on a late type of StuG. Looking at pictures confirmed this.
Now it was time for AAAARGH. When I for once make a quick decision, it had to be a wrong one. Well now there wasn't much else to do than to glue the Esci roof in place on the Revell kit. I can tell you that it fits just fine if you want an early variant. Later I have been looking through some books and found a StuH with an early roof, saukopf mantle and swinging type of schürzen of a slightly different type. It has only the cut outs on the first and the last corner, but this saves me. Instead of a StuG and a StuH I will have two different StuH's. |
| Looking at the old pictures I can see that the nozzle on the airbrush was damaged. Lots of splatter and heavy over spray. |
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This is a 1943 batch StuG III Ausf.G used by Finland in the war against the Soviet Union.
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| It is an Airfix kit where I removed the concrete reinforcements in front of the driver on the upper hull. |
| The wheels and return rollers came from an Matchbox Panzer III and the tracks from Revell's StuG IV. |
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I made the typical Finnish box on the engine deck and the early gun mantle of plastic card. I had to make new roof hatches as the ones supplied in the kit didn't open the right way for the early Ausf.G. I also moved the spare wheels. |
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Here is another Airfix kit. This time I had to make some more conversions to get the version I wanted: The 1944 batch.
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| First I remade the concrete on the upper hull, then I made the reinforcement armoured plates over the road wheels of plastic card. |
| I also reshaped the "saukopf mantle" and added zimmerit. |
| The logs on the sides was made of plastic tubes and Tamiya putty. The large box on the rear deck was lower on the 1944 batch of "Sturmis". |
| Stockholm May 26, 2019 |  |
No updates |
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miscellaneous .::. home .::.------------------------------------------------------ |