SPA Modeler

Today was a good bench session for this project. I spent a good portion of the morning using my Dremel to thin down the zimmerit panels for the hull and turret

Here you can see one before thinning and one after thinning side by side…



After that was all finished, I glued them in place and let them dry. Once dry I did a little fine tuning of sand if and roughing up the edges to make them look more realistic. I also added the drivers vision flap and bow machine gun ball mount





and lastly for today, I added some putty zimmerit on the turret front sides behind the mantlet, where Italeri neglected to add that feature…



More to come in a day or two…

Today’s progress report…

I finished up painting the motor and installed it



then put the section of deck in place…



not much will be visible, although the hatch is provided with working hinges…
then I added the spare track and tool racks onto the hull sides





So I had to do a test shot with the turret fitted in place…





I think that I’m going to order some AM brass screens for the engine deck…

Wow! Carlos, that zimmerit really looks the part! That is a great add-on. This Panther is coming right along and looking great. When I did my Tamiya Panther, I used some scrap plastic window screen I had in the toolroom. It looks okay I guess and did save some money over the AM offerings which would of course, look better no doubt.

Here's a look at those screens:

real nice work! The original 1/35 Tamiya Panther was my first armor kit. Always liked Panthers since then.

Damn Gary, you sure dressed up that Tamiya Panther very nicely! The screen look good for the engine deck wire mesh. I have plenty of different size mesh in my box of odds and ends for model use. I just feel like splurging a little on this kit.
That kit was the last 1/35 Panther that I built, back in the 80's. When the Tamiya A and the Nichimo G kit were the only game in town for 1/35 Panthers. I was so happy when Italeri released the kit that I'm building now, as it addressed all of the shortfalls of the Tamiya kit.

Thanks, Carlos! I appreciate that! I believe you were among the first to congratulate me on that tank way back when it was first posted here. Thanks for the continuing support, sir.

And, I'll go ahead and thank Chris as well; I'm not sure if your comment was directed at my tank or Stilk's fine new build, but I'll sure take it!

Very clean work! Nice job

A very nice bit of work indeed Carlos - I like the mod you did to the Zimmeritt (the sanding down), it certainly helps.

How do you go about fitting the PE mesh over the engine deck, do you just place them over the kit parts as is or do you have to do some cutting (asking for a friend)...

Stuart, I haven't applied the PE grills onto this one yet. But in the past when I have, they are usually just applied directly over the kit parts with no surgery. Some older kits, such as the Tamiya T-34s do need a surgery to remove the solid molded in grills, but it will vary by kit.

Thanks Stik, hope you're doing okay. That's good news - I was hoping that was the case with my Tiger. I do like the look of this kit though, would you say it was worth getting over the Tamiya kit?