Search the Community

Hi guys, This is going to be the first in probably a very long set of updates over the next god knows how long. After getting back into the hobby as an adult last year I've finally got myself up to where I want to take on a big project, until now the most difficult model I've built was MENGs terminator, which was more work than difficult. I wanted a challange, something to sink my teeth into over a long time and boy did I get it. After looking around for an internal detail kit for a quite a while I finally settled on the 1/16th panzer 4. I went for the ausf f2 variant, personally I dont really like the way the sideskirts look, and based off how they attach thought it could have been a real pain to sort out any minor warping, plus the colour scheme of the f2 is naturally a desert yellow, which is probably my preferred pattern. The kit comes, in a flipping gigantic box; and, just to ram it home, there is absolutely no space spared inside there; I cant help but feel its slightly optimistic of trumpeter to include a catalog of kits in here, but i suppose the stash gods exist for a reason. The kit is absolutely beautiful, going over all the sprues I'm blown away at the detail they've fitted into every inch of this kit. From the (slightly daunting) amount of wonderfully molded ammo to the masses of PE; (this is less than half of it, those packets are double sided and theres more. In total the PE alone probably weighs about 500g). It really doesnt hit you just what you've gotten into until you actually look at it next to some other tanks; Both of those are 35th scale, although chosen to slightly mess with the perspective. Currently my livingroom is literally overflowing with sprues; This is about half the total sprues, most of the rest are still in the boxes you can see top right but whats not layed out is ammo, track parts and other similar pieces that I wont be needing right now. Thus far I've completed the engine; Although I'm not happy with the little vent things at the back, theres some putty work to be done on that joint (or maybe not, looking at where those pieces go they pretty much go flush against a wall so you'll never see them. I'll have to think about it), and started on the transmission; This is probably the first PE bent piece I've ever been happy with. There are 2 (actually 3) things worrying me so far about the kit. 1) The PE bending, its not something I'm particularly good with but since most of the PE parts here are substantially bigger and tougher than the stuff you get on 1/35 or 1/350 I think its a great learning opportunity, 2) Figuring out exactly what order to paint everything (more on this later), and 3) figuring out what to paint things. The instructions are a little unclear on colours on the engine for instance. It gives some colour callouts for some pieces, but not an overall colour and theres no colour guide for the internal pieces at the back of the (50 page) instruction booklet which is disappointing. I think that the base colour of the engine should be the red/brown iron oxide primer colour based off their instructions but that doesnt seem right to me. Weathering the internal parts is also going to be a challange, I want a used not destroyed look, but frankly I have no idea what techiques to be using on an engine, hairspray chipping doesnt seem particularly right, so maybe just painting it as a new engine and giving it a nice black oil wash+various engine stains, diesel stains sort of products would work. The paint is something to think about too, the instructions default to mr hobby, but I've never used their stuff and its a little difficult to get over here. I tend to use tamiya or vallejo paint, but given large parts of the inside are an off white colour and I've had big issues spraying both their whites I might look elsewhere. I think AK interactive have a set of german interior paints? Thats really stuffI'm open to suggestions on. So yea, this kit is going to take me months, but so far its been really nicely fitting, nicely made parts, the instructions are very clear, aside from paint callouts, Plan so far is to leave the top of the hull off. I'm thinking I might display it like andys hobby headquaters did his tiger. Put the upper frontal plate on, leave that huge piece of the upper hull in picture 4 off, then have the turret either in that part of the hull or off and next to it, thats something to decide a very, very long way down the line though. Thanks for the read, Mike