Panzerhaubitze 2000, 1/24 scale, Scratchbuild

[Bandsaw Steve]

9 hours ago, Model Mate said:

 

that’s some very nice, tight airbrush work Steve; are you sure you need to mask? Looks very good to me as it is.

What reckless path of madness are you trying to send me down? 😱

[Bandsaw Steve]

11 hours ago, Model Mate said:

 

that’s some very nice, tight airbrush work Steve; are you sure you need to mask?

Don’t tempt me down that path!!! 😳

 

That is the path to despair and excessively feathered edges! 😱

[Bandsaw Steve]

Still…

 

It is tempting… 🤔

[ArnoldAmbrose]

6 hours ago, Bandsaw Steve said:

What reckless path of madness are you trying to send me down? 😱

Gidday Steve, I thought you could find your way all by yourself. 😁 Regards, Jeff.

[Bandsaw Steve]

Too true…

[Dmitriy1967]

A good photo of "Leitkreuz" got caught. It may be useful.

 

[Bandsaw Steve]

CARC

 

When you go to your local SMS paint retailer and look for 'NATO Green' and 'NATO Brown' you don't have much luck.  SMS appear to not do those two colours.  They do however do 'CARC green' and 'CARC brown' both of which look very close. 

 

If you then become curious and wonder what 'CARC' means you might google the subject and find out that it's a NATO (or perhaps US Army?) acronym for 'Chemical Agent Resistant Coating' which is - apparently - the technical name for the coatings that modern NATO armour get painted with.

 

Interesting... 🤔

 

Let's get some brown and green CARC on this thing! 

 

As per my stated 'plan A' above I started the long tedious process of masking out.  But - I dunno - they just don't seem to make blue-tack like they used to. This stuff just would not stick down and after 15 minutes or so the words of @Model Mate started ringing in my ears...

 

'Are you sure you need to mask?'

 

'Are you sure you need to mask?'

 

'Are you sure you need to mask?'

 

 

'Well maybe not'  I started to think.  

 

'But if I am going to try to freehand this thing then, I will definitely need some demarcation guidelines drawn on before I start airbrushing!' I thought.

 

But once the first brown was on I was gaining confidence and thought... well - if there's any mistakes made in the pattern I can just adjust with the final green coat... So to hell with the pencil marks.

 

 And from there on I just went a bit nuts. 😵

 

Quite a bit of paint got squirted.

 

After about 2 hectic hours the hull was done.

 

and most of the ancillary pieces had been CARC'd.

 

Soon after, the previous 'Reflective Green' on the turret was then replaced with 'CARC Green' leaving nothing to do except...

 

Remove the very basic masking over the tracks and wheels that I put on a week or so ago...

 

And admire my work... 

 

 

 

 

All of which I am very happy with.  Note that the wheels are still in 'reflective green' as originally painted a few weeks ago, and so there is still a small colour mismatch between wheels and hull. I'm not concerned because the wheels will be covered with a layer of dust pigmentation for weathering.  As for the CARC... to me the colours look bang-on! 👍 

 

So - @Model Mate 's outrageous suggestion of not masking proved reasonable after all and saved me a bunch of time. 

 

I think that the fact that it worked out OK is due to two major factors:

• SMS paints really are extremely good and flatter my limited airbrushing skills.
• This is a very big model so the  feathered edge still looks in scale.

Just in case anyone has forgotten just how big this is - have a look at the photo below.  

 

Well folks, that's another major milestone passed on  this project.   Not sure what's next; probably some matt varnish followed by more detailing. There's still a fair way to go.

 

Best Regards,

Bandsaw Steve

 

 

 

 

[ArnoldAmbrose]

Gidday Steve, I wish you'd use a different acronym, I was really worried when you said you'd CARCed it. (OK, somebody had to say it 😁).

Seriously, I used blu-tac for masking once. Only once. But I paint with the hairy stick and the paint I apply is thicker - it dammed up against the blu-tac. Without being a sycophant I think the paint job is very good and looks very authentic, to a ship bloke anyway. And if you had a touch too much green, not enough black and the brown upside down would it make a difference? Unless of course you were modeling this on a specific vehicle.

     She's come a long way and looking great. Surely she must nearly be finished, again. 🙂 Regards, Jeff.

[Courageous]

Agree with Jeff  great stuff indeed.

All I can add is Xantho!

 

Stuart.

[GMK]

Steve - that looks absolutely amazing! Very, very nice work. 

[edjbartos]

What you have done on this project is just incredible, fabulous work all the way through, amazing stuff, well done...

 

Ed

[Model Mate]

I hate to say I told you so, but……. I’d happily take credit for that!

excellent work Steve.

[hendie]

Very professional looking. That does not in any way, shape, or form look like a scratchbuilt effort. 

It looks great with it's clothes on Steve.

[Dmitriy1967]

Excellent work! Very realistic howitzer!

I especially like that you made it from scratch.

[Bandsaw Steve]

Fiddly Bits

 

Now that the big structures are complete and the bulk of the paint is on this thing it's time to dive once more into some details.  in this case three pieces of removable, external gear rather than integral parts of the vehicle itself. For a model builder these are fiddly bits, the first of which is the MG3 machine gun. 

 

The MG3 is an interesting weapon. Apparently it's just a revised-caliber (7.92mm to 7.62mm) MG42,  so it's essentially the same weapon as the Germans used in WW2,  the Imperial Stormtroopers used in 'Star Wars' and Dr No's Henchmen fired at James Bond.  It's possibly the oldest combat weapon in the NATO arsenal. 

 

From a modelling point of view it's a difficult subject. The main challenge being the elongated cooling slots along the barrel housing.  Here I've tried to model them by drilling holes side by side into a plastic tube and then sort of 'routing out' the remaining plastic between each hole using the drill. As you can see, It proved very difficult to get the slots looking uniform and convincing, in part because the plastic was too soft.

 

So then I tried something similar with brass tube. 

 

The result was unsatisfactory.

 

Then I tried cutting the slots at appropriate spots along the barrel places along the to about one quarter depth using this extremely helpful little grinding / cutting tool.

 

and very carefully filing out the excess brass. This worked fairly well but, at the end of the process I realized that I did not really have an answer as to how to build the rest of the gun nor how to affix this to it.

 

That was when I came up with this idea...

Find a bit of polystyrene sheet that's the right thickness and draw the entire gun's profile onto it.

 

Use a scoll saw to cut a series of slots from the top of the gun toward the barrel as shown. It turns out that this scoll-saw loves cutting polystyrene and does a beautiful job of it too! (Note to future self). 🤔

 

So, just press on and cut out the rest of the gun.

 

Cement a strip of polystyrene along the top.

 

Then use sandpaper to shape all of the round contours, add some mildly convincing-looking greeblies and sit back happy with one's effort. Although not 100% accurate, I think this will look fairly convincing with a coat of gun-metal paint and some dry-brushing.

 

The next bit of gear is a shovel. Each PZH 2000 comes equipped with a shovel affixed just to the right of the driver's hatch.  Let's make one.

 

This is simpler than the machine-gun but was still a bit more tricky than I thought.  The fact is that in side views, shovels have quite a distinctive profile to them; they aren't just straight sticks with a spade head stuck on the end. So here I've bent and shaped a brass pipe to the 'correct' shape.

 

Under all of that green masking tape is a 1/24 shovel head just waiting to be shaped to the correct contour. 

 

Boil up some water and dunk the whole kaboodle in until you are sure that the polystyrene is nice and soft. Then withdraw the scalpel from the water and - while protecting your fingers from heat - press the plastic to the correct shape. 

 

Which should leave a result like this. 

 

Which once sharpened-up and attached to the handle will make a fairly convincing-looking shovel.  I also added a dab of solder on the end of the handle so that the brass tube would not appear hollow, but you cannot see that in this view.

 

The final bit to discuss is a... goodness knows what...

It's the long thin tool that is always mounted across the vehicle toward the front of the glacis plate. You can see it quite clearly on the photo below just above the number plate.  It seems to consist of  three or four long bars terminating at one end in a small triangular structure. 

 

I do not know what this is and if any of you do, please sing out. My best guess is that a tool used in track maintenance or tensioning?

Anyway - to build this thing I chose to resort to my collection of surplus kit parts. Here I'm using injection molded ratlines provided by from a ship modeller who no longer needed them. 

 

I was just being lazy really. I only used these because they were already held together and their cross-sections looked about right.

 

 

After a bit of goofing around with a scalpel and some cement I had this.

 

Which after some 'greeblies' were added, looks like this...

 

So, I have made some progress on this project, which is now about 1.5 years 'overdue' and continues to inch along.  I promised various people that this thing would be finished by the end of the Southern Hemisphere winter and now that 'deadline' has also passed... ☹️   Right now I'm running a little low on mojo for this thing and am gagging to model some bigger pieces rather than being mired in this endless stream of details.

 

Keep your eyes peeled on the maritime section folks. I think the time has come to finally give the SS Xantho a KUTA!

 

Best Regards,

Bandsaw Steve 

 

 

 

[ArnoldAmbrose]

       Gidday Steve, I can understand loss of mojo, especially when doing fiddly stuff late in a build. It's hit me a lot during my current build. But stick with it, you've come so far and done so well. I think the machine gun looks great as you've got it. I actually thought your first attempt at the cooling slots using the styrene tube looked good too. And I know it's not easy getting two holes to match up in line, particularly if they're close together.

       You're also good at finding methods for making non kit parts, such as shovels etc. Mind you, I think using a ship part to make a non-ship part borders on sacrilege. 😲 But I guess the saying "To err is human, to forgive divine" is appropriate here. So consider yourself forgiven. 😁

       All-in-all Steve she's looking great. Do push on and finish her. And I'm looking forward to seeing SS Xantho progressing after she receives her KUTA.       Regards, Jeff.

[SafetyDad]

Very inventive work on both the gun and the 'glacis plate thingy'. Clever, convincing solutions for both items!

 

SD

[Niall]

The barrel shroud on the MG3 is square in cross section and 1 side has the small holes, the other side has a long slot.

[Clogged]

Great Scratchbuilding. You’re an inspiration for making something out of nothing.  I’m Scratchbuilding a plank on frame wooden ship and sometimes it would be nice to go back to putting kit parts together!

[Bandsaw Steve]

On 12/09/2022 at 15:54, Niall said:

The barrel shroud on the MG3 is square in cross section and 1 side has the small holes, the other side has a long slot.

Bugger! The photo I was referencing was taken from the ‘several small slot-shaped holes’ side. 😳
Too late now. 😆

[ArnoldAmbrose]

4 hours ago, Niall said:

The barrel shroud on the MG3 is square in cross section and 1 side has the small holes, the other side has a long slot.

 

2 hours ago, Bandsaw Steve said:

Bugger! The photo I was referencing was taken from the slotted side. 😳
Too late now. 😆

Gidday Steve, is it too late? If you really want to get it right (and I for one wouldn't have known) can you not gouge out to a shallow depth the bits of plastic between the small slots to make a long slot? You probably wouldn't have to go very deep. Then if the slots were painted black with the gun a lighter colour, well, the eye can be deceived. Just a thought.

Regards, Jeff.

[Bandsaw Steve]

1 hour ago, ArnoldAmbrose said:

 

Gidday Steve, is it too late? If you really want to get it right (and I for one wouldn't have known) can you not gouge out to a shallow depth the bits of plastic between the small slots to make a long slot? You probably wouldn't have to go very deep. Then if the slots were painted black with the gun a lighter colour, well, the eye can be deceived. Just a thought.

Regards, Jeff.

Maybe….

 

But on the other hand maybe I should just post some Xantho work on the maritime pages and distract you until you forget about it! 🤣

[ArnoldAmbrose]

7 minutes ago, Bandsaw Steve said:

But on the other hand maybe I should just post some Xantho work on the maritime pages and distract you until you forget about it! 🤣

🤣🤣👍

[hendie]

Nice scratching Steve. I'm particularly drawn to the shovel (dunno why tho')

[Model Mate]

Very impressed with your mg - I tried scratching one of these in 1/16 to go with a resin figure who was missing his weapon and gave up in the end, resorting to a 3D print from ebay. I think I should have persevered; yours looks pretty good and the hole technique is a great example of the scratcher’s lateral thinking!