1:16 Light Tank Pz.Kpfw. 38(t) Ausf. G

[Braille]

Started this step-by-step build-log in the (Old) AFV/Armorama Large Scale Forums. Will continue with the rest of the build here.

Light Tank Pz.Kpfw. 38(t) Ausf. G

Been having an issue with logging into my Photobucket account to post some progress pictures here, so as soon as I can get that resolved I will have more here to show.

~ Eddy

[iwatajim]

Great build so far. You can post pics direct from whatever device you are using here. Just copy and paste, or drag and drop, or whatever works for you. No need for photo hosting any more!

Cheers, J.

[Braille]

Thank you and thank for visiting! I appreciate the information regarding the use of a third party photo host, that is good news. I was wondering about that but hadn’t seen a post mentioning this, I’m sure there is one but just haven’t gone through most of the posts here. Anyhow I will give that a go as soon as I have a chance to finish up with the next update, soon I hope?

[tread_geek]

Hey there Eddy, didn’t know you had started a BLOG thread that truly doesn’t go with your callsign! As iwatajim mentioned, picture posting couldn’t be easier in this new Armorama. As an example I have a tab in my old browser showing the “old Armorama” right beside the tab with this version. So I went to the old site, found you BLOG and clicked on your opening image like so:

Photobucket | Make your memories fun!

Using my Mac’s screen capture utility I took a picture of the Blog to show a different method of posting image. Here we go:

Easy peasy as they say? And your right as you mention in the BLOG, you can never have enough clamps! And if we call 1:35 LEGO Scale, what will we call 1:16, Jurassic Scale?

Keep up the good work!

Cheers,
Jan

[Braille]

@tread_geek- Jan,

Thanks for the help, been having issues with my online picture posting host and this new forum surely will resolve that problem. At work I can’t see the images because their server blocks Photobucket, hoping this goes away? So far they haven’t blocked this site but as communistic as these corporations are becoming that could happen?

@iwatajim - J.,

I would also like to thank you again for helping me with posting here. I would have done so sooner but I was busy spending time on the bench, it’s that or posting and that takes time when you consider editing the text and setting up the photographs. In the end it’s all part of the fun.

~ Eddy

[Braille]

Well it’s been a while since my first build posting so apologies go out to those of you for having waited for an update. On my first posting I mostly concentrated on step 7 of the instructions building up the lower chassis and upper superstructure. But as I had mentioned, I tend to jump around working from the inside to the outside and adding details that could easily be broken off last.

I had already posted the beginning of this blog back in late September when a short time later Armorama released the new forums and I was considering bringing what I had posted there over here to the new forums but I don’t think there is a need for that as the old forums will soon come to an end and the postings there will remain archived and easily accessed.

I’m just now starting to notice that there is a lot of issues with this Panda kit that need to be addressed but overall it seems an easy enough kit for the average builder to handle. However undertaking these shortfalls along the way is causing a slowdown on this build, not a complaint I like the challenge and it helps to hone my skills. So on with this update.

There were several towing hook types designed and used for these vehicles and the most widely produced and used version on the Ausf. G where the ones provided in this kit. My kit tow hooks came with an abrupt flat ending so I had to use super glue to create the tapered horn shaped endings. A Flex-I-File was used to help me with shaping the ends.

After attaching all four of the tow hooks to the front and rear areas on the lower chassis I noticed that in this 1:16, ‘Jurassic’ scaled sized kit welds needed to be made or deal with having to have the tow hooks look like they were somehow held in place with magnets. Using Magic Sculpt I set about creating weld joints. Here are the tools used to create the welds. There are some good videos showing the process of making welds with Magic Sculpt on YouTube and also an excellent article on welds here on Armorama.

The welds applied to the front tow hooks.

And here welds are applied to the rear tow hooks. I removed bolts that straddle the tow hooks because they sat to low on the tow hook plates and should sit nearer the center of the plate.

The bolts now moved higher on the plates as shown per my references (scale drawings in Track Link No. 18).

There is a problem with where the rear idler adjusting housing covers sit and also the shape of the track pin kick plates.

On the real vehicle an angled cut was made on the rear plate edge to help slide loose track pins back onto the tracks. Part of the idler adjusting housing cover seat has been removed because of its location being along the edge. The track pin kick plates have also been removed in preparation for scratch made ones.

Thicker track pin kick plates have been fabricated using .040 X.080" (1.016 X 2.032mm) Strip Styrene with the correct angled edges that match up with the rear plate angled cuts. Aber photo etch screw heads were used on the track pin kick plates. There are no sizes embossed on the photo etch fret for the screw heads so you will have to guesstimate the size needed here. I just matched up what was already on the molded on track kick plates.

I have many more pictures to post but I still need to get the text together for each of the pictures and do some work on each of the pictures before posting. Thanks for stopping by, see you soon and keep modeling and have fun!

~ Eddy

[kornbeef]

I’ve been toying with the idea of building this kit for so long now watching what you are doing its going on my Xmas wish list. Really nice work Eddy.

[ColinEdm]

Excellent work!

[Braille]

@kornbeef - Keith,

Thank you for stopping by its appreciated and welcome to the ‘New’ site, I’m sure you will like it here. Don’t hesitate in getting yourself a copy of this kit, it’s not a Tamiya type shake 'n bake but with a little bit of work the parts go together easily enough. However, it seems that Panda has an issue with at least one of the large parts in there kit boxes being warped. Been reading through some of the blogs here and on other forums and that appears to be the consensus with their earlier kits. Good thing this is not going to get an interior or I would have made an effort to get the part that was warped on my example.

I will be posting more progress work on this build soon. Almost more than half way with getting the pictures and text ready. Hope to see some of your work here too!

~ Eddy

[Braille]

@ColinEdm - Key,

Thanks! And thanks for stopping by and taking a look, it’s much appreciated! So you build cars and you have a 1:1 scale one too that you drive around, nice. Looking forward to seeing one of your builds here on the ‘New’ site. I have a 24th scale '70 Plymouth GTX 440 Six Pack to build and will post that here in the future, I use to own a 1:1 scale version fully modified for the 1/4 mile and that’s what I will be building for memory sack and I will need help in getting parts to duplicate my 1:1 machine, so I hope I can count on you for advise?

~ Eddy

[ColinEdm]

Hey Eddy, yeah I have a 95 Skyline GTR that I autocross, built most of it myself but not sure how much help I’ll be with muscle cars lol.

[Braille]

I’m back with an update. Hope things are fine with each of you!

The transmission drive gear covers needed the housing shafts drilled open in order to have them fit properly against the transmission guide cover posts molded on both superstructure sides. Also the innermost transmission drive gear cover shafts both needed to be counter sunk, seen in the inset picture, to allow clearance for the molded on transmission guide cover posts.

Relief hardware cutouts were added to the outer transmission drive gear cover rings that line up with the cover hardware on the superstructure sides. These cutouts appeared on late model Ausf. G’s and some of the cover rings were also wider and thicker.

Here you can see that each of the cutouts line up with the hardware on the superstructure side and were centered between the rings rivets. On one of the transmission gear housing covers it was necessary to remove the location pin on the backside of the housing to get the cover aligned with the hardware.

I modified both the bump stop and housing supports to match them up with close up pictures that I found on the internet and Squadron’s 38(t) /Swiss LTL-H Walkaround book. The Swiss vehicles shared many of the suspension components with the Ausf. G. The bump stops and housings supplied in the kit are correct for the Ausf. E/F. On the Ausf. G the bump stops were shorter in width and the housings had an angle cutout suspending the bump stops away from the superstructure sides. Also the bump stops held a steeper angle on the backside. You can see the unmodified kit parts on the bottom of the picture.

Both my kits housings came with blobs of plastic representing bolt heads on the inside bottom surface of the housing. I removed the blobs of plastic and replaced them.

Here I opened up the three locating holes for the cylindrical radiator blower access plate because the locating pins on the access plate are larger in diameter than the locating holes.

I used the radiator blower access plate (C19) because it lacked the molded on support bar for the smoke discharge grenade rack. I drilled a hole on the plate near one of the bolt heads to accommodate a .047” (1.19mm) diameter strip styrene rod to simulate the standoff used for securing one of the smoke discharge grenade rack support bars.

The radiator blower access plate was used as a template for locating where I needed to drill the hole on the rear armor plate for the strip styrene rod. The strip styrene rod was then placed in the drilled hole and cemented in place from the backside of the rear armor plate. The strip styrene rod would later be trimmed just proud of the radiator blower access plate bolts. On the real vehicle the standoff served to keep the smoke discharge rack from being removed when removing the rear access radiator blower plate for maintenance.

Here the radiator blower access plate is now cemented in place but I have yet to trim the strip styrene rod.

The model would still not sit even without it slightly teetering from side to side on a flat surface so I placed a long strip styrene beam across opposite ends of the chassis under pressure causing a very slight bow on the beam but it worked and now the chassis sits level on the bench without teetering.

More on the way, thanks for stopping by and taking a look it’s much appreciated.

~ Eddy

[JoseCesar67]

Looking very good!

[Braille]

@JoseCesar67 - Jose,

Thanks for the kind words and for dropping by it is much appreciated. More on the way!

[Braille]

Here’s the last of the pictures showing where I am currently on the build.

The kit pieces that make up the return wheel assemblies.

Four styrene rods were cut to be used as shafts on the wheels. The existing holes on the back of the wheels were slightly opened up using a .099” (2.52mm) diameter drill to accept the styrene rods. After cementing the rods to the wheels the rods were trimmed back to .340” (8.65mm) long, measured from the back of the wheel out to the end of the styrene shaft. This was necessary to keep the shafts from touching the superstructure side when placed in the return wheel housings. The molded on shafts on the return wheel housings were removed and opened up using a .099” (2.52mm) diameter drill to accept the new styrene wheel shafts. Here it is important to step drill the holes on the return wheel housings starting with a small drill size and working up to the final drill size while keeping the drilling centered on the return wheel housings.

The kit wheels lacked the small hole openings on the outside face of the wheels. Using a .021” (.5334mm) diameter drill the six holes were added to the wheels. The inner tire openings were deburred just enough to allow some definition between the tire and wheel then the tires where cemented to the wheels. The tire assemblies were then attached to a Dermal tool to flatten the surface of the tire as the tires come molded with a slight angled taper due to the molding process and the far side of the tire surface ends without a radius. The Dermal tool and sanding sticks made short work of this deficiency.

The suspension support frame for the swing arms and leaf springs are a one piece part on the real vehicle. On the early model vehicles the bar that bolts to the belly plates was welded to the frame for the swing arms and leaf springs. The bolts were also of a smaller size. On the Ausf. G the bar and frame were a one piece affair with a concave blending between the bar and frame on the underside and the unit was attached to the belly plates with larger sized bolts. I created the concave appearance between the bar and frame with super glue and shaped it using a round riffler file. The larger sized bolts came from a Meng set of head bolts. The original sized molded on bolts are correct for the Ausf. E/F vehicles.

Here one of four suspension swing arm and leaf spring frames and return wheel housings are now cemented in place to the superstructure side. Note the hole now in place of where the molded on shafts, for the return wheels were, on the return wheel housing.

Here you can see the gap between the bump stop and superstructure side as on the Ausf. G.

Well I have finished with the rest of the pictures I had so far on this build. Now it’s time for me to get back on the bench and do some more modeling on this vehicle. Thanks again for dropping by to take a look, it’s much appreciated.

~ Eddy

[Braille]

Ok, I have another short update. Sorry about the delay in updating but just haven’t been getting the time I would like to have to build, everyday life things no choice!

I replicated a flame cut edge to the top and back side ends of the superstructure sides with the use of a round edge #10 X-Acto© blade. The cuts where then softened using a thin coat of liquid cement.

On the real vehicle the add-on 15mm side plates affixed to the superstructure sides with rivets where flame cut sized together making it difficult to see the separate plates when viewing the armor plates from the ends. On earlier Ausf. E/F models these add-on armor plates where cut to size and then fitted making it easy to distinguish the separate armor plates when viewing from the ends but as the war pressed on newer measures to speed up and ease production schedules lead to such expedient practices.

Due to the molding process the openings on the radiator exhaust grill are small on the inside and large on the outside. This anomaly also has the added effect of making it hard to tell at what angle the separate blades are supposed to be facing. This picture shows the exhaust vent after I have reworked the openings showing that the angle of the blades have a slight tilt to the left from bottom to top of each blade. I’ve provided a drawing of what I did to make it easy for you to duplicate if you like. I needed to open up each opening to allow the placement of a micro hand file by using the Flex-I-File frame and sanding tapes first.

I created an enclosure to keep the light from showing through from the underside of the grill. .020” (0.5mm) thick black styrene sheet was used to form and enclose the open underside of the radiator exhaust grill. I didn’t document the process here but any design you come up with would work. I also used scrap pieces of styrene strip to close off the holes that straddle the grill used for attaching the exhaust muffler.

Panda Model offers the modeler the option of building a particle interior to the front superstructure armor plate and turret interior. I am not going to bother with the interior parts except where they show from the outside such as the armor glass and associated parts to affix them in place. Here the driver’s armored glass is set in its location with several of the parts to help affix it in its place. The intergraded glass and frame are however, removable for painting.

After checking through the line drawings in my reference books I noticed that I had still to add several rivets located just around where the front idler wheel and boogie suspension reside. I have been removing rivets from the inside of the superstructure hull to use them where they are missing on the outside as they are exactly the same size.

I scribed a panel line alone the rear edge of the superstructure roof to depict the 15mm rear panel that is fixed in place on the real vehicle.

Finally I fixed the one piece superstructure roof and rear engine compartment top to the superstructure front, rear and sides using Tamiya tape overnight to let the liquid cement cure.

Thank you for dropping by and having a look, it’s much appreciated, see you soon!
~ Eddy

[kornbeef]

Good to see you posting more. Really informative stuff too. Thanks for showing us.

Keith

[Armor_Buff]

Fascinating build! Thank you for sharing! Looking forward to future updates.

[Braille]

Keith and Wade,

Thanks for the comments and for stopping by. I’m glad to see that both of you are enjoying this blog I know I am. I will try to keep posting as I get time so stay tuned for more. Much appreciated!

~ Eddy

[Braille]

I hope that all of you visiting are having an enjoyable, safe and wonderful Christmas holiday weekend.

The kit box features list or the instructions do not indicate that the suspension is workable. But because all of the suspension parts come as separate pieces, with careful attention to assembling these components, the suspension can be made to work as on the real vehicle.

Here I have identified several of the parts that are mislabeled on the instruction sheet.

The fit of parts G2 and G3 over the shafts of part G13 was much too tight and wouldn’t allow for any movement. So I resolved this issue by rolling a piece of sandpaper to sand open the inside of the swing arm housings. I supported the sandpaper by using a pencil. The pencil does not fit into the housing but keeps the sandpaper from collapsing and holding shape during the sanding process. By numbering each of the parts I could easily fit each part to the same location again.

Here you can see an example of the numbering. I created a shallow concave opening, as seen on some of my reference pictures, on the backside of the swing arm housing. I stepped drilled and used a small grinding stone to even out the drilling and then smoothed this out by applying liquid cement. The sizes I used for this were a .095" (2.43mm) and .115" (2.92mm) diameter drills.

I needed to reduce the height of each of the swing arm housings so that the housings would sit just slightly below the height of the shafts on the swing arm chassis supports. The second picture shows the shaft sitting just proud of the swing arm housing after reducing the height by using sandpaper affixed to a flat surface.

On parts G4, swing arm housing plates, the locating bosses, where much too large in diameter, to fit into the openings of the swing arm chassis support shafts. To remedy this problem I used a .202” (5.13mm) diameter drill. I warped a small piece of tape to the end of the drill just enough to accommodate for the depth of the locating bosses to fit them onto the shafts. With the swing arm housings in place over the shafts of the swing arm chassis supports and once the swing arm plates are cemented in place the swing arm housings should move freely without binding against the swing arm housing plates.

The semi-elliptical leaf spring sets that the Panda kit provides is almost correct for the Ausf. E/F models. However, there should be 15 leaf springs in place of the 13 leaf springs the kit provides. Originally there were 14 leaf springs and 15 for the late Ausf. E-G models. Also on the G models the oval aperture on the face of the leaf spring wrap around cap had a solid covering added over this opening. The extra leaf spring and solid plate covering were added to both help with the added weight of the extra vehicle armor and brakeage of the leaf spring caps.

I added two new leaf springs using .015” thick (0.4mm) X .156” (4.0mm) styrene strips cut just a tad longer than the proceeding kit leaf springs. .015” thick (0.4mm) X .188” (4.77mm) X .348” (8.83mm) styrene strips were cut to simulate the leaf spring cap plates. A .020” thick (.508mm) X .081” (2.057mm) diameter styrene strip was used to simulate the rivet used to hold the leaf springs in place on the cap. I dapped on Mr. Dissolved Putty with a toothpick around the cap plate sides to simulate the circular like appearance of the welds.

And finally a picture of the completed assembled, installed and workable suspension.

Thank you for dropping by to have a look, it’s much appreciated. See you next time.

~ Eddy