Apologies in advance if you have already seen some of the WIP images that I will have been posting on the book of faces or elsewhere as this is a recap of a 12 year long build that is almost at a journey’s end. I opened the lid on this in 2013 after reading a story about an unusual, and as it turned out, unique late war built German prime mover. Built on a Sd.Kfz. 8 DB10 chassis, this was a rare, armoured variant that was pulled from the Pilica River in Poland in 1999. It had sunk in the river on January 18, 1945, during the German forces’ withdrawal. The vehicle was later restored to a running condition in 2003 and is now on display in a museum.
Trumpeter’s 2012 kit is based on this restored vehicle and on the whole, is a fairly simple kit to build. From an accuracy perspective there are a few inconsistencies even with this one-of-a-kind restoration, and they have opted to include just a late set of regular DB10 front wheels and not the large rimmed, solid tyred type that were present upon recovery
I managed to get 90% of the kit built, with the chassis, running gear and interior fully painted before a house move in 2015 shelved it. It remained unloved in its box until May 2024 when it saw daylight again after getting a new photobooth.
I was just grabbing stuff to hand to experiment with it and the chassis ended up getting photographed. After inspecting the pics, I liked what I saw. It needed updating in places, but I figured it was presentable enough to resurrect it. I’m pretty sure it’s not the norm to return to projects abandoned so long for obvious reasons, but I liked the fact it not only looked cool ,but was unique and I rarely see this kit built.
It had been sat safely in a storage box so it was in great condition, but upon inspection there were some areas of my original build that could still be improved on. Amongst the re-workings and improvements to the running gear, two sprockets were included in the kit and typically I had not used the ones fitted to the restored vehicle. Refitting the correct ones was a challenge but it was a worthwhile improvement.
I worked on this in between other painting projects, so progress was slow but by May this year the new sprockets were fitted, and I was onto the bodywork. A pretty big visual anomaly with the kit parts is the lack of any real upper armour overlap. Unfortunately, the kit parts pretty much butted up to each other. Not wanting to disturb the work on the interior I opted to resolved this by shaving off a small amount of material from the lower angled plate.
I was on a roll (for me😊) and was now ready to add the upper and lower hull together. In early July the interior was 99% complete, and the two bodywork mouldings were fixed permanently. It was now finally ready to receive all the exterior fixings. Remarkably these were all still present so were added along with some better represented 3D items. I also re-scribed panel lines, added some welding, made copper handles, and replaced the kit jerry cans with Bronco items.
So, the time was finally coming to prep for paint. 
So, with reference pics to hand the green pattern was added first. This comprised a mix of Tamiya LP31 and LP26. This was followed by the red brown which was a mix of LP57 and Mr Hobby chocolate brown with drop of XF64.
