Hi gang, anyone know how/where to buy Chino Model stuff here in the UK? Or even from a website that ships to the UK? I’ve scoured the web and came up empty…
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They have an e-bay shop, I understand they should ship to UK:
They have a webshop on a site that seems to accept international shipping, and despite the shop is in Japanese, I think the portal can be used in English:
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There’s a lot of stuff on that site to be sure, some very useful; may I as what’s caught your eye Tom?
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You cannot buy products from Booth directly from outside of Japan. In order to purchase from Booth and other similar Japanese sites like JDirectItems you need to use a proxy service. I use both Buyee and Japan Rabbit, Buyee has cheaper fees, but there are some things they can’t purchase, so then I use Japan Rabbit. Both will buy product, let you store it for 30 days (so you can get enough stuff to make it worth shipping overseas) and ship it to you. You pay a service fee for each item, shipping from supplier to the proxy supplier and then shipping to you.
There are lots of fantastic items on these sites that you will never see outside of Japan, many being produced by hobbyists that are simply doing stuff for themselves and selling them. And Chino stuff is much cheaper direct from them. I’ve purchases dozens of items from multiple producers in the last few years and everything has been consistently well done. The sites are difficult to search though and when items are out of stock, it can take months for them to come back in; I waited 8 months for a set of three different styles of stowage racks for the JGSDF Type 74 to come back into stock.
Some of my many purchases:
Conversion for Fine Molds HMV to version with Chu-MPM Medium Range A/T system
Update set for Aoshima Type 73 JGSDF trucks
New, very thin shields for Tamiya 5cm Pak 38
Early Kubelwagen conversion - which no one has done that I know of.
Full kit of Type 5 prototype
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Those shields on the Pak 38 would be more than worth the effort!
I was looking at the A30 Challenger tracks, but it looks like £50 with shipping - ouch!
I seem to recall Tom that SKP made some, and had the virtue purportedly, of being click-together (always a boon in my book), but have you thought of using PzKw IV tracks with solid guide horns as a solution? Even a set of Friuls are going to be cheaper than Chino’s.
I’ve got the SKP tracks, but they are fairly weak on the clicking! They need a new sprocket, so I did one in CAD based on the Comet one - but anyone else using them would be stuck as the kit sprocket is for the 14" track. I did look at Pz4 tracks but discarded the idea. I was just hoping the Chino tracks would be more robust, but looks like I’ll just use the SKP ones and add superglue once they are in position to secure them…
A useful heads up for me re Chino Model stuff.
This one is of much interest for my newish Tamiya PAK 38 …
Unfortunately, finding this is proving challenging!
Here’s a direct link. Unfortunately, it is out-of-stock, and as I noted, it can take months for producers to make them available again. I’ve been waiting over 6 months for other items from this producer to be available: I purchased the Pak 38 set in October last year. Only option is to keep checking back regularly and order it as soon as it is in stock again.
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