Intrigue of Cats, litter of Panthers

[Armor_Buff]

Speaking of feelings, here a real…

I’ve mentioned many issues and a multitude of disappointments with Dragon products over the years. I mean “Black Label” is practically Dragon-Speak for "premium priced box of disappointment "

However, today all my ill-will towards Dragon for that suck-taclular #6164, 2002 “release” aka Dragon Dropping…is Officially Forgiven.

I finally opened Dragon’s new 2 n1 Panther G kit w/zimmerit option.

Spare upper, lower hulls, spare turret!

There’s even a spare rear engine deck!!!

Saw that and shouted like this fellow…lol

That will teach me to order new kits and not look in the box when they arrive! OMG that extra engine deck part would have save me weeks of work bench time…got to laugh at the irony.

Can’t help but wonder how much fun a unholy fusion of random parts cobbled into a Tami-gon or Draga-miya Panther would be to build.

^^^ tongue & cheek comments aside, the Dragon 2n1 Panther G kit is one of the nicest looking kits in the box I’ve ever seen. Well worth checking out if you’re into 1/35 Panther’s.

[Armor_Buff]

Reworked exhaust pipes. Chopped of the side vent pipes as early Panther D’s didn’t have that feature. The kit plastic ones were badly deformed. Aluminum tubing doped with Molak Stucco Putty replaced the kit pipes.

[Armor_Buff]

Installed exhausts, with hangers and anti-crimp bolts. Special thank to @SSGToms Matt, for pointing out these were anti-crimps and not poppet valves as I had made a faulty assumption based on a couple of barely in focus old pictures.

Tool Time, Heavy Hobby Style

I’ve vowed no Italeri Panther parts will be used in the Italeri Panther build if I have a replacement available. Not using Italeri Panther parts on the Italeri Panther build has been medically proven to reduce blood pressure, cholesterol and improve sex appeal.

What previously took two weeks building old school now takes minutes.

The parts do still need a little bit of touch up. I’ve also got to tweak the Zimmerit because your know the Heavy-Hobby parts are pretty accurate and this an Italeri Panther…that isn’t.

Something just feels so right about slapping state of the art 3D printed parts on this old Italeri Panther / pig

[SableLiger]

What’s your verdict on the Heavy Hobby stuff? It looks amazing.

[Armor_Buff]

That’s complicated

The parts are very nice and 100% percent happy with the looks but they are so incredibly fragile and very very brittle.

[SableLiger]

That’s what i was afraid of. because i want to build a Marine Sherman for the “Shermania 2024” event and i have the Asuka “Caesar” Sherman, but i will need the T-54E1 tracks with the “Duckbills” and the Wading kit and at least on that, Heavy Hobby is the only game in town.

[RandyT]

Wade I have the same kit. I was counting on being able to make 2 Panthers from all the extra parts from the kit plus 8 or 9 other Dragoon Panthers in my stash. In all I have 17 Panthers to build {Tamiya, Meng & Takom) not including the JagdPanthers . How do you post pictures to this forum. I want yo show a few photos of my hobby area, and wall of unbuilt models. VBG.

have fun building Folks!

[Armor_Buff]

Randy, that sounds like a fantastic Panther inventory! I’d love to see your hobby area.

Pictures are pretty straightforward to post. Everything I do on the forum is by cell phonw but the same basic outline should applu to PC/Mac/Chrome book etc.

When we hit reply there’s a picture icon on or near the reply box. It’s circled with blue in the lower right hand corner in the picture below. I’m sure there’s a similar icon on PC/Iphone etc.

Click the picture icon and you can navigate to your pictures. It’s possible to go to ablums or browse etc. The three dots circled in yellow on the right allow browsing to wherever on your device. The red circled albums allows access to the typical main picture storage areas like screen shots, downloads & camara pictures. Typically the most recent pictures appear directly below. One can usually schroll to the most recent 40 or so pictures. Usually up to five pictures can be uploaded at one time. First upload maybe limited to one or two pictures, I can’t recall.

Select the picture(s) you want to upload and click add or attach as show below.

It will like 5 to 30 seconds to upload to the reply/post and look like this:

Click reply and the reply and picture will upload to the thread like shown below.

[Armor_Buff]

Reynier, I say go for it.

The only thing I really obliterated were the L hooks for the rear track links which were very thin. Easy to replace with wire or styrene rod,

I broke the two items:

1. shovel handle snipping the trees away but that was an easy super glue back together

2. pry bar by snipping too close. It shatter where I snipped. Had to patch the middle of the bar with part of a tree and super glue, then file back to shape.

With today’s little bit of experience, I’ imagine I’ll probably only break one item next time around. Razor saw might have been a better choice than DSPIAE nippers but being on the road all I had were the DSPIAE nippers & Xuron nippers (The Sledgehammer).

The Xuron’s were great for removing the 3D printed box around the parts but no suitable to nip around the parts etc.

HTH

FWIW - the Heavy Hobby parts easily cut ~20 hours off the build time for this project for me. That’s basically a week of build time for me!

But it “feels” like a “cheat” because it was so incredibly easy compared to going old school on the tools. It looks better than my old school too. However, there some missing "build/crafting satisfaction that goes with taking the “cheat” and easy way out on this build.

In hindsight, this morning I’m wishing I hadn’t used the Heavy-Hobby parts and had dug up an extra set of Tamiya Panther G tools and slapped those on the Italeri Panther old school style. I’m thinking I’ve compromised the enjoyment of this idiotic build to some degree…or maybe that’s the beer talking.

Cheers

[Armor_Buff]

So far this thread has focused on older Panther kits like Dragon’s Panther D from 2002, Tamiya’s Panther G from 1994 & Italeri’s Panther A from 1993.

Hope to do several of the new Panther kits (Takom, Meng, RFM & ICM) and some where along the way work in the 1967 1/35 God Father of AFV models:

Purchased today

[Arch-Stanton]

I liked the old Tamiya kits with the 70s porn movie title font like this.

Of course this is the vaunted motorized version…

[TopSmith]

You gotta build it in the running condition.

[SableLiger]

i built one of those old kits back in the day to practice some of my weathering skills, decided to just leave as-is. Not a horrible kit, but as with any of the vintage Tamiya models, they’re soft on details and have that huge void in the sponsons area.

[Armor_Buff]

Looks sweet!

Many good memories of the old Tamiya Panther A kit. After college, returning to model building with ships etc, I think this was my first AFV getting back into the model hobby. Purchased at Modeler’s Hobby Shop in Charlotte, North Carolina in 1988. It had sat on the shelf for at least three years. Couldn’t resist as it was the remote control Panther.

Killed more batteries playing with the cat and that silly Panther tank than I should admit.

The cat that started 1/35 scale still looks decent for a 1967 era kit in my opinion. On the Mark has a detailed write up in their PE instructions explaining diminson wise whats wrong with the kit and how to fix it. The turret would require a fair amount of surgery. OTM says 1/8 or ~3 mm should be removed from the length of the lower hull IIRC.

Considered how I want to approach the Tamiya old Panther A build.

1. Do Tamiya Panther G to F conversion first using Chesapeake Model Design Panther F turret. This will free up an entire Panther Turret assembly that’s far more accurate for the old Tamiya Panther A. This will also free a set of newer rubber road wheels for the old Tamiya kit.

2. Build a Meng Panther A or D or both to free up spare parts for the old Tamiya Panther.

3. Full On the Mark PE, new tracks, Heavy Hobby tools plus Zimmerit

I want my last old Tamiya Panther to be a kit bash.

[Armor_Buff]

Added headlights, one broken & one intact. My mounting is a cobbled up deal but the Heavy-Hobby parts are way better than anything else I have available.

Calling the hull, tracks & suspension completed other than adding spare track links and related. Intend to use RFM Panther track links for the spares.

The Chesapeake Model Design turret doesn’t disappoint. After ~27 years, I’m a bit concerned the resin is a little more brittle now than when it was new. I trimmed & sanded the turret a fair amout to ensure the cupola would “drop in” without requiring any “snap in” pressure. Given my track record shattering brittle plastic etc felt the extra work was the safer way.

All of the pistol ports could have been made removable. I felt one was enough.

Opposite & rear.

The Cavalier Zimmerit rear hatch needed a few tweaks due a pull out in the mold that caused a fat bulge on the inside face. Needed a little filing to remove and allow a flush fit.

Now comes the dilemma and why the update post took a while. Which mantlet & gun barrel to use?

Cavalier Zimmerit w/Jordi Rubio gun barrel.

CMD’s resin gun barrel vs Jordi Rubio

Chesapeake Model Design main gun & mantlet vs Cavalier Zimmerit & Jordi Rubio main gun.

Mocked up

My gut feel is the CMD parts are correct and look best overall. However, that turret is designed to work with the Italeri Panther kit and is slightly under scale. Combine with the turret, I leaned towards picking the Cavalier Zimmerit mantlet & Jordi Rubio main gun combination because they seem better matched to the turret.

Adding Zimmerit to the CMD mantlet isn’t a factor. Also saving those fin CMD parts for the old 1967 Tamiya Panther project crossed my mind.

Open to listening to thoughts…

[SSGToms]

I’d say use the Cavalier/Rubio parts on this one.

[Armor_Buff]

Rare WW2 Panther Ausf.D footage - Panzerkampfwagen V.

Panzer Insights has a very sweet ~3 minute video, with a few key Panther D details, that’s well worth a look.

The commander’s hatch stop detail.

Early Panther D radio & driver hatch center mounted handles.

Nasty looking winter white wash camo.

And of course wrecks, note pistol port plug popped out.

Plus more, pictures for discussion only etc.

---

Thank you, Matt!

[Armor_Buff]

Cavalier Zimmerit & Jordi Rubio

Mock Up, been waiting for this for a long time…

[Armor_Buff]

Just for fun, my review of the 1993 1/35 Italeri’s Panther kit. This is of course is just my subjective opinion, others may, will and do have other opinions, I fully respect that.

There’s a TL, DR Readers Digest version of the review at the bottom of the post.

Spoiler Alert

An X-Panzer Police Strikes Back

(j/k)

1/35 Italeri Panther A
0 Price ~$53 (Spruebrothers.com)

It’s not a fluke on the price.

4 Instructions - they are clear & concise best part of the kit

0 Molding Quality - flash, sinkmarks, multiple worthless deformed parts, soft details

3 Plastic Quality - decent enough

3 Parts Clean Up - the useable parts clean up well enough without excessive hassle

1 Ease of build - out box 3, poor upper lower hull fit, stock turret sits too high and fixing requires tweaking. Fixing multitude of issues complicates the build.

1 Accuracy - Has multitude dimensional errors in hull & turret, turret sits wrong stock, many details are wrong, rear engine deck has errors. For many folks, none of that will matter.

0 Fit - upper & lower hull and rear plate didn’t align properly without significant effort to fix with both examples I’ve built. Turret doesn’t fit correctly stock. Can’t think of a worse alignment of key hull parts out of the 220 + AFV kits I’ve built.

0 Doesn’t Require Aftermarket - every part needs help by today’s standards. They needed help 30 years ago as well. Over 80% of this Italeri build is replacement parts or reworked parts.

0 Details built Out of the Box - pathetic unless one likes sinkmarks

12 points out of 50 possible

Not Recommended, far too many kits with better everything out of the box.

Italeri’s pile of bat guano from over 30 years ago typically retails for more than a new tool Meng Panther A.

Uses? A few…

Being given as a Christmas present to someone you don’t like, donated as raffle prize filler or built as a demonstration of your sado masochism tendencies.

Readers Digest version - I despise Italeri’s nearly worthless Panther kit.

YMMV

[RandyT]

Wade tell us how you really feel about the kit! LOL.