Tamed Panther: “Cuckoo”

[Jakko]

Yesterday, I completed the wheels by painting the tyres in a rubber colour with my normal method, though only the running surfaces, not the sides. I first painted them dark grey, then added a black wash (thinned Indian ink, in this case) and drybrushed them with another shade of dark grey. It’s kind of hard to see, but they’re subtly different in colour than the mud I then glued them on:

Having done that, I had the impression that I had installed the suspension arms too low, because the tank appears to be riding high to my eyes, but when I held it against 1:35 scale drawings in Panzerkampfwagen Panther by Bruce Culver and Uwe Feist, they proved to be in the right position after all.

I’ve also been busy drawing the markings in Illustrator so that I could make them into stencils. Here the star on the left side of the turret:

You could spray it like this, but on this surface especially, that doesn’t seem like a good plan to me: because of the curve in the armour plate, the stencil fits poorly while the Zimmerit doesn’t give a smooth surface underneath — you’d get a lot of overspray. This is why I instead used a brush. White paint on a short-haired, broad brush (a drybrush-brush of about 6 mm diameter) and then dab paint on through the stencil:

Then just remove the stencil, and:

After that, all I had to do was use a fine brush to fill the gaps and repair minor defects, as well as increase the coverage a bit:

I then did the other side and the roof:

For the star on the roof, I first broke off the lifting eye at the left front, because it was very much in the way of the stencil. After painting on the star, I glued it back and painted it white (except the outboard bit, as can be seen in the photo of the real tank). That there are still brush marks showing is not a problem, chances are they were on the real thing, too.

[Jakko]

After some industrious painting in my attic hobby room:

… I finished the markings:

I had also made stencils for the name and the diamond on the rear of the turret, but ended up painting them by hand instead. The name is too small to cut out (at least with a hobby knife, though maybe a cutting plotter can do it) and if I had wanted to use a stencil for the diamond, I should have kept the rear hatch unglued.

For the arm-of-service number on the back, I first painted a red background. It’s debatable whether Cuckoo had that, or only the number 153 in white, but my thoughts are that red would probably be hard to see in black-and-white film. To illustrate, here’s a mock-up of that with the last picture above, but now with the standard silver-tint filter applied in my iPad’s camera app:

[Seanmcandrews]

Clever holder for your punch set ! 3D printed ?

[Jakko]

Nope, made the old-fashioned way from a piece of large, square PVC tube plus lengths of small, round PVC tube

[BootsDMS]

All coming together now Jakko - very nice work. 'Brings it all alive.

[Jakko]

Thanks But I’m by now seriously thinking about buying another set of tracks …

[Jakko]

Tonight, I started assembling the QuickTracks … eh … tracks I got yesterday. The difference with the RFM ones I intended to use originally is quite noticeable …

This is one track of 86 links, which took me under half an hour to make.

Don’t get me wrong, the RFM tracks are pretty good too, but those damned pins started getting to me. You need to very carefully glue them in so that no glue seeps between the links, and I just couldn’t do that accurately enough without taking far more care than I wanted to. These by QuickTracks don’t need any work except to click them together. One of the links broke when I did that, but you get 200 while you need 86 times two, so no worries.

Everything considered, I should have bought these straight away. The 10 euros or so that they’re more expensive than the RFM tracks easily compensates for the cleanup needed on the RFM tracks, and even more so for the care that you have to take to glue in all those little pins.

[Jakko]

In addition to building and painting the tracks for this model, I also finished the stowage:

The coiled rope on the left mudguard, I painted as rope rather than as steel cable (after some discussion about this on the TWENOT forums the other week), while the metal parts of the tools are Humbrol Metal Cote Polished Steel over matt dark grey; the tow cable was painted much the same way. After it dried, I lightly buffed the Polished Steel with a coarse, sturdy paintbrush to bring out the sheen a little. The oil can on the right of the tank is American olive drab to give a slight difference of colour with the British OD of the rest of the tank, and the jack block is SCC 2 brown for the same reason.

The wash basin has a range of shades: I first painted it light grey from Vallejo and then added random splotches in increasingly lighter shades (by mixing ever more white into the paint) using an old, stiff, coarse brush, but in the end it looked like somebody had painted random splotches on it That was easy to correct, though, as I found when I tried something: I took a very pale grey from Tamiya — lighter than the base colour I had used — and painted it all over the basin without stirring it first, so it didn’t cover well. Before it dried, I wiped off most of it again, which drew the colours underneath together much more and I think it looks reasonably well like galvanised iron.

After a remark on Missing-Lynx a while ago that the chance is good that the jerrycans etc. were tied on with field telephone wire, I painted the copper wire I had used there, matt black instead of as string.

The spare track link will remain olive drab — I suspect it was already on the tank when it was captured, and simply got sprayed SCC 15 along with it.

[Jakko]

I painted the tracks in the same way as the lower hull and suspension: first I sprayed them with very dark brown, but now mixed from Tamiya Flat Black and Flat Earth, because Tamiya acrylic paint is much stronger than the Vallejo and Mig airbrush paint I used on the hull and wheels. Then I painted a wash of Army Painter Dark Tone (thinned about 1:1 with water this time round) over the whole tracks, and when dry, drybrushed them with first Humbrol Chocolate and then Dark Earth. And because the picture of Cuckoo on the forest road shows shining tracks, I finally drybrushed them with Humbrol Polished Steel, which I then buffed a little to give it some sheen.

And then they’re finally on:

That went well enough on the right, but less well on the left because a few links had broken as I assembled them, and of course, they fell apart as I installed the track. I glued the broken bits with superglue, and to the link next to them, and once that was dry, I could install the track.

This was the last major job. In addition, I added a little rust to the steel parts of the jack block, but you can’t see that all that well (because red-brown on yellowish brown) and glued empty 75 mm cases on the engine deck, as is visible in the film of the attack on Geijsteren castle. They’re from Academy, but these came as complete cartridges from which I sawed off the shell, then opened op the case with a drill and a hobby knife. I painted them silver, then added Tamiya Smoke followed by matt varnish, painted the inside matt black and drybrushed more matt black around the opening to represent powder burns.

Also an antenna from 0.3 mm spring steel on the turret (70 mm tall) and a figure for the commander. I don’t quite remember if I showed him before, but he’s from Bronco with a right hand and binoculars from my spares boxes, plus headphone cables from thin copper wire.

And then we’re finally done!

[SenorOuiOui]

Looks amazing jakko!

[Tank_1812]

Congrats, looks great.

[Dioramartin]

Bravo Jakko, excellent job – worth taking to a Show and a likely winner. But I’m torn, the markings would certainly have been fresh so on the one hand I’d agree they should look so white. On the other hand I’m an inveterate weatherer…just a touch of grime/dust on the markings maybe…?

[Jakko]

Thanks all

The markings look a lot whiter in the photos than IRL — because of the way my iPad messes with the colours in the photos, I had to lighten them a fair deal to prevent the tank being a dark blob, which made all of the white a lot lighter and results in the white stars looking almost like they’re starring in a toothpaste advert

[SSGToms]

Exemplary work all along Jakko and a superb finish. A beautiful build.

[Jakko]

Thank you for the compliment