Built the Tamiya 1/35 Panther Ausf. G (No.35176) straight out of the box — no paint, no modifications.
The 48 interleaved road wheels were the highlight of this build. Challenging to align but satisfying once they’re on. Also used Tamiya’s individual link track set and a Passion Models photo-etch set.
Paint and weathering build coming soon — stay tuned.
Any feedback welcome — this is my third German tank build.
Why stipple with glue if adding putty over it?
Good question! The cement stippling roughens the smooth plastic surface first — once it’s textured, the thinned putty picks up that unevenness and enhances it further. Just applying putty straight onto smooth plastic tends to look too uniform. Some people mix putty and cement together in one step, but I prefer doing them separately. Just the way I like to work!
I find your work to be excellent. However with Panther tanks, the rolled armor was very smooth, Looking at the first 3 pictures you can see just how smooth it is. The fourth picture is of a panther that they added a concrete like paste and applied a pattern to it as it was applied. This finish is called Zimmerit. A cast piece of armor has the rough texture you used. A Russian JS2 would have a texture like this because it has cast armor instead of welded plate.
Russian JS 2
Thank you for the detailed explanation — really appreciate the history lesson! For this build the surface will be sanded down before painting anyway, so it’ll be corrected. And the JS-2 is coming up soon, so the cast texture will definitely get proper use there!
Good photo references. I tend to agree with you. My main output is German stuff and I have never tried to roughen the surfaces as shown (unless applying Zimmerit, but that’s a totally different ball-game). Russian cast surfaces could be horrendous, as was their welding. IMHO Tamiya got the surface about right on this particular model. The paint scheme on the Bovingdon Panther (the weird yellow/brown/white scheme) is probably spurious, as this particular tank was actually built post-war under British supervision. Anyone intending to use the figures supplied with the Tamiya Panther G are advised that they are clearly SS. Despite this the colour guide for the kit is for a Heer unit, so I painted mine as “White 121” from 9SS Panzer Regiment in the Ardennes.
