Die Panzerwanne

Project thoughts

I hadn't actually decided, how to write my progress reports before I started writing this post here. The funny thing was that I had already started building a bit before I realized I should've started writing, too. Perhaps those experiences were useful for this decision.

Lately all my building sessions have been, shall we say, full of interruptions, so writing a post per every "not nearly 45 minutes" session provided any value for a reader. Then again, if I waited for some logical entity to be finished before I wrote about it, we may end up with various empty weeks, repeatedly.

An example from the very beginning: in one sitting I had the time to install a magnificent amount of three of these cross-supports (pieces G36, 35 and 30). Of course before that I had unpacked all the packing plastics and whatnot.

The support himmel of the tub

Right, here we go: to begin with I had to install a set of support slabs to the bottom of the tanks' tub. They felt pretty flimsy and therefore finding the correct installation positions felt a bit difficult, because the target slots and piece's overhands were also very shallow, providing little haptic feedback.

Inner sides

Some armoured slabs were waiting to be installed to the inner sides of the tub, these slabs had passthrough holes for the torsion bars, and installation slots for all the wall-mounted stuff there was going to be. In the first picture below you could see, as far as my blueprint reading skills (or lack thereof) were concerned, one of the 145-litre fuel tanks.

Installing the megaslab was almost easy, just a couple of those slightly misaligned ribs tried to protest. Here, if anywhere, it'd been supremely helpful to own a couple of [screw] clamps or something like them.

The following pictures told the same story, but from the viewpoint of the left inner wall. First those at-an-angle installed things that looked like shock-absorbers, but of which I wasn't quite certain.

It started looking pretty interesting already, looking from the nose. A huge amount of the stuff that was going to be installed here, and at this point they were a mystery that I hoped to slowly get solved while working.