Jagdpanzering 9

Ninth session

Looking at the instructions it was pretty clear that the building process was nearing completion. Thanks to my time situation this would still consume a session or two, depending on how I'd approach the case of the road wheels and the tracks.

7.5 cm Panzerjägerkanone 39

A casemate alone wasn't too useful, you had to have a barrel to conduct business. I got so excited building the 75mm cannon that I forgot to take any in progress photos. That hinge setup was annoyingly painted also on all connecting surfaces, so before anything I had to scratch off an amount of paint, to ensure the glue taking hold.

The barrel sat nicely insided its armoured friends, and the Saukopf behaved well, too. The barrel still needed some work, it had some irregularities around the seamlines.

Warping

Now I started gluing together the upperhull and the Panzerwanne. This first photo showed how warped the halves were, when I pressed the hull together in the rear end. There was a clear gap of many millimeters in the front. Had I failed this miserably or had time played its tricks on me and the plastic?

By carefully poking and pressing I found out that the halves fit together well, so it apparently wasn't a construction error on my part. I decided that this would be fixed with patience. So I glued the hull halves together in the rear, and let the glue flash.

After a while I quickly tested my approach by pressing the front into place, the glue in the rear held as expected. I then glued the next ~quarter of the way and let that flash. Again a trial and I glued the third quarter. This way I got the frame installed nicely and straight in four steps.

The fit of all of the front edges wasn't perfect as shown in the next photo, I would have to fill them a bit later on. At this point I finally went through my attempts at the flame cut effect with liquid cement, which softened the grooves.

Random details

The flimsy feeling bit in the rear end of the tank was to hold a length of track, so I assembled a handful of links and after the glue had cured enough I dropped it into the holder. In my usual caution and paranoia I had been a bit too cautious, and was short a link. I added one more track link and it was good. At this point I refrained from gluing the track part into place, as I wasn't quite sure of my painting order yet.

The exhaust barrel

This was a surprisingly productive session, I even had time to start with the exhaust pipe. The (relatively) massive thing consisted of only a couple of pieces, I just didn't have enough time to also glue it in place.