Project II/24

Tamiya Panther Ausf. G early

This model was from the same 2017 "new home for some orphaned models" case from some modeler's estate. Unlike the Jagdpanzer IV, this had been already painted and a bit too much, compared to my building process. Building the model would take a bit more time than normally, as I had to clean up the contact surfaces somehow.

Hmh. An early version of the Ausführung G, this sounded so very familiar. I was pretty sure that I had built this exact same set years ago.

I checked what my documented history said and the motorized Panther (Project IV/14) was the one I thought of. So no, I hadn't done the same set, or at least the same SKU, as this had a couple of self-explanatory differences with the wheels and the tiny motor as well.

Previously owned content

There wasn't anything special to say about the Tamiya instructions, I rarely had anything to grumble about with them. The previous owner had made their own markings about this and that, mostly about paints, on some subassemblies.

 

But the instructions were not specially important, I thought I could've somehow easily assembled the model without looking at the instructions. Still, I was going to use them as usual to avoid wasting time.

I was much more concerned about the pre-painted bits, like I mentioned earlier. Yes, this was an approach I had tried before, the last time was in the long Königstiger project, and then I saw that it didn't really work for me.

Maybe there was some point to painting things in the sprues if you protected all the glueable surfaces from the paint. And if you didn't use a very thing glue that ruined paints if it flowed over.

 

The instructions said that the flexible tracks were simply glueable and paintable. We'd see about that later, but the painting process (or its one-person steering group) would be run by Project Assistant II. This model got to the top of the priority pile due to her humble requests 😅