Hummel build

A SPA factory

This model kit had lots of fun to tinker around with, and being a Panzer-based being, it had a mindnumbing amount of road wheels. I couldn't blame anyone else for liking German tanks, I just had to find a way to get through the most boring part of the build without feeling the need to cut corners. Luckily I had a set of aftermarket tracks waiting so I could ignore the kit's own tracks.

Lower hull

Simply following orders, I started building the Hummel by cleaning up the Panzerwanne. The side walls had a few excess nubs that had to be sliced off. Next to the idler wheel a shallow < -shaped piece was installed to bump the track pins back in place. I also got to start with some of the most repetitive things, the octet of two-piece return rollers. The rubber-rimmed road wheels I then decided to leave for later, much later, to wait for the time when I couldn't postpone them anymore.

On the rear hull plate I installed a step for the personell, a towing hook setup, the convoy light and two pretty flimsy racks for the spare road wheels. Not too surprisingly the other flimsy bit suffered damage when I was cutting it off from the sprue.

Then I was about to get seriously confused with the bogies but luckily I noticed before applying glue (and then swearing heartily) that both of the sprues, with 4 bogies each, had two for the right and two for the left side of the hull. The L/R bits were only recognizeable by the connector pin sizes. Most likely the biggest issue I could've caused with some rushing would've been a bit of a glue mess, but I avoided that by keeping my weary eyes open for once.

Two exhaust pipes were installed on both sides of the rear hull, with a protective bit added. I started thinking already how to paint these now. Maybe I'd do it like the last time and leave the wheels and tracks all out until the basic painting was handled.

 

The state of the fighting compartment

My thinking was cut short as I simply continued building the vehicle. The tracks with their accompanying pieces were going to be installed to an otherwise ready Selbstfahrlafette. Now the artillery crew's workspace started finding its shape in calm and piece by piece.

No issues with the armoured bit covering the driver's and radio operator's spaces. More boxes got added onto the battle deck.

The three walls didn't settle in perfectly and without any grumbling, thanks to me installing one earlier piece a fraction of a millimeter off. Not a huge problem, anyway.

A few bits were purposelly left uninstalled. Those shovels living on the outside of the walls would get added painted whenever I was done with them, and the self-defence MG from the inner hanger was something I also wanted to paint separately.

The howitzer and its mechanisms

With that the tank part was just about done, so I could now proceed to build the howitzer itself. It had some actual moving pieces! I really didn't expect them to remain movable throughout the project but I had to give it a shot.

Playing with the elevation of the gun was lots of fun, the front's flimsy bit felt a bit weak. More hardware was going to be glued on them later so maybe they would be made sturdier that way.

Those cylinders worked fantastically when I had forced myself to glue the inner and outer cylinders separately - and to let them cure firts. Their mechanical insert-turn-press connection was convenient.

Gluing the supports for the gun shield was then the first properly annoying step, thanks to the fancy 3d instructions that didn't make it any easier for me to see which way what was pointing at and where it belonged later on. The four supports I glued in were the results of the classic trial-error process.

I dry-fitted the gun onto the hull every so often, mostly because it stayed put nicely and didn't spin around the box when I moved my operation from here to there twice a day.

During the build process the only step that I decided I knew better - or the one I thought I could optimize - was the front armour's gluing order. The instructions said that the gun was to be installed first, and then the front plate needed to be glued in. I wanted to paint the gun and especially its details outside the hull, just like I wanted to paint the insides of the fighting compartment without the gun being on the way. With a bit of testing I decided that I could still install the gun after the fourth wall was solidly in place, so alea jacta est, I proceeded on my chosen path.

At some point in gluing the gun's shield something had gotten stuck and the gun's barrel was locked into a horizontal position and was not budging. Most likely the culprit was the pair of cylinders because nothing else could lock it that strongly. Not that this was an issue, it gave me an excuse to glue the aiming device solidly in place, the screws didn't give the solidity I was hoping for.

Steel texture

Now that I actually remembered, I tried the steel surface texuring a second time, but this time I didn't do the second step of stippling glue-diluted putty. As my first part I chose the gun shield's right half. I painted it with glue (I had just ran out of AK I's extra thin but thankfully Hobby Point sold me some Mr Cement S that smelled really weird). The glue-softened plastic got stabbed with a short-bristled and mistreated old paintbrush. In the end, when the glue had flashed, I sanded off the biggest edges with a sanding sponge (superfine, 800 grit said the package).

 

One by one I iterated through the list of practically all vertical surfaces that I could poke conveniently. I got just about all of them done in the first evening, then on the next day I thought I could go overboard and apply the method on the sides of the Panzerwanne as well. Had I gotten even more excited, I could've done the inside armour walls of the gun area, but I didn't want to start poking an already assembled area. That would've only led to disappointments.

Pätkä kerrallaan, pientä vaihtelua muuten niin sileisiin ja tasaisiin panssaripintoihin.

 

At this point I had to loop the tow cable into its hooks on the upper glacis plate, and that was surprisingly more challenging than I expected. I left the gun's travel locks off still, but I assumed I would be installing them before the painting stage. Maybe they'd be easier to set in place before I started installing the tracks.

 

Now I glued the rear doors in place, as soon as they were treated with the steel texturing on both sides. I half-assembled one of the crew members by gluing the torso onto the legs, and the head with its field cap, but I left the arms off yet. I also decided that I wasn't going to start working on the accessories like shells, cartridges, extra boxes and planks.

In this photo the guy was standing on his sprue bits, so the plastic Übermensch wasn't quite that tall in nature. The gun was also way too far back, lying in the middle of the floor instead of its own attachment point.

Tracks

With the official build pretty much done I did the Panzerwerk tracks at their own pace. They just happened to work in a way that nothing else could be done in parallel, it was just dedicated time that was needed. I used the instruction sheet's 1:1 scale step as a guide to avoid nonsense in measures. Working in my flow mode they took something like two hours per side, I wasn't rushing but I also didn't get bored.

Of course I assembled a length of track armour from the remaining track links and cat whiskers. If there weren't enough of them in this box, I had some remaining from the earlier two sets.

 

Gun's travel lock

This felt like a good moment to snap the travel lock's two booms in place so everything except the wheels was ready for painting. All the separate bits could be easily primed. 

 

Now there were eleven building sessions done. In addition to the wheelsets we were missing the MG, engineering tools, the jack, and the crew with their accessories. Not much.

Project IV/26

A heavy self-propelled howitzer, attempt two

I've been thinking about the incomplete Hummel project every once in a while and now I got a new one to work on. In case I didn't write it down earlier, when I was paying for the StuG III in Tieto-Nikkari I commented that "this called me the most, but had you had a Hummel I'd grabbed it immediately". The guy had his sales pants on, so he wrote down an order from any manufacturer in 1:35, and promised to call when they had it in the store. Two weeks later I got an SMS and I half-ran from work to fetch it, on just about the last summery day of 2025. At that point I hadn't even opened the box of the StuG. This model was also the reason I ordered a double set of the Panzer III/IV tracks.

 

Memories from the early two thousands

I accidentally found a few photos of the source for all this, the Dragon's Hummel that I had built and painted grey. The winter-geared crew was also assembled but completely unpainted. What cut my project in this stage back in the day? I had been very excited about it, of course, so it was very difficult to come up with an explanation or a reason. This was also my stage of painting all my German stuff grey, most likely because of the way they were depicted in Steel Panthers.

The timeline for these photos I could poke at by the Leman Russ in the background gifted by a friend, and the speaker connected to my father's Beomaster 6000, and the last photo's CRT display. Earliest it could be was 2003, and latest 2007 but I was unable to guess any better myself. Then I realized that the zip file was named based on the photo metadata and that told me they were taken in 2005, handily in the middle of my guesstimate.

A new bumblebee 

When done, I could somehow compare this one to the old memories, even with a very different crew and a completely different approach to painting. The variant was also different, the Dragon's had spare roadwheels on the front armour plates while this Tamiya one had them in the back hull. Tiny differences.

Paper stuff

First of all the box revealed a background information sheet with basic stuff about the Hummel in a few languages. There were two suggestions for a paitnjob, both from an unknown or unspecified unit. One of them was plain Dunkelgelb, the other in three-tone camo. I especially appreciated the third photo's "this is what we're talking about" section for those who didn't live and breath these devices.

Not many decals in a way, in addition to the Balkenkreuze and the unit number there was the black info sheet for the gun aimer. The rest belonged to the shells, I imagined, but didn't doublecheck from the instructions in advance.

In general the instructions were Tamiya-clear and I was very happy to see the 1:1 track schema in the second photo. I could use that when building the Panzerwerk tracks.

Bits and pieces

Hummel's Panzerwanne was a big single entity so that kept me safe from a funky-angled side walls. Painting the crew made me a bit worried but maybe I could survive especially if I didn't get more bright ideas of giving them camo patterns...

This sprue had a healthy set of shells and cartridges. The tracks looked acceptable but they'd go to the bits boxes for some unspecified future moment demanding greeblies of that type.

All the running gear in their sprues were doubled, and I was foreseeing half an eternity going to the painting and fixing the painting on the road wheels, idlers and friends. Maybe this time I should at least prime them in the sprues before getting much further, just to recude swearing.

 

Most of the remaining vehicle was then spread to the last two sprues. The cannon alone at most of one, then the deck and armour plates took the other. Pretty clear to me, as the manufacturer led me to expect. I doubted I had to spend insane amounts of time searching for the individual pieces all around the spruesets.

 

Finally we had a plastic bag with random things, like the tiny screwdriver, a bit of thread to play the part of a tow cable, some sets of poly caps and whanot. Hopefully I wasn't going to drop any on the floor for the cats to play with.

 

This'd be a lot of fun as long as I didn't make a fool of myself with the assembly/paint order choices.

Finished: Project III/26

The first Merc Lance

Finally I had the first Lance of the ISD's Devastators mercenary company painted and ready. The silly jokes for all the namings was still in progress, just like the composition of the other Lances. I really wanted to fill one Lance with LRM boats or dinghies at least. If I couldn't get four legged LRM platforms, one Arrow IV 'Mech would be also very fitting. The important thing was to get an indirect fire group into my gang.

This Lance was a heavy hitter that intended to make the enemies' ears ring with the sounds of their armor plates crumbling under the relentless barrages. You could almost hear the staccato thud of the Marauder's AC/10 slamming into a Davion 'Mech, heat sinks rupturing. 

I left the MechWarrior names unpondered because I didn't have delusions of being an author, or even good for fanfics. Should the inspiration strike me for more than the boss' name, I'd share them and probably update here as well. For any potential later tweaks I predicted redoing the canopies, for the purpleish things didn't work at all like I hoped. I'll try something else with the upcoming two Lances and then retrofit these.

Devastator DVS-2

As the boss and owner of the merc unit was captain firstName lastName, who roamed the battlefields in the cockpit of his DVS-2 while not drowning in paperwork. The captain's 'Mech's left shoulder had an american-style II as his rank marking. Of course the number 1 painted on the left shin also was some sort of a hint when you had to find your ride from the ground.

Both Devastators were of the same variant: a Gauss Rifle in each Arm, a PPC in each side torso, and with two Medium Laser in the Torsos and one in Head, and a fourth one in the back facing backstabbers. Just painting the Head and back -mounted ERLas red to turn them into Small Lasers this could've been called a DVS-11, but I tried to stick to the Classic timeline whenever the pieces allowed. Also, if blue was good in general, and the PPCs were a bit differently jeweled, this could've also been a DVS-1D with AC/10s in arms and Large Lasers in the side torsos.

Devastator DVS-2

The shop's second in command, a lieutenant firstName lastName also operated a DVS-2. This MechWarrior recognized their 'Mech, if not by the different camo, from the left shoulder's I rank bar and the left leg's number 2.

 

Marauder MAD-3D

On the much better-looking half of Thunder Lance was sergeant firstName lastName in their Marauder MAD-3D, its top hull had a <<< marking and the left leg carried a number 3 for recognition. MAD 3D carried the typical PPCs paired with a Medium Laser in both arms, and its dorsal gun was a Large Laser that removed the 3R model's problem with being reliant on ammo.

 

Marauder MAD-3R

The optional dorsal gun was, of course, the aforementioned AC/5 with its ammo load. 

KUVA 

Marauder MAD-5R

The other Marauder, decorated with a number 4, was driven by a lance corporal firstName lastName, their ego was also stroked with their << rank painted on the hull. This Marauder was recognizeable as the 5R variant by its different kind of a dorsal gun, a RAC-5 that was somewhat less ridiculous than the awful RAC-2. In its arms it had the more advanced ER PPCs but still paired with MLas rayguns. To the outside you couldn't tell it was also loaded with a Guardian ECM, a C3S system, and some additional armour.

Rear shots

 To accompany the more frontal and front-side shots I added here a few side-rear views to show the caution stripes better, and the Devastator back-facing death rays.

Now I didn't spot any more masking tape pieces on the minis. Took many enough rounds, that!