Lower inner hull details

Spending a lot of time in the bottom

While working on the tank I often took a look at how the insides started looking when you looked at it from the front. As far as I could somehow the full interior, I'd be enjoying watching its progress.

After the inner walls I installed a couple of lenghtwise support bits, which I assumed to have something to do with supporting the combat compartment's floor and what got set on top of that, than anything to stiffen the hull itself.

Already the vagueness of some of the pics in the instructions had confused in some places. Just like I complained the last time, the attaching surfaces of some of the pieces were pretty tiny and low on tactile feedback while installing: you couldn't easily feel when it was where it was supposed to be.

In the left front corner, right next to the drive sprocket's clutch(?) and the cylinder installed at a 45° angle seemed to house a set of three periscope heads for the driver. If that was the case, it was an interesting detail.

This sad-looking box looked like it was also protecing one of the combat compartment's fuel tanks (170l). Originally spacious panzertub was getting fuller by the step.

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.

Project IV/21

Königstiger with internals

Now, folks. Before I started writing this intro, I checked my #Begin-tagged posts and got shocked. I've always considered myself primarily as a tank modeler, and especially one most concentrated on the PzKfw subcategory. So when did this happen: my last tank of any kind was started 3,5 years ago and my latest Panzer got started almost seven years ago?

I'd have to admit that this box has been waiting for its turn for over four years already. It felt like that as the previous PzKfw V (still running on that same battery, btw) and the mere idea of this PzKfw VII having its insides modeled too was so intimidating that the downward spiral has been speeding up for a good while.

Just paging through the instructions (with the photocopied corrections) and staring at the amount of pieces to be played with was... well, strange. The complexity of the insides, revealed by the painting instructions, didn't really help. Then again, this was exactly what I had been waiting for.

The pieces

There was a hefty amount of sprues. The convenient-looking thing that Takom had done with the sprues was the military-like open character in the tab in a corner. I expected that to be much more readable from the stack / pile than the usual embossed chars.

Decals, my enemies. A bunch of those apparently belonged to the sides of the shells and other things that would most likely never be seen again. The photoetch sheets had a few more unusual things, like the bottoms of the shells - or so I guessed at this point.

Guidelines for painting

This two-page paintjob example looked slightly scary, considering the upcoming tasks. As a bonus I thought this'd help with the unclear bits of the instructions, at leat in a couple of places.

Error correction

The first time this happened to me, there were indeed some corrections to the instructions. These photocopies were targeted to the assembly phases by the step numbers, except for that 0,0's "drill here" part. That'd be easyish to locate anyway.

Checking the instructions

Last but not least, the imperfect instructions. This was not a leaflet but not an epic, either. If my poor memory served me well, Dragon's instructions were a bit like these here: nice pics but sometimes those were a bit difficult to figure out. Perhaps my expectations were going to prove unfounded in short time.

The motor itself got a couple of pages dedicated to it. Concerning.

The insides of the combat space was to be filled with stuff. It looked pretty stuffed.

Looking at the turret instructions I started worrying, how in the Empire would I ever get any of that aligned perfectly for the outer shell?

Pre-project work

Stocking up

Early in the year I ordered a couple of sets of VMA paint and a couple of extra bottles to top all this up (cream white and two different shininesses of brass). Ten points and a parrot sticker to who first guesses, what we'd be talking about next week.

"A Panzer" won't cut it, I'll have you know. We expect and even demand more accurate definitions around here.

Finished: Project III/21

Optimus prime

So, the high difficulty rating stamped brightly onto the packaging had raised my concern-o-meter, but no one told how the difficulty had been calibrated. Of the individual pieces the most difficult were the exhaust pipes, because I didn't have anything to roll them into cylinders, so they ended up being something weird instead. Or maybe they were expected to be like that, and I was just mentally locked to the smokestacks of the G1 toy.

All in all this was a very pleasant build, the subject was exciting and the model itself was decently straightforward. I even managed to keep my foul fingerprints nicely off the shiny external surfaces.

Basic photos

Below I left the usual set of photos around the model. Optimus' pose was surprisingly backwards-leaning, perhaps he was admiring the Underbase rising in the horizon?

Comparison shots

Of course I rushed to take photos of Optimus Prime next to the Bumblebee I had built the last time. Clearly these two models were not made to the same scale in any sense of the word.

The leader of the Autobots was pretty shiny and as if he had just taken a shower in a car (truck?) wash, especially when compared to lord Megatron who had a couple of years on the shelf. I imagined that Megatron's surface had suffered over time, but no, he had come here with a duller armour plating to begin with.

Stomping ahead

Final components

Before the head itself the backpack was to be done, and to be left waiting. I was almost optimizing by installing it already, but a quick "hey, let's check what's coming up still, just in case" check saved me and this build.

The face here looked otherwise familiar, just a bit too tall. I expected that to be straightened during the next steps.

Oh yes, the ninja mask repaired the long face immediately. The most difficult thing in this face building operation was to get the pieces folded into correct angles without accidentally splitting the pieces apart.

Apparently the unusual height of the head was to cover up the extra step that ended up being in front of his jaw. This had obviously absolutely nothing to do with the good old G1 toy, but as I think I pondered on that in the first post, this model was depicting a more modern version of Optimus Prime than the one I grew up with.

The helmet with the ears/antennas was one of the worst subassemblies so far, thanks to the round shapes. Luckily I got it done in one piece without getting bothered.

Combining the head's two parts was about to give me grey hairs. Again it got done succesfully without smashing or bending the components into a mess. This was one of the details in addition to some random weird corner shapes that increased this model's difficulty rating.

Putting the backpack complex into Optimus' torso was almost scaringly easy. At this point I noticed that I had left a couple of few-corner edges open from the small of his back / corresponding sides, either because I had just ignored those in the instructions or didn't understand to do it as told (as you could see in the first photo below, I had also misread the image for attaching the left arm and got him almost keeping his free hand against his hip instead of down-front).

The robotic mittens

Building and installing the upper limbs

The shoulder with its pretty awful exhaust pipes was a bit of a weird setup to build. That still unclosed shiny, pointy bit in the first photo was the piece where the lower arm was attached later on. While working on this left arm, I didn't manage to attach all the four points, but it stayed tightly enough as it was.

Ion Blaster

Much more often than swinging his Energon Axe around like a mechanic viking, Optimus punctured his enemies full of holes with his ion gun. I would be lying at all if I said that I would have immensely enjoyed the axe as the weapon for this model. The Blaster was a surprisingly complicated thing, due to its shape and one of the barrel pieces remained looser than I wanted it to be, thanks to some very tight spacing to close the connectors properly. It was recognizeable and that was great.

As soon as the gun was built it was attached onto Optimus' right fist. This installation was tight and proper, and didn't shake loosely.

Now I knew to be extra careful when attaching the forearm to the upper arm. The image in the instructions was pretty foul, and it wasn't that clear (to me at least) if the key piece was supposed to go this, that or some other way. Adding to my state of concern was that if I installed the gun-arm rotated 180°, it'd look like the poor robot had his elbow uglily broken, pointing behind him.

Attaching the appendages

The right arm sat into its place just nicely, even though again the space to tighten the attachment pieces had become somewhat challenging. I managed to avoid making ugly scratches to the outer surfaces, which was also a positive thing, considering how much they would've shown.