Tamyia Hetzer (mid) 1:35 WIP

Never built a Hetzer, so I'll watch your WIP.  The Texas Military Forces Museum in Austin has a "runner" Hetzer.  It gets exercised every so often.

Hey Richard,

What a GREAT choice of build! A simple Tamiya kit but anything based on the 38(t) chassis is great imo which is why I have a soft-spot for Marder III's!

I recently built this exact kit myself and painted it in the Ambush Scheme but I over weathered and used rattlecan gloss varnish (solvent based) which Karl reckons really darkened my lighter areas of Dunkelgelb

Because of the Side skirts hiding the return rollers making visible sag pointless I was able to easily get away with using the vinyl kit tracks - they look ok. I did use an AM barrel but it wasn't really necessary as the kit barrel is one piece i.e. no nasty seam

Because of the darkened paintwork I've decided to do a full hairspray whitewash on mine. I'm yet to do a proper whitewash so it's a perfect base for it.

As for your build I'd recommend chipping and damaging slightly the edges of the rubber on them big road wheels. The damage looks really good if done properly.

I'd also look at your side skirts. Obviously Tamiya supply them as one solid moulded piece but I wish I'd cut mine into sections to show individual panels which they were like or even used brass replacements which are readily available.

What paint scheme are you planning on?

Bill recently built the Dragon Hetzer and painted it using straight Dunkelgelb and it looked SOOOPERB! He fully blogged his great weathering work so checking it out on his site might be of use to you and give you some suggestions?

Best of lucK - keep us posted!

ATVB

Ben

Good choice should be a lot of fun to build .

Ron

Richard, you should bring this over to the Panzerjager GB.

Hey guys,

Thanks for the warm welcome

Hinksy, Thank you for your tips on the roadwheels and sideskirts. Will certainly take a look at them once they are called for in the instructions.

Tigerman,

Didn't know there was a GB for these things.... Since i already started here i think i'll finish it on here as well but will certainly apply for the GB if i do another TD Wonder if tamyia's StugIII ausf B would apply, it wasnt on the list...

Well, i've been working on my hetzer for a bit last night and i got the suspension and rear plate on. The roadwheels will need sanding to get the seams off...:

As for the question on the paintscheme.... Not sure yet. I am leaning towards either one of these two:

But it seems there was some variation with applied paintschemes so i might run across a scheme that i like even better. Were all the hetzers in ambush scheme? The instruction manual seems to say so...

Richard

Great subject Kermit,,,    thanks for sharing.

I built this same kit a while back. I started out just going for an out of box build....  shortly after I started "MMIR" or "Armor" (don't recall which one) came out with a walk-around type article about the Hetzer. Needless to say, I ended up going crazy on the build. BUT, it was fun and turned out pretty nice.

Best of luck with it,,,  I'll be following....................

Bill

Hey Richard,

Great choice! This is a typical Tamiya "Shake 'n Bake" kit, no downfalls and a superb fit, however, the side-skirts are on the (very) thick side and can do with some thinning or PE replacement...

Will follow this one!  Grtz, John.

Hey Kermit,

On this build all the supplied paint schemes are ambush or hard edged cammo schemes (or whitewash over a hard edged scheme) but I see no reason why you couldn't just go for a standard DunkelGelb or Dunky with a different cammo - have a look at some photos.

• This is how mine looked after the initial painting - an Ambush scheme as it has the small triangular 'flecks':

• This is how it looked after decaling? I know the washes wouldn't have killed the Dunky like this as it just wouldn't lighten back up, even after scrubbing it with Thinner and a cloth. Karl Doog is adamant that is was down to the 'hot' solvent based rattlecan gloss varnish that I USED to use. I now use Vallejo's Acrylic water based varnish through my air brush which is so much better! 

If I'd used my Vallejo gloss back then I think this could have been a stunning Hetzer but it wasn't to be. I'm going to go for a full hairspray whitewash now so it still might be one.

I painted it with a basecoat of Dunkel Gelb the masked it using Blu-Tack poster putty to add the Red/Brown & Dark Green. The flecks were added by hand using a small, flat-tipped brush.

The supplied kit Grouser (sic?) or tool box is 'solid' (you can see it on the rear of the fender in the second photo) whereas I think it should have very small holes in it. I'm going to swap this one for a PE Dragon one that I now have but you could drill some very small holes in it using your pin vice drill? A few people that I have seen that have built this kit actually did that. 

Again, best of luck buddy!

ATVB

Ben

Hinksy,

Superb painting on your little killer!. Too bad the varnish ruined your day.... Usually i use future for my aircraft so that the decals go on nicely but reading about the Doog's weathering tutorial i might choose not to coat this one to prevent these things from happening as well as avoiding the future shinyness...

But about your comment on cutting the sideskirts into separate sections... Did you mean something like this?:

As you see i used red for the lines to cut across.

Apart from this i can announce i started on the figure...little flash to clean up there and i am not very familiar with figure painting/ building so bear with me

Richard

Hey Kermit,

That's exactly it matey.

Where you have put the red lines is where the would have 'butted up' against the next one as they were separate pieces.

I used them as one solid piece as I was probably just being lazy but really I should have have at least sliced them carefully using my scalpel with a new blade fitted so get a nice smooth edge.  At best I should have bought AM replacements like Griffon or Eduard ones. Someone showed me a link to dedicated Tamiya Hetzer replacement sideskirts so they are avaiable.

I cant tfind the dedicated Shurzen (side skirt kit) but this is a nice little kit for added detail at a nice price.

http://www.modelarmour.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1422:hauler-hetzer-detail-set-basic&catid=37:kits&Itemid=60

Note the holes in the PE tool box!

If you don't want to spend a load more $$$'s on AM stuff for this relatively cheap kit I'd either:

• Buy a suitable square of Brass sheeting to use in place of the kit parts. Just trace around the kit items onto the brass sheet and cut them out. The Brass needs to be pretty thin mind you. Carefully slice off the kit mounting arms and glue onto the brass.
• Chop up the kit parts and fit slightly crooked to make it look obvious that the parts are separate. You could leave one or two missing or hanging off to look like damage.

They look fine as they are - very overscale as someone has previously mentioned but you will be fine whatever you decide on.

Best of luck and keep the blog going!

ATVB

Ben

Hi Richard. Shame you won't join the build with this guy, but perhaps something else. I decided that the short barrelled StuG III B would be omitted from the build, because it wasn't designed as an ambush weapon, such as it's later variants, but more as a support weapon.

Hinksy,

The plan was to go fully OOB but maybe i can do something about the sideskirts and make em thinner. Will look at that (and trying to do some damage to the roadwheels) in the morning... Thanks for your interest and suggestions!

Tigerman,

Ok so no stuG.... I mentioned it because i almost bought that one... But like i said i do like the russian stuff so maybe a SU85 then?.... Who knows i might do it sooner rather than later

Anyways... some progress for today:

Started on the hull assembly

And gave "otto" the tank commander his field grey suit:

And inevitably every build has it's FUBAR moments.... As i was cleaning the supports for the muffler one of them fell onto the (wooden) floor and dissapeared into oblivion.... So i attempted to copy the one i had with some evergreen:

And that's it for now

Richard

The Floor/Carpet Monster will be be denied its sacrifice. 

 Good job on the remake!!

Good luck on your build Richard, like many others I have this in the stash because I got it dead cheap. All extras aside you need to address the mesh over the intake which will probably require an etch set but I would just use Eduard or something simple.

If you check out the osprey on the Hetzer you will see that from early ones like what Bill finished recently in monotone dunklegeld there are many schemes but the most common are the factory applied schemes which I cannot remember off hand if they are ambush or not but there is a photo of unfinished hulls outside a factory, I think its BMM painted in camo.

Again good luck with the build.

Terry.

Terry,

Thanks for the input. I did a bit of searching around on the www yesterday and it seems to me that most hetzers still in existance today are swiss ones repainted in german camo's after the war. So i conclude that people who done this were aware of german camo schemes but ill still take the pics i see with a grain of salt.

Another thing that keeps intriguing me is the fact that i have a game where the hetzer is (wrongly?) depicted in panzer grey. They do look great in that color.... Guess the pondering over camo jobs will continue..... Ofcourse i am totally free to do a what if job... that's what makes it so hard to decide.

Anyways, just dropped by to show you "herr Otto" in his paint coat prior to washes and drybrushes and what not. insignia need a bit of work though:

Richard

Always a nice subject.  Nice work on your replacement bracket and "Herr Otto" is looking good.  Here a few pics for you, hope they are helpful, of referbished Swedish Hetzer.

Not trying to fill up your WIP with unwanted stuff but these show two very common paint schemes

Where were those taken?

Off to a good start! Videogames are notoriously sloppy/lazy when it comes to depicting WW2 gear accurately and will recycle/re-use their coding models rather than come up with newer/better/accurate ones if they don't have to. Hetzer production ran from roughly April '44 to the end of the war so you wouldn't have ever seen one on Panzer Gray...although I agree they would look awfully menacing in that darker color for sure.

Like the work you've done on Herr Otto!

Thank you all for your comments and input. I am nowhere near your skill levels so i take each suggestion and comment seriously and try to implement them into my build. Loved the pictures too!!

Well quite the big update this time....

Got the suggestion to thin down the sideskirts and cut them into separate pieces. Also attached them in a bit of a sloppy way as if the vehicle has seen battle and bumped it's way through some narrow gaps. The first pic show you before and after sanding. Still a tad too thick but better:

Attached them and completed the initial assembly of the hetzer:

The white bit you saw up front was the result of my second FUBAR moment this build. While sanding i knocked off one of the supports for the sideskirt. Attempted to scratch a replacement (please ignore the glue residue/ will scrape that off ofcourse):

Lastly i gave otto a drybrushing and a wash to make the detail pop a bit. Think im gonna leave him like this:

I also been working on the roadwheels a bit and tried to cut into the rubber parts a bit as to simulate dried out/ damaged rubber. Neglected to take a picture but you will see

Thanks for watching gentlemen.

Richard

Otto looks great and could star in a dio of his own. Looking forward to seeing this one completed

Hercmech

Otto looks great and could star in a dio of his own. Looking forward to seeing this one completed

What Hercmech said.

Darn.  If I were doing this WIP, there'd be a lot of glue smears and missing parts involved.

Like the figure Richard. Very nice.

Great build so far Richard,

Here's a link to a small walk-around from the G13 Hetzer in Overloon:

http://public.fotki.com/DRAGONWAGON/walkarounds/jagdpanzer-38-hetze/

I still don't know how to post a live-link on this Forum....

Grtz, John.

Great job Rich!

I'm glad you chose to slice them - I wish I'd done that now or used some brass replacements.

As soon as I'm finished with my StuG I'll get the whitewash on mine to cover that darkened paintjob up!

If you aren't happy with that front skirt with the broken arm you could show it as missing or hanging off through damage?

Keep it up - the figure is superb btw!

All the best,

Ben

Hey guys,

Been busy getting the basic paint on during the weekend. Hope you guys like it:

After three attempts with my airbrush i gave in and chose a brush painted camo job and yes it shows... But i still like how it looks and am eager to attempt some weathering with washes, drybrushes and filters... More soon to follow gents!

Richard

Camo looks great Richard. Once you weather it, the brush marks will be more muted.

Thanks Tigerman,

I know i could do a german camo with AB if i would just have the right tool for it...  The brushmarks arent that bad, maybe so on the dunkelgelb as it was the most unforgiving paint i used.

Right now i am trying a wash and some drybrushing and if i dont like the outcome i can always attempt a whitewash i think... At least that's the line of thought i have.

Richard

Richard great job on Otto man Hey I have 3 figures I need painted

I think the brush painted camo on your Hetzer looks spot on. I would think ( not being an armor guy) that a lot of the camo was field applied with brushes or even rags. The washes and dry brushing should tame it a bit and make it look even better.

Hi Richard,

What a great job!

The brushwork is great and I imagine it makes painting a hard edged scheme a hell of a lot easier and removed the need for masking if airbrushing.

The figure looks very good too - I really need to work on my figure skills!

Keep us posted,

Ben