Italeri Panther...Help

wow, that is alot. at least it looks like panhter.............

QUOTE: Originally posted by t3488g i heard that tamiya's panther is also inaccurate. i have an ausf A. is there somthing in accurate about it?

I hate to tell you, but there's little that is accurate about it. The hull is too deep because it was originally tooled to be motorized, it has motorization holes in the bottom of the hull that have to be filled, it has the "famous" Tamiya "hollow" sponsons, the inner set of road wheels should have two wheels per axle, not one, and the turret is the wrong shape. Also, the tracks are Tamiya's old style, rubber band tracks that have no detail on the inside. The tools are all out of scale and not detailed very well.

(Take a breath, Bill!!) Now, having said that, you can still build a tank that looks like a Panther from the kit. A lot of the problems can be fixed with styrene sheet (the sponson bottoms) or realitively inexpensive AM parts (the inner road wheels, the tools). The hardest part to fix is the turret. Derek (claymore) scratch built a new turret for his for the Panther Group Build a few months ago. I was lucky enough to have a resin AM turret/barrel that's now oop that I used.

Back to the Italeri kit; Here's the link to the Missing Links article on correcting the Italeri Panther A:

http://www.missing-lynx.com/articles/german/jgpanth.htm

i heard that tamiya's panther is also inaccurate. i have an ausf A. is there somthing in accurate about it?

I have the kit, but it is fairly inacurate. I have the kalmbach book on detailing and coversion projects, and one of them is a fully authentic panther, but the guy in the article used pieces from 4 or 5 different kits.
I personally could really care less about 100% authenticity, as most of my models are out of the box. Only suggestion I have with this kit is to not use the zimmerit panels, but rather add your own.

I think I remember seeing a website that had this one guy defending the Italeri Panther and saying it only needed several modifications to be accurate. He listed about 20 things he had to modify/replace with aftermarket/fix. I've heard Italeri's sheet zim is a little too thick too. Many problems if your a rivet-counter...

Ryan, I've heard that it's somewhat better than the Tamiya A, but that's not saying much. There is an article somewhere on the net about making it better, I think. But I'll stay away from it, too. (I've already got 4 DML and one Tamiya G Panthers to build!! lol)

Good luck with yours, John!

Oh boy. I've heard some pretty crummy stuff about Italeri's panther. Have only built one panther, but I won't go near it with all the dirt I've heard about it. Have fun fixing it!

Thanks for help men. I'll try the styrene way, can't get Fine Molds stuff here. like your Panzer, especially tracks. Never happy with mine!
regards John.

I usually make my own periscopes by laminating a few peices of thin styrene sheet together then cutting it to fit the hole. I bevel the outside rear edge and paint it with the rest of the tank. I paint the lense gloss black, normally as the last step of the build after weathering.

Fine Molds makes a set of clear plastic periscopes for Tigers and another for Panthers. I have a Tiger set and they are really nice. You get several each of two different sizes. I painted the back of the angle where the mirror would be silver, when dry, I painted the outside flat black, then put Tamiya clear blue on the front of the "lenses". They don't look too bad, but I'm not sure I'd put the flat black anywhere but where the scope is visible. It really makes it dark and I'm not sure you'll even be able to tell the silver is there. I'm not sure how cleanly they'll fit the Italeri's.

Hope this helps a little.