Academy 1/35th panzer IV H

I was doing research and happened across your post. I just started building the same academy kit. Do you remember the built? , I'm finding the kit to be somewhat of a pain in the a@#. Would appreciate any pointers. Thanks. 

I haven't seen those guys on the boards for a long, long time.

  T(h)anks Tigerman

Chazzer

I was doing research and happened across your post. I just started building the same academy kit. Do you remember the built? , I'm finding the kit to be somewhat of a pain in the a@#. Would appreciate any pointers. Thanks. 

It's pretty straightforward, but it definitely requires patience and it helps if you have shares in sandpaper and filler manufacturing companies.

Areas to watch:

• Alignment and shaping of the turret schurzen,as this is made up from multiple parts. Alignment of the mounting brackets is a bit awkward too. It helps to have three hands when you get to this point.
• If you build the kit straight from the box, you may find that the fender side hooks for the schurzen won't fit in the little brackets on the plates. You may have to do some strategic thinning of the hooks and brackets or consider replacing them with thin styrene strip.
• the hull-side schurzen plates themselves are extremely thick and could do with replacement using suitable thickness styrene sheet.
• There's no positive mounting for the turret bin and you have to eyeball the amount of stand-off from the rear of the turret. It helps to add a stand-off on the underside of the turret bin using a scrap of styrene strip, as otherwise, it's just hanging from the two side brackets which in turn are simply butt-jointed to the rear of the turret.
• There is a sizeable gap between the rear edge of the engine bay doors and the upper rear hull plate. Insert a suitably sized strip of styrene and filler if necessary.

With a  bit of work and a bit of patience, it can be made to look relatively nice OOB.

It's just a clone of the old Tamiya Mk IVH kit. And yes it can be build in to a nice kit. A great entry level kit to build up and have fun with.

Looking at the original poster's history. He hasn't posted here in almost 6 years here..last one in Oct 2005...

           Yer right about the sandpaper and filler. Holy smokes. LOTS of filling and sanding!! Your pictures helped out a lot. This build is gonna take a bit more time than I thought. I just finished a Dragon kit, 3cm Flak 38, What a difference in quality! Academy's plastic is much more softer and with varying thickness and a lot of flash to clean up. Like you said with just a bit of work and a bit of patience.....or not