Lately there have been a few builds of these old 1969 Tamiya Panthers posted here. Mine started a couple of months back, when I picked one up thinking, "How bad can it be?" The kit is indeed well off Tamiya's 1970's standards, and the tracks are just terrible (They could even be described as the kit's "weak link"![Wink [;)]](/FSM/CS/emoticons/icon_smile_wink.gif)
) There are a lot of other issues, and spending a ton of money on aftermarket parts for it just didn't make a lot of sense, so I chose instead to fix what could be fixed and accept whatever other problems remained.
The main things I fixed were to seal up the motorization holes, remove the front and rear axle tubes, and add sponson floors to the lower hull, and to reshape the gun mount and narrow down the mantlet on the turret. I also did a number of standard build tweaks such as shaving overscale thickness parts, drilling exahaust pipes, and adding wire tow cables.
For Zimmerit, I used Tamiya two-part polyester putty, raking it with Tamiya Zimmerit tools. I used the larger 0.7mm tools. Although the 0.5mm tools would have been closer to scale, I don't think that they would have raked cleanly through the putty. I've previously done a variety Zimmerit experiments, but had never done an entire tank before. It actually wasn't a terribly difficult process being more tedious than difficult, although the experience makes me wonder how people are able to pull off some of the more complex patterns![Question [?]](/FSM/CS/emoticons/icon_smile_question.gif)
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Since the tracks were immune to CA glue and anything else I had handy, I couldn't sag the tracks by gluing them to the tops of the road wheels. So I used one crosswise brass rod behind the drive spocket. Over the road wheels, I used thread passed through the sproket holes to tie the tracks down.
For paint, keeping with the Tamiya theme, I natually used the usual Tamiya acrylics. I had not used Tamiya acrylics previously, other than for weathering purposes. They painted well enough, although the colors seemed change a great deal during the drying process which threw me for a bit of a loop at first. I had no confidence in decals over the Zimmerit, so I painted the numbers and crosses by hand. I pre-painted with white, masked, and then painted the camo. It was then really easy to touch up the white and in-fill with black. Weathering consisted mostly of some light washing, dried mud from pastel chalk and flat acrylic, and light dusting with browns and tans to simulate dust.
All in all, this was actually a pretty fun tank to build. It had a number of unique challenges and was an ideal test bed for experimenting with some new techniques. While still not a perfectly accurate Panther, it'll look good in the display case.
There are more photos of the finished cat here: http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v624/ABARNE/Panther%20-%20Ausf%20A%201-35/Finished/
Here are some construction photos:
http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v624/ABARNE/Panther%20-%20Ausf%20A%201-35/Construction/
Hope you enjoy.
Andy