Well, its been a while since I last posted an update. I left off with the problems I encountered with some bad fitting parts from the resin kit, deciding to scratchbuild some replacements. I went back to look for more WIP photos and realized that I stopped taking photos when I got really into the build, not taking any more until most of the assembly was done…oops! So I spent some time recently recreating some of the work so I could post some photos.
Lets take a look at the rear plate first:
In this photo you’ll see what I did. Most of the new plate is done, I just need to saw off the idler mounts and the outlet for the traverse motor exhaust, carefully sand away the backs to get back to the correct thickness and glue them onto the new plate. The other parts are not required; the square plates on the sides of the resin plate are for the rear tow hooks which are not a feature of the Ausf. A (Coree got that wrong!) and the two small rectangular blocks are just for properly locating the resin main exhaust.
At first I was going to totally scratchbuild the upper plate, but thought maybe I could save time by just reworking the original resin part by sawing it two at a spot where there was a minimum of detail and adding an extension made from styrene. I actually did a pretty good job of it, but then I found that the corner angles of the resin plate were off and reworking them would cause more fit problems and also misalign the prominent screw heads….SIGH!. So it was back to scratchbuilding. The hardest part was getting the angles just right and it took three attempts to get a perfect fitting plate. Then I had to figure out how to add those sunken screw heads. In Tom Cockle’s “Modelling the Early Panzerkampfwagen IV” he describes how he does this by using a sharpened stainless steel tube of the correct diameter to make the round indentation and a sharpened jeweler’s screwdriver for the slot. Cool idea, except I couldn’t find ANY tube small enough to do that. Instead I found I had a set of Lion Roar PE fittings that had the perfect size slotted screwheads!! Yippee! All I had to do was drill a small hole and drop in the tiny screwheads! In the photo below the unused reworked resin part is below the new styrene replacement
Adding the screwheads wasn’t that hard. Fortunately I remembered I had a little drill guide from CMK that was perfect for aligning the holes. I just had to be real careful not to drill all the way through the .020 styrene plate. A little CA glue was all that was needed to fix the PE screwheads in place!
The rest of the detail was relatively simple consisting of various strip styrene, hex head bolts made by salami slicing some styrene hex rod, Caliber 35 .05 rivets and a couple of German wing nuts from Bronco. The tow cable hooks are just bent .020 brass wire. Below is a photo of the completed back assembly with the remaining resin and PE kit parts in place.
Oh yeah, by the time I was ready to assemble everything I lost the scratchbuilt tow assembly, so I stole the parts from the Dragon Ausf. C kit (what a lifesaver that kit has been) and added some fine chain just for the “halibut”!
Now for the front glacis plate. Recall that I raided the Dragon Ausf. C kit for a spare plate and transmission hatch. The problem was the brake access hatches which I started to scratchbuild. The were coming along pretty well, but I had a devil of a time adding the weld bead all around the edge of the hatches! I tried every method I know: stretched sprue, textured model putty, fine solder wire, Archer weld beads and lastly some Aves ApoxieSculpt, but STILL I wasn’t happy with the results. 
I really wanted them to look like the Dragon kit parts! Soooooo, it occurred to me that what I really wanted was exact DUPLICATES of the Dragon parts. What the 
are you thinking bufflehead? Make resin copies??? Oh my, now we’re getting serious!!
Yep, so I was down in Los Angeles on Thanksgiving weekend at Brookhurst Hobbies and bought this:
Two weeks later I tried my first attempt at making resin copies. I won’t go into detail on how the process works, but it was a blast making molds from the original and mixing the resin for the copies! My first attempts were disappointing as the Alumilite resin mix cures REALLY fast and I couldn’t make complete copies at first.
Here’s a look at my hatch work. The Dragon kit part is on the left, then my disappointing scratchbuilt copy, and finally two failed resin attempts. You can see how the hinges are miscast and there are air bubble holes present on the hatches.
However I wasn’t discouraged and finally I managed to mix a batch of resin that cured a little slower and allowed me some time to work the resin into the hinge portions of the mold! The parts that come out were really nice and only had a couple of minor air bubbles that were easy to fill and sand! Again, I didn’t take photos of these, but here’s a photo of the completed assembly and you can see the successful resin duplicates!
What happened to the Dragon transmission hatch? Well, I accidentally ran over it with my chair and it was easier to just scratchbuild a replacement than to repair it. Plus the replacement fit better than the Dragon part!
Before I glued all those plates on and glued the upper and lower hulls together I wanted to take another look at those resin fenders. Remember those? Weren't they a little warped? Well, they were more than warped...they were also waaay too short! To be honest I wasn’t surprised and immediately turned to my savior, the Dragon Ausf. C kit! The kit comes with two sets of fenders, one with locating holes for the tools with molded on clamps and one without holes in case you want to install PE clamps, which is the set I needed for this build!
In this photo you can see the comparison between the two fenders, the Coree fenders being short by nearly ½”! 
(FYI, the Coree fender has the front part molded on whereas the front of the Dragon fender is a separate part). Actually the Dragon fenders are a bit too long for the Coree hull by about 1/8”, but its easier to shorten the fenders than to make the resin ones longer! Note the seam on the Dragon fender, which is where I’ll make the cut to shorten it.
And here’s the section of the fender that I’ll remove using one of my favorite modeling tools, a JLC razor saw!
I made sure the first cut was straight along that seam and the second cut was straight and true to the first cut. All I had to do afterwards was a little clean up and then butted the two fender sections back together followed by a swipe of Tenax 7R liquid cement which has an excellent bond and sets very quick. A little sanding along the edge to blend the two sections, then duplicated everything for the opposite side and, Voila! New fenders that fit just right! BTW, the Ausf. A had a wider upper hull than subsequent versions so I wasn’t worried about that section missing the treadplate…the Coree hull will cover it all up!
Here’s a little photo close-up of the right side fender, again after assembly was complete. You can barely see the seam of the reworked section! Whew!
With most of the rework done the next update will be assembly of the parts! I hope I didn’t bore anyone with this post!