This weekend's round of bench time was very productive and work continued on the gun and superstructure. I decided to build the gun first as it's designed to go into a static mount in the fighting compartment and everything else revolves around it as a result in terms of fit and placement.
That meant skipping to Step 11 which assembles the gun and breech as well as the collar and recoil cylinders. The breech block can be left movable if you so desire and some sanding is necessary on the join halves of the breech but otherwise it's a straightforward step.
Step 12 combines the elements from the previous step and adds the recoil guards. Step 13 assembles part of the gunner's side of the gun mount by adding a choice of two different styles of traverse gears. I chose the simpler type for expediency.
Step 14 completes the gunner's side of the mount with the addition of the gunner's seat, the gun sight, and the elevation wheel. There's also a toothed gear that is added that the instructions indicate shouldn't be glued...I tried this out and found it to be unnecessary to allow the gun to elevate and omitted it since I'm closing up the interior anyhow. I suppose if you were really really careful with the glue you could find a way to make the gear actually "turn" with the gun as it elevates but it's not essential to the gun assembly in the long run.
Step 15 is the moment of truth, it adds all of the previous components together along with the base and ball mantlet to create the full gun assembly. The fit on E19, the ball mantlet, was too tight for the gun barrel to slide through so I had to trim and sand it with a round needle file on it's inside diameter to get the gun barrel to fit. Even then it was an extremely tight friction fit and a challenge to get it to slide all the way down. It also has to fit tightly over the side hinge points of the gun mount and the fit has to be just so for it all to work. I got it as far down onto the mount as I could make it go but I suspect that it needed to go about another 1mm or so to actually fit correctly. Unfortunately the friction fit made it impossible for me to remove it and try again...and this in turn resulted in some issues down the road in the following steps.
I added the interior plate from Step 9 and did a test fit with the gun mount dry-fit in place and sure enough, the mantlet interfered with the fit, causing the rear of the superstructure to not align properly with the fenders and engine deck...a major problem. This meant that the interior ring around the ball mount needed to be trimmed back to allow the mantlet to clear it. This was done with careful trial-and-error and much trimming and sanding.
This led me to wonder if the same issue might be encountered with the exterior circular plate, so I added the Atak zim panels and resin plate and did a test fit. It too had the same issue, so same trimming and sanding treatment was called for. I also used some Squadron White putty thinned with liquid cement to fill small gaps around the circular plate and create a unified look with the rest of the zim panels.
I decided to go ahead and zim the rest of the superstructure before installing it to the hull to make sure I didn't run into any more fit issues. I decided that I would not mount the schurzen rails and opted instead for just the small mount tabs as called out in Step 21. The tabs were installed first and the zim panels added after followed by the lifting hooks and pistol ports from Step 9. Small amounts of trimming were needed here and there and lots of test fits with the lower hull, so I'm glad I decided to zim first. I also opted for the command version "adler's nest" 2nd antenna mount and added that from Step 18.
With all that out of the way, it was time to install the superstructure to the lower hull. I used a combination of regular glue, liquid glue, rubber bands, and finger pressure to get a good join all around.
Next up will be the roof and small details and then I'll start in on the tracks.