Kits That Build Themselves (Almost)

Late in 2009 I built Tamiya’s old StuG IV kit (35087) and was delighted with the easy-build characteristics of the 1970s approach to kit engineering. Dragon sophistication had not come into the world, but Dragon over-complexity had also yet to appear, and notions like slide moulding were a technical phantasm. As I’ve mentioned on occasion, while the armour kits of the 70s leave a lot to be desired by modern standards, they also had the virtue of buildability, and before the advent of Dragon, Tamiya’s only real competitiors were Esci/ERTL and odd offerings from Heller, plus the 1:32nd scale range from Monogram and the 1:40th scale series from Revell.

I recently found the urge to build another Tamiya StuG IV, this time the Academy issue of 1987 (from the period when a batch of older Tamiya kits fleshed out their range for market impact before their own product really got rolling). The factory example photographed for the box shows a very attractive fall ’44 ‘Ambush’ scheme complete with blowing leaves, but the markings (for what appears to be the Grossdeutschland Division, going by the helmet motif) are not included. Academy scanned Tamiya’s plans, rearranged the drawings and renumbered the parts, rather a pointless exercise if it was meant to disguise the origins of the kit, all of which rendered the plans confusing in places. I built from Tamiya plans, and referred to the Academy plans merely for part numbers on the rare occasions I couldn’t recognise them instantly.



This is a very simple kit, but its 217 components would have been an impressive total in the 70s. What strikes me about it is how easy the build is. This example fell together in about four sittings, even wasting time I doubt I spent more than five hours from go before I was encountering the need for paint. The moulds were showing their age, some parts needed extra filing and fiddling to get them to line up, some separation lines were pretty heavy, especially in the suspension, but these issues were par for the course in the 70s anyway, and compared to the Dragon StuG III F/8 I’ve had underway since last year, this one built in a blink. The indie-link Ostketten on that one put me off every time I think about them.

One unusual thing, there is a gap about .060” wide between the idler axle components. The rooting of the parts, moulded onto the transom, is supposed to fit against the outer axle parts which are cast with the main tub, but the parts sit back, with a pronounced cutaway. This element does not appear on the original Tamiya kit, I just checked the one in my display case and it’s not there. So did Academy retool and introduce this change for some bizarre reason? The parts do not look soft and ‘blobby’ as they would if they had been three-dimensionally traced with a pantograph. I have Academy’s issue of the Panzer IV H with stand-off armour, originally Tamiya 35057, and this difference does not appear in the transom plate of this essentially identical kit (identical as far as these components are concerned, certainly). Whatever, that left me with gaps where none should be and axle roots that don’t look convincing.



Given that it’s not the easiest part of the vehicle to see, I decided a perfect fix was not required, and sufficed to shim the gap with a sliver of 4.8mm tubing to create a mechanical illusion of completeness. A proper fix would have been to shim it with sheet plastic and carve the plastic to match the structures adjoining, and this would have been possible before assembly, but that much knife and file work when there are finished structures in close proximity seemed like asking for trouble. This is a simple build, I want it finished, not living on my bench. Filling in the slots behind the axle mounts with strip plastic was also a simple enough process, and created the impression once again of mechanical detail, barely-seen.

Modelling is meant to be about fun, and the simplicity of the engineering lends itself to prompt assembly while the age of the moulds inescapably exercises the skill muscles to compensate. In that much, it’s a good mix. The artistic muscles come next: I’ve never done an ‘Ambush’ scheme before, and have not dialled the airbrush down for tight soft-edge freehand spraying in two or three years. Maybe it’s time to give that technique a whirl again.

Breaking Your Dragon Virginity

Over the years I have noticed a certain progression in armour modellers, from easy scales to more challenging ones, and from easier builds to the more difficult. Dragon is a case in point, a company which from its inception some twenty years ago set out to find unprecedented detail levels through complex plastic engineering.

Many modellers call building your first Dragon kit 'breaking your Dragon virginity,' and it seems to be a somewhat accurate notion, but to be fair there is Dragon, and there is Dragon.

I have in fact already built two early Dragons, both Russian armour reboxed by Zvezda, and I was frustrated by a trend toward too many small parts and too few positive location devices. I did not really count these as they were from the company's first five years or so, and any firm goes through an evolution in approach and engineering.

I'm rating Dragons's StuG III Ausf. F/8, in the old Imperial Series, as my first genuine Dragon, and this is perhaps a less than perfect first choice as the Imperials are known for being both complex and, by many standards, over-thought. The object was to create the maximum number of variants from the same set of moulds, resulting in a huge number of parts in any box, with many sprues in common between kits and scores of parts unused on any particular project. For instance, though this is a Sturmgeschuts, there are enough parts to construct a Panzer III turret in the box, along with many other elements. My impression is that if I was to carefully inventory what unused parts I have and buy a batch of bits through Dragoncare (if they're available), I could more than likely build a Panzer III as well.

To look at the plethora of individually bagged sprues in the box is an impressive experience, then you start to build and inevitably compare the engineering with other firms and eras. The large number of parts is derived at least in part from tiny details being molded individually rather than as part of larger units, but as some variants have such details and some do not, you find either holes to open as locators (if you're lucky) or merely raised lines to indicate where the parts go. In any other context I would have rated the latter as very amateurish indeed, especially in view of the very high shelf price Dragon has always commanded. If you're paying the big bucks you expect less of a fight and better fit.

The superstructure is a case in point. Individual panels in the roof cater to the evolution of the StuG's fighting compartment so that a common core casting can be detailed for a number of marks, but the fit of those parts is far from great. While cast detail provides tight panel lines and rivet runs in some places, separate parts conjure gaps only an inch or two away which would have been fatal flaws in the real machine. Likewise, the engineering of the canon mount is weak, a multi-part structure to which the gun will glue at the end of assembly but which depends totally on the strength of your adhesive to hold the pivots in place in a friction-fit. I reinforced the assembly with strip styrene and superglue to be a bit more confident of the canon not simply falling out one day.

And what do you do when two parts are trying to occupy the same space? The instructions are not sufficiently explicit on assembly order, the way that details crowd around the superstructure and relate to the hull top, and a strip on the glacis (bullet splashguard?) which is supplied with a locator tab and slot was around 1mm too close to the superstructure for the frontal armour to fit. After filing and fiddling for a while I shrugged and ground away the strip's locating tab. It can lie 1mm forward of where it's supposed to be: no one will ever know the difference.

The Imperials did not necessarily venture into photoetch and I'll need to source engine grills for this one. Despite an inevitable negative comparison of Dragon in the 90s to Tamiya (of almost any era) when it comes to simple building pleasure, I would have to say this is going to be a good looking model on the shelf. Assuming I can conquer the individual track links... I've never tried before! I have a few other Imperials in my stash and now know what to expect, and look forward to building more recent Dragon engineering too.

I'll post a full review when this kit is finished. For now, I have some plastic to wrestle with...

Recently Completed: Tamiya StuG IV

This kit (#35087) has been around for a very long time, thirty years or more, and in general one expects toolings of that age to fall down on the job by comparison to the new stuff. In recent years it was widely speculated that Tamiya were backing out of the 1:35th scale armour game, leaving it to the prolific releases of Dragon and Trumpeter that were making such an onslaught in the marketplace, but among Tamiya’s updatings to get new life from old moulds there have been a series of gems, their T-55, JS-3, Char B-1, Leclerc, and the brand new ISU-152. Tamiya has always been characterised by “buildability first,” catering to the younger or less experienced modeller by engineering their models to build well, something Dragon started to do with their “Smart Kit” range about thirty years after Mr. Tamiya made it policy. So just how do older kits build?



I wanted to do this one for many years. I was inspired by Glen Phillips’ build-up and detailing techniques in the May 1991 FineScale Modeler, and hunted out a StuG IV which I bought from a second hand dealer in Japan, but it was many years before I could get around to it. For one thing, I had to figure out how to make an airbrush spray fine lines, as the rotbraun mottle was far finer than anything I had ever sprayed before, and these skills did not come easily. And there was the matter of Zimmerit, a prepossessing task when it involves plastering putty all over a model and scraping it to make that characteristic ridged pattern.

The second problem was the easier to solve. Cavalier Model Products to the rescue – see my upcoming review of the brilliant Cavalier product for the low down on how to get a superb rippled finish on your German armour, if you’ve not already used this terrific texturing medium.

The first was solved about a year ago when I did some experiments to spray a more convincing, true-to-the-research, disruptive scheme on my Academy Tiger I Early, and I found that I had a formula for getting tight edges and fine demarcations (at last) from my Paasche VL.



Armed with these and other tools (such as the Alliance Model Works photoetched mask set for tank wheel rims, reviewed last time), I built the old StuG and was very pleasantly surprised. The parts fit was excellent throughout, there were no dramas, no fights, except for one track which would not couple. I shaved away the pins and superglued the ends together, problem solved; I’m not sure I even class that as a problem.

The kit has lots of options: two lengths of spare track to mount in a couple of possible locations; schkurtzen standoff armour and mounting rails, none, one or two radio antennas, moulded concrete frontal slabs for late-serving vehicles, open or closed hatches, a figure, deployed or stowed MG shield, posable scissors-sighting gear, plus a suite of divisional insignia and several sets of vehicle numbers, allowing you to either follow the kit suggestions for final subject vehicles or do your own research and paint it however you like. There’s plenty you can do with this kit to build several and never have two look even substantially similar.



Another thing I like is the fact that all the wheels rotate, with the exception of the return rollers. Some later kits don’t do this, and while link-and-length tracks are of course rigid, and Tamiya engineered their early-era kits in the days when motorisation for “toy appeal” was in, it’s always somewhat cool to see your model’s running gear actually work on a rough surface.

In terms of accuracy, there were a few details that Tamiya missed out, probably due to the limitations of moulding. The kit belongs to the era of open sponsons, and if you’re having any open hatches it’s a good idea to do a bit of scratchbuilding and close the hull to avoid a see-through effect if viewing from above. The standoff plates and rails are overscale, of course, they were in reality 5mm armour plate but if you multiply the kit parts by their stated scale you find they would be more like 30mm or more. There are photoetched replacements for many vehicles out there, plates and racks alike, but I simply sanded mine down on wet’n’dry paper to thin them a little. The plates are cast as single units but they were in reality separate plates along the hull. You can cut the plates from their neighbours to get this effect as an irregularity in the way they hang from the mounts.



The age of some of the components is probably close to forty years, as the lower hull is shared in common with their other Panzer IV kits and Pz. IV-derived subjects (Brumbar, FlakPanzer, Jagdpanzer etc.), the earliest of which were definitely early 1970s releases.

I would have to say this kit, while simple by today’s standards, is remarkably good. It builds a sturdy, appealing product, is a project which early-career modellers can tackle adequately due to the builder-friendly design, and there are quite enough options and room for scratchbuilding to keep experts happy also. There are uncountable numbers of Pz. IV accessories on the market, and many would be appropriate for the StuG, such as damaged roadwheels, better-quality external tools, photoetched fittings, replacement tracks, and decal sets for a wider choice of markings and schemes.



It took quite a lot of methodical work to get it finished, but I can’t say there was a particularly difficult bit anywhere in the project, and I will certainly be building others. My next StuG IV will be minus zimmerit and skirts, and be wearing three-tone ambush camo. In conclusion, I recommend this kit to any modeller: beginners should find it a bit of a challenge but by no means impossible, while styrene experten may find it a refreshing simplification compared to Dragon’s policy of ‘never use one part where five will do.’ As an older kit it’s also cheaper by far than the new-tool products, around half the shelf price, though they change hands often enough on eBay for a fraction of that.

I Feel Like Building A Model… NOT Painting It!

 Have you ever had the feeling that one part of your artistic creativity is in conflict with another? There have been occasions when I had a spare hour or two and found myself staring at the projects underway and realising that every single one was at some point which obliged me to set up my airbrush and start pushing various colours through to spot-paint detail parts, which means far more cleaning of the airbrush and its jars, and far more mixing of paint, than actual painting. There are times when you just want to build. One problem with aircraft, much as I love them, is that you’re pretty much obliged to paint that wretched cockpit first. Struggle with tiny details, drybrush the controls, put on decals perhaps, create instrument lenses with blobs of Clear Parts Cement, and suchlike. And frankly, there are times you don’t want to be bothered with all that, but just get to the engineering of the piece, tidying up the parts and bringing them together just so, then perhaps doctoring the joint lines with whatever technique you prefer. Perhaps that’s one of the drawcards of armour modelling. Unless you have a perverse desire to open hatches all the time, the inside of a tank is a mystery to the viewer and can be conveniently ignored, which means most of a tank can be built before you need to start painting, and that’s attractive. Building the barrel and turret, mounting suspension swing arms and other lower hull details, dressing the upper hull with hatches, grills, any number of parts that can go on before you need to paint anything… Then join the hull, do some joint work if needed, and you’re into masking the locators for tools and such, masking the mating ring of the turret and all the axles. Oh yes, there’s lots to do before you need put down the first colour. The Academy M981 above falls into this category: I just wanted to enjoy building, and a relatively complex, multi-part armoured vehicle fit the bill to a T. I put it together months ago, and when a slot comes up in my painting schedule it'll finally see it's three-colour camouflage.  

 Right now I have 20 models in progress, at some stage or other. I could be mottling the camo of that Tamiya Me 262, or I could be prepping for the natural metal finish of that F-84 Thunderjet. But over the last week or so I’ve been wash-and-drybrush detailing three armour kits. The time comes when you have to paint what you’ve built and production line modelling is a way of getting through them. Base colour, camo pattern, fade coat, oil filter weathering, pinwash, drybrush profiling, decals, dust coat… I’ll get back to aircraft shortly, I have at least seven to finish in the next two months or so, but you know, when the fiddly details have got me at my wits’ end, I’ll take a break from being an artist, and be an engineer again for a few relaxing sessions. One thing I’m certain of: whatever I build on that day, the odds are it’ll have tracks under it! Hoping you all had a wonderful festive season and that the New Year brings everything you could hope for! Cheers, Mike/Thunderbolt379