We’ve all done it, I’m sure – spotted a bargain and gone for
it, only to realise that saving a few bob can lay you in for a lot of work.
When Zvezda reboxed Dragon’s Pz. III/F I was more or less
ready for a struggle, but the reviews mentioned the firm had tooled out new
vinyl tracks so I would not be contending with L&Ls, and when a Moscow
trader offered it for a song I shot off an order. In a very reasonable time a
package arrived from Russia and I was able to check out the state of this
particular art.
Well… I discovered recently that this kit was not actually a
Dragon tool, but one of the Gunze “Hi-Tech” series from the late 80s, and to
say the moulds are showing their age is an understatement. Separation lines,
thickening and softening – maybe the tooling was cut in brass, which tends to
blur with use. And flash, loads of flash. Even wheels with axle holes heavily
flashed over, requiring drilling out… Gunze were big on sprue-gates, suggesting
they were working with low-pressure moulding. To give some idea: including the
spare wheels, there are 112 sprue gates to be cut and cleaned up on the roadwheels
alone!
Fit is middling poor (I think pegs that go correctly into
holes at the first try can be counted on one hand), and almost every part needs
not just cleanup but actual modification with a file to engage even half-way
with its fellows. Gunze seem to have been going the Dragon route in
persistently moulding separately a plethora of small parts. Every leaf of the
towing lugs, fore and aft, is a separate part, and none of them fit worth a
damn. Superglue to the rescue, as ever. Fortunately the soft-ish grey styrene
works quickly and responds very well to all glues, which is just as well, as it
also breaks under much tension at all – ask me how I know...
The engine screens are poorly moulded plastic parts, so I
replaced them with Aber brass, which fits close enough to do. Likewise the main
gun barrel was so imprecise that I did not even attempt to assemble it, but
ordered up an RB turned steel replacement. It was meant for a different kit and
I had to drill out an aperture through four thicknesses of plastic right back
into the turret to mount it, but there was no real difficulty in that, and it
looks the part. The turret ring has no lock-in lugs to engage the cutaways in
the receiver ring of the upper hull, but it does have a small pin which
prevents the turret sitting down flush with the hull – I cut it off, of course.
By the time construction was done, the model looked
acceptably like a Panzer III. This would be my first Panzer Grey paintjob, and
I went the mixed route, the classic recommendation of Tamiya XF-24 Grey, and
XF-8 Blue to provide the cool hue missing from XF-63 which they pack as Panzer
Grey. Maestro Tony Greenland recommends adding “20% blue” to the grey, but
whether that refers to a ratio of 1:4 or 1:5 is a mystery – it can be read
either way. I went with 1:5, being conservative as to the hue. One thing I was
sure of, I did not want to go the way of the modern trend toward a blue-grey so
washed out and faded it looks like a pair of cheap jeans. Some folks are using
Tamiya XF-23 Blue-Grey as their base colour and, at least to me, this cannot be
right – the German name for the colour was schwartzgrau,
“black-grey.” It is by definition a dark colour.
I did, however, use XF-23 for the fade coat. I always
intended to do a full modulation job, so for the paler value I used a 5% solution
of the pale blue-grey and misted it onto the upper surfaces. With that out of
the way I could concentrate on the wash and drybrush phase, working with oils
in enamel thinner as always to streak on dirt and rust (dark brown),
condensation streaks (white); then unthinned oils for dirt spots and old rust
(black and brown) as well as new rust (orange) and profiling all edges in pale
grey (a mix of Payne’s Grey and white). Bare metal was drybrushed in silver
enamel. The wheels were completed using the stencil method, which allows a
distinct difference in shade between the tyre rubber and the grey hubs, though
the running gear and lower hull all received a going over with a 5% solution of
brown to suggest road grime, built up gradually, and this pretty much destroyed
the visible difference between tyres and hubs.
Zvezda’s soft vinyl tracks have raised ejector pin marks all
over them which are impossible to clean up. I shrugged and went with it, after
all, if memory serves, I only gave $12 for this kit! The material does not hold
paint well, acrylic flakes off with minimal abrasion, so the idea is to handle
them as little as possible. In their favour, the detail moulding is very good
indeed, with fine apertures clean through the tracks between the links, something
I’ve not seen from vinyls before. Mounting the running gear is a process of
logic, as nothing is meant to roll or turn, there are no retaining caps or
whatever, so feeding the tracks around the wheels last, as I typically do with
Tamiya flexibles is not an option. Forcing them past fixed wheels would strip
the paint, so I joined the tracks off the model and got the drives and idlers
inside the run, so as to attach them with superglue in one go, then ease the
tracks to add each roadwheel separately, and finally the idlers at the top.
Fiddly, but okay… Surprisingly, once all axle holes were drilled and filed out
to fit at all, everything slipped into place readily and stayed put without
glue – I did a dry run and the tension of the tracks, which were just the right
length for a snug fit, held everything in place. Only the return rollers were
glued in, everything else actually turns!
The decals are Zvezda standard – very good indeed. They free
off in twenty seconds in cold water and are very thin, snugging into the
surface without complaint, and their very flat finish blends them into the
paintwork without need of clear coats. Applying the decals was the simplest
part of the whole project.
I now have a schwartzgrau
Pz III F in markings for the 2nd Panzer Division, in the Barbarossa
era. It sits between Tamiya kits and looks very good on the shelf. Maybe I
overdid the pigment work – too much rust? The beauty is, I can wash it off if
it starts to bug me, and redo it more subtly. But for now, I think it looks quite
the part, and I certainly got my money’s worth with this challenging project
that resurrects some classic moulds for another airing.
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