Saturday, August 25, 2012

The story so far...

Several weeks ago- getting on towards months now - I set myself the task of scratch building a couple of 15cm Self Propelled artillery pieces - Hummels.  I was given some of the bits: guns, running gear, lower hull, ammo racks and other small items, all from ESCI kits that had presumably been adapted to other purposes.  The upper hull and fighting compartments had to be built. 
The front drive sprockets having been glued previously needed to be re-fastened with reinforcing.  I drilled a hole through the centre of the sprocket right through the hull and shove in a brad.  The solution is OK, but better would have been thickish wire (about Nr 16 gauge) right through.  After all my effort, the sprocket still sticks out a bit...
The alignments aren't great, I have to admit, though
the top plate over the driver's compartment looks worse on
account of the skewed ink streak at the front edge.
 Here's my progress thus far: none too impressive, I have to admit.  I've not used plasti-card for modelling to any extent before, and I'm finding it not very forgiving.  Getting things right is hard enough, but with a glue that grabs, it's hard to get things properly aligned as well, as these pictures show.


I'm hoping, therefore, that the final painting will disguise the less perfect aspects of these models.
Alignment problems and poor measuring left a gap
that you see in the centre.  Time to try out what
can be done with Green Stuff.
The grey pieces are from the ESCI 1:72 kit.  From the above picture I've mocked up how they should fit together.  The front of the fighting compartment has certain peculiarities I haven't yet figured out how to model: the slight inward bend edging the embrasure; and the cylindrical/frustum-shaped piece that forms the gun-shield(?) attached to the gun.  I'll also be making and fitting the hydraulic arms involved in elevating the gun in action.

A quick mock up with the bits assembled so far.
H'mmm... could be worse...
 The way things are going, I think the final product will at least be recognisable.  I'll be keeping one: Evil Uncle Brian (who provided the ESCI parts - Thanks Brian)) will be getting the other.
 Below is an ESCI kit made up many years ago when it was just about the only German ordnance (with the Wespe) that one could find in plastic that was not an Anti-tank or FlaK gun.  I still haven't figured out how to do the louvres at the sides, just above the tracks.
I have the crew figures.  I just need to glue them in...
 About the time my daughter was born (twenty years ago, now)  I used the ESCI model as a template for making a towed 15.0 cm gun/howitzer.  I've since removed the shield I had fitted, and I believe there are additions to be made.  The legs are too short, too, though I hope to disguise that by adding spades.  

Needs finishing: hydraulic elevating gear and spades; some crew figures.
Then finish off the base.
The whole thing was made from cardboard, balsa and plastic tube.
I never did finish the thing...


Finally, a couple of 7.5cm PaK40 Anti-tank pieces fashioned from the gun from the Airfix SdKfz234/4 Armoured Car kit.  The original kit was unsatisfactory from several points of view.  They will end up as fitted with scratchbuilt 75L24 guns as recon support vehicles (SdKfz 233).  One unfortunately I destroyed trying to fashion a Soviet BA64.  That experiment was not a success...

A use for the guns from the Airfix Armoured Car kit.
  I did at one point have a couple of scratchbuilt 7.5cm field guns
based on these, but dismantled them for other uses.
A bad decision!
The near piece has has the gun barrel replaced with plasctic tube, but the muzzle brake has been retained.  Not a wholly satisfactory solution.  I had shortened the original barrel to make 50L60 PaK38 AT guns - a mistake as I had no clear idea what the PaK38 looked like.  Oh well...

15 comments:

  1. Excellent progress on the Hummels! Your artillery park of scratch builds yet again impresses me!

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    1. I hope to get these finished this week sometime. Or at least the construction down to cosmetic stuff...

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  2. Speechless Ion...Awesome work all around!

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    1. You're too kind, Paul. Especially considering the impressive stuff I see coming off your workbench!

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  3. The SPG looks very good, must have been a lot of work putting it together, and the scratchbuilt gun is pure genius!

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    1. Not so much work, though a bit of thought has. I'm just painfully slow at this sort of thing...

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  4. increadible, your very good at all this. I have often wondered how to alter/ build some of my models with plastic card... I have 2 Abrams which are about 28mm scale or a bit bigger that I think I can turn into some sci-fi tanks with a bit of alteration. I just need to figure out what to do... they'll be used in Oronegro of coarse, perhaps some crazy prototypes for a US plan or something

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    1. Thanks Gowan,

      Why not use your Abrams as Abrams? Or maybe a 'super-Abrams' if scale is a problem. You've heard of the israeli 'Super-Sherman' no doubt, and late in WW2 an American tank repair workshop built a 'Super-Pershing.' This S-P was a plain old ordinary Pershing tank, but with the gun barrel doubled (more or less) in length I think they might simply have joined a second gun barrel onto the first. Be that as it may, a firing test in a stone quarry send a 90mm AP shell through the entire length of a Jagdpanzer IV - engine block and all - and 16 feet into the bedrock.

      The thing saw action, firing one shot. Some nasty beast of the German Cat variety had been molesting Allied road traffic from a side road at quite a long range. This side road was dead straight toward whatever it was that was causing the damage. Super-Pershing rolls up. Bang. Brief pause. Suddenly from roughly 1500-2000 meters away there was an almighty flash, something flew into the air, then silence. No one was game to travel down this side road to see what was what. But the traffic travelled trouble free henceforth.

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  5. Great work on the Hummels, I don't know if you have seen this but this guy does so nice scratch builds, I've gotten allot of inspiration from it:
    http://www.ucs.mun.ca/~tmarshal/

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    1. Great site, Don, thanks. I think I'll put a link in this blogspot. The casemate add-ons for temporary conversions of tanks to assault guns are particularly interesting.

      As for the Hummels (and the 15.0cm medium piece I'll be making from the third gun barrel), we'll just have to see.
      I'll say this about scratchbuilding: when it works well, you get stuff that has a character all its own.
      Cheers,
      Ion

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  6. Very impressive scratch-builds and conversions. I wish that I could do half as well!

    All the bet,

    Bob

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    1. Thanks, Bob. I just hope at the end of it I can be just as pleased with the result.

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  7. Thanks a lot for sharing this with all of us you really understand what you
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  8. If you'd like some PAK 40s, I have a few from building Airfix Opels that I'm not going to use.

    Drop me a line at bloggerator@gmail.com

    Regards,

    Greg

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    1. Thanks, Greg. I think I might be OK for PaK40s now, having at least 8, not counting the scratchbuilds...
      Cheers,
      Ion

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