General Rockets Flakpanzer

[lancfan]

Well it worked ! If you increase the size further to 700 or 800 you will get larger clear images. I assume your last picture is narrow because you resized it before you rotated it giving it a height of 320 instead.
Re-sized to 350 wide and then uploaded to Photobucket:


Re-sized to 700 wide and then uploaded to Photobucket:


David.

[Ian]

It's looking very good!

[ntrocket88]

Excellent work. You did a great job on the camo especially.

[general rocket]

The finished item














The main jobs this week have been to straighten the gun barrels and aerials.
I retried the recommended method of immersing in boiling water, gently dressing straight, then immersing in cold water to recure. The slight warp looks less bad than it did, but is still noticeable to me (the modeller is never satisfied) but given my lack of experience with resin, I'll let myself get away with it. The guns where then glued onto the turret, positioning carefully in order to conceal the greater sag on the right hand gun.
The aerials are cut from a piece of wire, slightly to thick but all I have at the moment. Consulting several photographs, showed aerials of several different lengths, so I chose my favourite, on purely aesthetic grounds. I glued it in using the gel glue, which when cured received a dab of ModelColor Black Grey to represent the rubber mount and Knarloc Green for the antennae.
The turret finished, I have not glued it into place for purely storage reasons. The turret itself looks generally fairly faithful, apart from its lack of depth. I've not measured it, but judging by the position of the cross decal it appears to be about 1.5-2mm to shallow above the guns (I've already mentioned the lack of slope on the front of turret).
My next German tank I will try using Citadel Skrag Brown instead of Humbrol Matt 62. The Humbrol paint is pretty well spot on colour wise for factory fresh German armour, but dries very uneven and patchy. Speaking to the proprietor of a model shop I visit, he tells me that Humbrol have been having problems with quality control from their Chinese suppliers, can anyone confirm if this true, or is it just one of those paints that does not like being used?
My only real self criticism, being the front mud flaps not glued on straight. This I think can be put down to my lack of experience with resin, in that the glue I was using to start with did not seem to like the resin and took an age to cure, giving the parts time to move (what do they say about a bad workman?). I may try to do something about that in future, once I know what I can do about it without risking damaging the model, any one any suggestions?
Conclusion, despite the turret, a nice model of one of my favourite tanks.

Criticism welcome.

[JohnRatzenberger]

Hmmmm, I re-read your notes about super-glue.

First, did you give your kit a nice bath in a mild soap/water and dry it off beforehand ? That gets rid of mold release agents, more prevalent in resin kits than styrene.

I think you noted it already, but a good mating surface is necessary. Super-glue (CA) has no shear strength and a bumped part will do what it will. I find this particularly true with photo-etch attached to resin and usually use a white-glue ...

Do you have an accelerator ? I use it sparingly, prefering to let glue cure naturally but sometimes it is necessary to prevent a part from shifting while in the cure process.

I use thin brass rod to apply CA sparingly. A glob of CA will not be much stronger than a tiny dab and parts will slide around in the glob while it is drying.

I tend to use a mid-cure/thickness CA for most everything, and thick/heavy if I need longer working time. As you noted a gel is also good for some things.

If you CA a part on, and it comes off, try to clean up the mating surfaces again before regluing, otherwise the glue is just bonding to the previous layer of glue and not the surface itself and is thus weaker.

Just a few thoughts from the resin wars ....

[lancfan]

Humbrol have/are about to move paint production back to the UK to recover the old paint standards so the paint problems should hopefully change as new UK stocks replace the old pots.

David.

[general rocket]

Thanks for the comments JRatz.
Yes I did give the parts a bath in warm water and washing up liquid with a careful rinse afterwards.
I didn't use an accelerator, in the past I have found super glue to go off quickly enough and I saw no point in running before I could walk (resin-wise that is).
I will make use of your tip about the brass rod, though I was as sparing as thought appropriate, though experience may prove wrong.
I did clean off all of the old CA before regluing, and prepared the surfaces carefully, though as above, as I gain experience I may prove myself wrong.

T.V.M.