Panther II – Assembling
The kit of this Panther II is by Cyber-Hobby, derived from an old Dragon one; in addition they added some photo-etchings, a bonus figure set (four "Volkssturm" soldiers) and an external tools set reissued with finer moulds. The detail is overall good, except for some inaccuracies, like the wrong turret shape.
The assembling has been easy, after all, I found no gaps between the joints and I didn't need to use putty. Few the cons:
- the main gun came out a few degrees off-axis, but actually I don't know if it's my fault;
- exhaust cover grills do not exactly center on the silencers, but it's hardly visible to the naked eye;
- photo-etched silencer struts are fragile;
- the rectangular slots for the cooling vent grills are smaller than the PE grills themselves, needing a fix with a cutter.
As a further detailing, I tried to make, with a small modeling drill, both the cast steel effect (for Saukopf, Kugelblende, commander's cupola and telemeter sight covers) and the rolled steel one, for the armor plates: while the former came out quite well, the latter was too off-scale, and I had to fix it with putty.
Finally, I rebuilt all handles with copper wire, adding also some handles to the turret walls (used for attaching branches, as an additional camouflage) and I added a welding seam around the Kugelblende with some Milliput bicomponent putty.
Tracks consist of three parts per link, totalling about 250 pieces. Some of these featured ejection marks, which I had to remove with a lot of patience... For the rest, the building has been quite easy, just pay attention to glue the return roller arms only after having completed the tracks.
Here is the model built and coated with primer.
