Dan Vadas

Thank you all for the comments, and especially vossiewulf for the extra information .
 
I have finally finished gluing up both sets of tracks. That was quite a marathon . Below are some details of the "teeth" and "lugs" :



 
Fitting the tracks to the body isn't easy. I started by first gluing the locating lugs to the idler pulley, and then glued the pulley to the chassis :


 
The drive pulley is only glued to the tracks at one point so far, and not glued at all to the top rollers yet. Once the idler pulley has dried I'll glue the drive pulley into place. The bottom rollers will be fitted last to tension the tracks :



 
Danny

Thank you all for the comments, and especially vossiewulf for the extra information .
 
I have finally finished gluing up both sets of tracks. That was quite a marathon . Below are some details of the "teeth" and "lugs" :



 
Fitting the tracks to the body isn't easy. I started by first gluing the locating lugs to the idler pulley, and then glued the pulley to the chassis :


 
The drive pulley is only glued to the tracks at one point so far, and not glued at all to the top rollers yet. Once the idler pulley has dried I'll glue the drive pulley into place. The bottom rollers will be fitted last to tension the tracks :



 
Danny

Thank you all for the comments, and especially vossiewulf for the extra information .
 
I have finally finished gluing up both sets of tracks. That was quite a marathon . Below are some details of the "teeth" and "lugs" :



 
Fitting the tracks to the body isn't easy. I started by first gluing the locating lugs to the idler pulley, and then glued the pulley to the chassis :


 
The drive pulley is only glued to the tracks at one point so far, and not glued at all to the top rollers yet. Once the idler pulley has dried I'll glue the drive pulley into place. The bottom rollers will be fitted last to tension the tracks :



 
Danny

Thank you all for the comments, and especially vossiewulf for the extra information .
 
I have finally finished gluing up both sets of tracks. That was quite a marathon . Below are some details of the "teeth" and "lugs" :



 
Fitting the tracks to the body isn't easy. I started by first gluing the locating lugs to the idler pulley, and then glued the pulley to the chassis :


 
The drive pulley is only glued to the tracks at one point so far, and not glued at all to the top rollers yet. Once the idler pulley has dried I'll glue the drive pulley into place. The bottom rollers will be fitted last to tension the tracks :



 
Danny

Thank you all for the comments, and especially vossiewulf for the extra information .
 
I have finally finished gluing up both sets of tracks. That was quite a marathon . Below are some details of the "teeth" and "lugs" :



 
Fitting the tracks to the body isn't easy. I started by first gluing the locating lugs to the idler pulley, and then glued the pulley to the chassis :


 
The drive pulley is only glued to the tracks at one point so far, and not glued at all to the top rollers yet. Once the idler pulley has dried I'll glue the drive pulley into place. The bottom rollers will be fitted last to tension the tracks :



 
Danny

Thank you all for the comments, and especially vossiewulf for the extra information .
 
I have finally finished gluing up both sets of tracks. That was quite a marathon . Below are some details of the "teeth" and "lugs" :



 
Fitting the tracks to the body isn't easy. I started by first gluing the locating lugs to the idler pulley, and then glued the pulley to the chassis :


 
The drive pulley is only glued to the tracks at one point so far, and not glued at all to the top rollers yet. Once the idler pulley has dried I'll glue the drive pulley into place. The bottom rollers will be fitted last to tension the tracks :



 
Danny

Thank you all for the comments, and especially vossiewulf for the extra information .
 
I have finally finished gluing up both sets of tracks. That was quite a marathon . Below are some details of the "teeth" and "lugs" :



 
Fitting the tracks to the body isn't easy. I started by first gluing the locating lugs to the idler pulley, and then glued the pulley to the chassis :


 
The drive pulley is only glued to the tracks at one point so far, and not glued at all to the top rollers yet. Once the idler pulley has dried I'll glue the drive pulley into place. The bottom rollers will be fitted last to tension the tracks :



 
Danny

That sounds like a good guess, but one wonders why they couldn't just say StuG III ausf G and use its proper name. With the tracks, the cover art shows Winterketten. Don't tell me you're trying to do Winterketten with paper also, that would qualify as cruel and unusual punishment of customers by a publisher.

Dan
 
Those tank tracks put my whinge about the difficulties of skinning of a hull into perspective
 
Nice work
 
Richmond

Just catching up on your build Danny and great work as usual so far.
 
Having built a 160 individual track links I can feel your pain 😃
 
I am guessing its because it has the 75mm Pak 40 gun to distinguish it from the other versions available from the same publisher.
 
Cheers
Slog
 

Very nice job, Danny.
 
BTW I don't know where the 40 comes from, since this is a standard SturmGeschutz (StuG) III. It took its designation from the fact that it was built on the Panzer III hull, and eventually Panzer III production stopped entirely in favor of the StuG- as the war turned against Germany they needed more and more AT assets to deal with the Soviet T-34 hordes, and the StuG III G and later were quite effective tank killers with a good 75mm/L48 gun. Without turrets they were also cheaper and faster to build, and the StuG III was the most-produced armored vehicle built by Germany in WWII, with somewhere around 10,000 being built.
 
The StuGs were Von Manstein's idea, the early versions had a short-barreled 75MM gun intended to fire primarily HE in support of infantry attacks, hence its name which literally means assault gun. They often operated as single platoons parcelled out across an infantry battalion to support the infantry assaults, and were quite successful in this role. However, as noted their role changed during the war to basically exactly the same as a Pz-IV or -V, primarily a tank hunter and only secondarily supporting infantry.
 
Interestingly, the crews of StuGs were not part of the Panzerwaffe, they were artillery soldiers since their first role supporting infantry envisaged considerable use of the short-barrel 75mm in the indirect role.
 
With respect to the numbers you see on the side of German StuGs/tanks, they are usually company/platoon/vehicle, so if you see 321 that's the command tank of the second platoon of third company. Two-digit numbers were not at all typical, so not sure what the 40 is meant to be.

Thanks David, and all the others who replied .
 
The sprockets are very visible, this part (the tension adjuster) not so much :

I don't think I've got it quite right - the instructions were very vague about it (as usual ).
 
Danny

Five days later and I've made all the sprockets and rollers. To cut the teeth in the drive sprockets I used my punch set. There are 12 of these, a central one that contains the spokes and two outer ones to get the thickness correct :





 
The idler sprockets :


 
And the top rollers :



 
Danny

Continuing - the shock absorbers :

 
Next up is the reason I haven't updated lately - the 12 (plus 2 spares) bottom dual wheels. These have taken me 8 days to make, the equivalent of tying ratlines on a ship. I'm really glad to see the end of them at last . Here are four of the wheels in the various jigs I made to assist assembly :

 
I used two spacers and a piece of brass tubing to fit the inner wheel to the axle :

 
A finished wheel fitted to the suspension arm :




 
Danny

Pavol, I went one better and found THIS guy's build of the same kit. I've had to use the pics a few times to work out how to build some parts, and where they went .
 
I did that . No discoloration is visible to the eye and they are VERY strong.
 
Thanks for the link to the tracks. I didn't find that one, but that's not unusual for GPM's site which is rather difficult to navigate sometimes .
 
And thanks too for the site with that beautiful model - an inspiration indeed .
 
Danny

Thanks Mark and G'day Hof. I definitely had a cutaway in mind before starting the model, but the more I got into it the more I realized it would be virtually impossible with this particular one. I could have made nearly the whole top, from the front of the turret to the back of the engine cover, in one piece that lifts off but it would have created too many alignment and stability issues. I did the best compromise I could by making the hatches moveable.
 
Doing cutaways on card models wouldn't be any more difficult than in any other media, just not on this particular one. Anyhow, isn't actually BUILDING the model most of the fun? I don't look at them much after they are finished .
 
Danny

The front hatches only have one hinge each, so it's larger than the others with 2 and 3 sections. This of course makes it a bit harder to construct :




 
The engine cover hatches are a more complex arrangement, with ventilation for engine cooling :


 
There are also some small details, like these "fairleads" (for want of a better word) that support the tow cable :

 
With all the hatches finished it's time to fit the track guards :



 
Also the air filters :

 
Danny

Thanks for the info Patrick.
 
I'm not sure about that yet. The kit gives you three options, one of them being articulated tracks (that explains the 5 pages of tracks ). I'll certainly give it a try.
 
Danny

No.
 
As you will see from the next lot of pics. I've now glued on all the upper panels, and most interior detail has vanished. Here are the bits you CAN still see (just as well I took lots of pics earlier ) :









 
And just for you Richmond :

 
Danny

Sorry Sjors and others who have been waiting for an updated Index. My health and Xmas have been getting in the way a bit lately. The Indexes are now up-to-date.
 
Please note - updating the Indexes is a rather complex operation. It's not worth the time to update for only one or two new build logs - I usually wait until there are 5 or 6 new ones before updating.
 
Danny

That's easy to do on rounded pieces, I've done the same myself occasionally. What looks good on a computer doesn't always work in reality . Yep, looks good from a distance .
 
  Danny

Sorry Sjors and others who have been waiting for an updated Index. My health and Xmas have been getting in the way a bit lately. The Indexes are now up-to-date.
 
Please note - updating the Indexes is a rather complex operation. It's not worth the time to update for only one or two new build logs - I usually wait until there are 5 or 6 new ones before updating.
 
Danny

Time to start on the tracks. Here are all the ones needed for them. They come as an inner and an outer :

 
As you can imagine there is a bit of cutting to do :


 
I didn't align the sprockets quite right - the teeth of the inner sprockets don't quite align with the outer sprocket. This one isn't too bad, and I'll probably get away with it, but the other is worse so I'm going to have to cut it apart and fit the sprockets properly :


 
I've overlapped the inner and outer tracks to avoid have a "hard" joint - two sets are needed for each side :

 
Just when you think the amount of cutting needed can't get much worse - here are the "teeth" of the tracks. One is needed for each track segment :



 
There are also just as many locating lugs, which fit to the inner track and run between the double rollers.
 
The kit gives three options for the tracks - a simplified belt without any of the "teeth" or lugs, the option I chose which is a continuous belt with all the details, or the individually segmented tracks.
 
After looking at doing the tracks as individual "articulated" ones I decided against it. For one thing there are absolutely NO diagrams as to how they go together, although I did eventually work it out. There isn't much point, as the finished articles look identical anyway, and there is a lot more cutting and folding involved. In fact the only instructions regarding the tracks in the kit is one short paragraph listing which tracks go with each option - and they got the whole lot WRONG anyway 🤬.
 
Danny

Thanks David, and all the others who replied .
 
The sprockets are very visible, this part (the tension adjuster) not so much :

I don't think I've got it quite right - the instructions were very vague about it (as usual ).
 
Danny

Five days later and I've made all the sprockets and rollers. To cut the teeth in the drive sprockets I used my punch set. There are 12 of these, a central one that contains the spokes and two outer ones to get the thickness correct :





 
The idler sprockets :


 
And the top rollers :



 
Danny