vossiewulf

My suggestion is to as much as possible not need to sand into tight corners by pre-sanding and pre-finishing anything that's going to go into a tight corner. If I need to sand into a tight corner I feel like I didn't think something through correctly.

Oil coating. First stage.
I used linen oil.

Good morning everyone
 
LOL i have king of given myself a Easter 2019 deadline (subject to change) to complete her, so there will be lots of new updates as i progress,  rhank you for the feedback
 
the foremast is fully completed with the exception of Stuns, main mast i just have about 5 lines to run, and the Mizzen about 50% complete, but Longbridge shows lots more so i will try to work out if more are needed, 
 
repair two bow lines and tighten a few up
stun booms
Coils to be made
ships boats
lanterns
crests and stern coat of arms
replace some tiles
general tidy up and stand to be dome
 
and no doubt others things as well
 

Hi ☺️

My suggestion is to as much as possible not need to sand into tight corners by pre-sanding and pre-finishing anything that's going to go into a tight corner. If I need to sand into a tight corner I feel like I didn't think something through correctly.

Danny, very nice job once again. But if you're a stickler for accuracy, the winterketten track extensions on your track should bend inward toward the bogies a bit. See pic below for an example.
 

My suggestion is to as much as possible not need to sand into tight corners by pre-sanding and pre-finishing anything that's going to go into a tight corner. If I need to sand into a tight corner I feel like I didn't think something through correctly.

My suggestion is to as much as possible not need to sand into tight corners by pre-sanding and pre-finishing anything that's going to go into a tight corner. If I need to sand into a tight corner I feel like I didn't think something through correctly.

Danny, very nice job once again. But if you're a stickler for accuracy, the winterketten track extensions on your track should bend inward toward the bogies a bit. See pic below for an example.
 

My suggestion is to as much as possible not need to sand into tight corners by pre-sanding and pre-finishing anything that's going to go into a tight corner. If I need to sand into a tight corner I feel like I didn't think something through correctly.

My suggestion is to as much as possible not need to sand into tight corners by pre-sanding and pre-finishing anything that's going to go into a tight corner. If I need to sand into a tight corner I feel like I didn't think something through correctly.

Danny, very nice job once again. But if you're a stickler for accuracy, the winterketten track extensions on your track should bend inward toward the bogies a bit. See pic below for an example.
 

Danny, very nice job once again. But if you're a stickler for accuracy, the winterketten track extensions on your track should bend inward toward the bogies a bit. See pic below for an example.
 

Hello my friends,
 
it's time again for a little update. Of course I could not let the weekend pass by without some work on the FWZP. Due to the very bad weather - even the dogs did not want to take a long walk - I decided to start first planking of the hull. The provided material - limewood strips - is really excellent. It's very easy to bend the strips after a hot water bath, the timber is sliced very exactly and cut into 1.5/6mm strips. It's very comfort to work with it - I know kits with much more worse material.
 
I started at the gundeck level and will go to the keel and upwards to the lower level of the main deck at a first step. When I have finished this work I will sand and fill up some smaller gaps. After another sanding I will cut out the gun ports of the battery deck. After this a second layer along the inner side of the hull (battery deck) will follow. I do this for a maximum of stability and for a good fitting of the gunport sills.
 
As usually some pics in the attachement
 
Cheerio
Max

Pair of blocks.

I’m moving to the "oil" work. After a critical assessment, I decided to finalize some elements.
I have modified zwaarden and made fasteners.

Danny, very nice job once again. But if you're a stickler for accuracy, the winterketten track extensions on your track should bend inward toward the bogies a bit. See pic below for an example.
 

First of all, many thanks for the greetings for the New Year and I hope that your interest in my report will continue in the New Year as well.
Steve, thank you very much for your nice comment.

Before I start with the shrouds, I still need a device for serving ropes.
First of all, I drew a plan to get the material and parts.




 
The first attempts with the rope serving machine were very successful.
In order to be able to control the tension on the thread better, I have to think of a supplement for the device.


 
 
 

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.

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.

And here is the look through the windows:
 

 
 
Oh, I have almost forgotten - here is one of my helpers - sometimes is very tired and sleepy. I can't understand why?😄
 

 
 
 
Enjoy the pics and have a great time.
Best regards

Happy New year to everyone!  First off my apologies for not being on the site as much as usual and checking in on everyone's progress, something I hope to rectify soon. 
 
My progress has been limited, some small steps have been taken, and problems encountered that stopped me in my tracks for a while.
 
Channel Brackets:
The kit supplies PE channel support brackets, unfortunately I found this unworkable as is as the profile impinged on the decorative molding, they're also a little wider than indicated on the plan.  The PE parts are scored pretty heavily at the bending points so trying to tweak these was not really an option.  The problem also identified by others is that there are not enough provided in the kit (per the AOTS there are 3 shown on the mizzen, 6 for main and 4 for the fore channel) and only 11 provided, so the kit is 2 short.  Further analysis suggests its likely 3 short as there are 2 brackets used between ports, and it appears that one is simply hidden behind the stock of the anchor on page 69.  I'm going to reflect 5 brackets on the fore channel.  Another slight complication is that the mizzen brackets need to be smaller to account for the lower position of the channel in the open rail configuration I'm following.  Basically I needed to make my own, and without any really good photos to follow went with my gut.
 

 
Not having any other suitable materials handy, my eye turned to one of the spare sets of PE from other CC kits I had purchased a while back.  Not sure which kit, but a little filing and cutting to length allowed the chains to be workable.  These also appear to be almost exactly the same narrower width as shown in the AOTS profiles.  The center portion of the Diana PE part was re-purposed to attach to the channel.  Exactly the same approach was taken for the mizzen, except that the top of the Diana PE part was used and different dimensions for the bracket supporter.  This was all rather fiddly and took rather longer than I'd care to admit... 🙂
 

 

 
Cannons....finally:
Once the channel supporters were in place I could then proceed with installation of the cannons.  These are now glued in place (using CA), I didn't pin these in place as this would have been a little problematic at this stage, and they seem quite secure as is.  Breeching ropes were attached off the ship prior to installation.  Another self imposed delay was decision to go with 'light brown' Syren line rather than the 'tan' used previously - this seems to have a tone that blends better with the colour palette.  The Syren line is very nice to work with and the usual trick of using dilute PVA was used to fine tune the final profile.  For these more obscured cannons, I used a simple eyebolt to secure the breach rope, for the more visible ones in the waist, I want to explore using ringbolt as per practice, but even using a simple eyebolt gives a satisfactory result to my eye at this scale.
 

 
And finally, the exterior shot...in retrospect I'm happy with the decision to install the channels and brackets first as I'm pretty sure there would have been collateral damage to cannons during installation.  5 down, 23 to go.

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.

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.