James McFarlane shows the steps he took when constructing Italeri''s SEMOVENTE DA 75/18

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If you have comments or questions please post them here.

Thanks!

What's a pity that the rubber tracks are so bad we can even see the join on the right one.

Cheers
seb

Hi James

Are these the reference photos you used?

http://www.ambbrescia.com/photofile/Veicoli_terrestri_uniformi/_1/m75_18sum41/m41_75_18.html

I've built the Tamiya equivalent as well as Italeri's and the Tamiya interior is marginally more accurate as far as layout goes, but not as detailed. The Breda Modello 30 Italeri give you for the interior puzzled me too and I wondered if Italeri had managed to include it after looking at an M13/40 based Semovente as they used the Modello 30 as an AA MG instead of the Breda Modello 38 of the M41s. Just a guess though.

David

Nice job on that one, James. Good to see what nice builds can be achieved with old kits.

Thanks for sharing

Hi Guys, glad you enjoyed the article.

-Darren; thanks for putting up with my many e-mails and getting this up on the site, appreciated!

-Seb; the tracks themselves actually have quite good detail for their age, although of course suffer from the issues that rubber band tracks have. For this build I couldn't justify spending twice the price of the kit on indy links. The join you see was due to some over zealous heated screwdriver work that prevented this side from closing properly. Obviously hiding it under the roadwheels didn't prevent your eagle eye from spotting it!

-David; Yes that site was the inspiration for some of the interior scratching and the interior colour scheme, the other big online reference used was the beutepanzer site which has several pics of Semovente's in German service.
I havn't built the Tamiya kit (which looks like will be re-released with new figs soon) but I know it includes the ammo storage bin that is missing in this kit.
Can't comment on the Italian MG's with any certainty but what you say sounds plausible. It's unlikely they would have had both, my feeling is that it was added simply as something else to put in the interior.

-Jesper; Thanks for your kind words. I'm a big advocate of not writing off old kits, with some TLC they can make some lovely builds.

Thanks guys, I welcome any more questions.

James

Thanks James for your reply
Nice build anyway
seb

It's always nice to see these older kits being built and still enjoyed.
Nothing wrong with exercising a little modeling skills to update older kits instead of simply writing them off.
Having built both the Tamyia and Italeri kits back in the land of real teeth, I always liked the finer details on the Italeri kit, over the Tamyia kit's more chunkier parts. But just my opinion of the two kits.

Dave,

Thanks for the comments. As mentioned I havn't built the Tamiya kit, but having seen it built and under construction i'd be inclined to agree with your assesment. I'd definately recommend the Italeri/Zvezda offering anyway.

James