Kevin,

I'll be watching this. Your interior is great!

Very nice work here. I like the interior stuff, very advanced. Should make a great diorama.

-Conor

WOW!! excellent work! looking forward to seeing the finished project

Now it's on to the ammo/storage boxes on either side of the superstructure.

On the right side was the main ammo bin for the charges. The 15 cm sch. Feldhaubitze mounted in the Hummel used a 2-part ammo system: the projectile and the charges. The ammo bin on the side is used to store the charges (which propelled the projectile) while the two boxes at the rear of the fighting compartment held the projectiles. The bin comes with brackets for holding two small boxes on top of the bin but I decided not to include them because I could not find any photos of them and I wanted to show the folding cover for the ammo box:



Note that two of the spaces in the bin are empty but Dragon thoughtfully included two empty charges in the kit so I showed them sitting on the floor - I had to fill them with putty to simulate the explosive powder (which I found out later actually comes in cloth bags which were just stuffed into the charges - so what I have shown is a minor inaccuracy). Note also that the shell casings are steel rather than brass because I am depicting a late-war vehicle when shortages of copper forced the German munitions industry to switch to steel casings.

On the left was another storage box which I'm not sure what it was used for - I'm guessing that it stored the large superstructure tarp used to cover the vehicle in bad weather. The box include in the kit was a simple box without any added detail so I scribed the front into a 2-section arrangement similar to the ammo boxes and added hinges.



I also added the two kar 98k rifles that equipped the vehicle for close-quarters defense (along with the two MP 40 guns and MG 34) - one in its storage bracket and one lying on top of the storage bin. I scratchbuilt two small cardboard boxes which the ammo came in:





Returning to the right side I added the MG 34 but had to raise the brackets 2 mm over the location given in the kit in order to make room for the two ammo boxes stored underneath it (I had to make the brackets for ammo boxes):





Next is the front of the superstructure. This consisted of two plates on either side. Between them was the gun and gunshield. The inner plate had a series of four "splatter shields" (according to the Nuts & Bolts volume) which were supposed to deflect any shrapnel or bullets that hit the gun shield. These were not included in the kit so I had to make them myself. They turned out a little uneven but this will be a low-visibility part of the model anyway once the gun and gunshield is installed:



On the right side was a gas cylinder that held the compressed gas used in the gun's equilibrators (again, according to Nuts & Bolts). This was also not included in the kit (although the bracket for holding the cylinder is included) so I had to scratchbuild it. I used parts of 2 "88" shells which came in the kit as part of the artillery loading figures (a kit bonus!) and a piece of sprue:



Once it was glued in place and the subassemblies painted I attached them to the main model. Here's the right side:





And the left:



And a rear view:



That's it for now - thanks for following.

Looking great. I like the little details. Can't wait to build one of my Hummels.

Thanks Dustin - it can be a challenging build!

Now it's time to move on to the gun. When I first opened the box and inspected the contents I was impressed with the level of detail on the gun - I thought that at least this part would be a straight OOB build - wrong! Comparing the gun details (or lack of) to my references I started to notice immediately that a lot of work would be necessary to bring it up to the level of accuracy that I wanted.

So starting with the recoil slide one immediately notices the large number of rivets on the exterior but the complete absence of rivets on the inside surfaces. So my first task was to laboriously glue a couple hundred (I'm exaggerating although it didn't feel like it at the time) rivets from my spares box and some kits that I never intended to finish onto the interior of the slide.



I also added a small rod on the left side - I'm not really sure what its purpose was. On the exterior right side there was a ruler that measured the amount of recoil of the gun - why this was important I'm also not sure. This was molded onto the recoil slide so in order to make it look more realistic I sliced off the molded version and scratchbuilt my own:





I added the gun barrel next.





Added a few more details to the recoil slide and trunnions:



I also redid the two small pulley wheels on top of the trunnions:



Next item was the gun carriage and mountings. A lot of work was done on these parts - almost half the rivets you see in the following shots were added by me. There were a few parts that were added that were not included in the kit - you can see them in the photos:



Here's a close-up of the left side showing the large metal board on which was posted a table for determining the amount of charge and the gun elevation necessary to deliver a projectile to a certain distance. The part included in the kit was too thick for my preference and I replaced it with a scratchbuilt part:



Those of you who are familiar with this weapon will note the absence of the sighting device. I will add it later after I paint the main gun and the sight separately. The mounting for the sight and the two parts that link it to the gun are present, however. It should be noted that the instructions reverse these two parts so beware if you are building this kit - I had to resort to my references to determine exactly how they were arranged (in fact, I had to do this a lot with this kit).



And a view of the right side:



Note that I also replaced the four flanges supporting the recuperator with pieces cut from thin plastic card in order to get the right scale thickness - the parts supplied by the kit were way too thick (you can compare the kit-provided parts with my own by looking at the photos at the top of the page and comparing them with the last four). And that's all for this post - hope you find this interesting and informative.

On your photo of the Mark IV what did you use for the camo foliage?

David-

I bought HO scale trees from my local hobby store and stripped them of their "leaves."





I painted a section of cheesecloth olive green and then cut the needles from the strands of cheesecloth and glued them to the branches from the trees:





Very time consuming but I think the effort was worth it in the end!

Before attaching the gun to the hull I painted it - Lifecolors Dunkelgelb lightened with about 30% flat white.







NOW the gun can be mounted into the hull:



There's one more step to make the gun assembly complete - attaching the two rods on each side that connected the gun to the gunshield. These were not included in the kit so I scratchbuilt them out of plastic rod and had to do a lot of fiddling with them to get them in place:





And here's some overall shots of the fighting compartment so far:







Now to move on to the exterior. I added several scratchbuilt details to the front and rear, mainly because the kit-supplied parts were too thick.





I removed the molded-on cleats on the upper sides of the superstructures and replaced them with "type 2 cleats" made by TMD - here's a shot of them on the sprues:



And on my model - you can see they are very nicely done!



Next I painted the overall exterior with more dunkelgelb then overpainted olivgrun and schokoladenbraun in broad stripes and wavy lines. I have an airbrush and tried using it initially but couldn't get the patterns just right so I ended up painting most of the pattern by hand. It should look more realistic once I weather it:









And until next time...

Kevin,
That fighting compartment looks great! I really like how you've speckled the gun making it looked used but not dirty.

Gaz

Looks great!!

Thanks Gary and Dustin - glad you're enjoying it!

So after applying the base camo coat I proceeded to add the external details. I do this because I find it easier to paint all the little add-ons separately rather than when they are already attached to the main build. First the front. On the bow and glacis plates I added the spare track links, two tow ropes (not provided in the kit - I had to use artistic wire glued to spare tow cable ends)and a spare road wheel carried on some vehicles.



On the left and right fenders I added the jack and wooden jack block, respectively.

The barrel locking device was a complex build in itself. The construction of it was made even more complicated by Dragon's less-than-crystal-clear instructions! For example, two small parts which are necessary to complete the main support rods are not mentioned in the instructions and aren't even shown on the parts page! Here they are, parts
N36 and N37, shown next to the parts they attach to:



And here's a layout of all the component parts of the barrel lock:



Now to put them all together, paint and attach to the rest of the model:





Moving to the rear, I added the two spare bogey wheels in their brackets:



Next I dulled and blended the camo paint with successive washes of Raw Sienna (basically, dirt color) and Dunkelgelb. The same was done for the glacis plate hatches and the rear doors before attaching to the vehicle. Then I could attach them...





The last structure to be added to the front (besides the antenna) is a wooden storage box which some vehicles carried on the right front fender (in fact, some carried boxes on both fenders). I scratchbuilt this out of plastic sheet. Photos of the real thing show it to be a dark color so I chose to paint it a greenish field grey but that is purely speculation on my part.





And a final shot for this post - the breech is open, ready to fire!

Kevin,
Really liking that paint job. Your scratchbuilt added details look great, too.
When I was in the artillery we called that barrel locking device a travelock. Love that you can look down the barrel and see rifling.

Gaz

This is so nice. You did a great job. I love the pic looking down the barrel.

Cheers,
Dustin

Gary-

Thanks for the reply - it's good to have an ex-artillery man following my blog! Hope your life now is filled with "targets" of the good variety - money, women (if you are so inclined) and, of course, great models!

Dustin-

Thanks for you interest and feedback. Your King Tiger is looking nice - I like the "ambush" pattern. I do have one suggestion. I noticed that you painted the heads of the tow cables in camouflage like the rest of the tank but the rest of the cables in a dark rusty brown. I think either color option could be used but the entire cable should be one or the other. The way it's currently shown, they would have had to spray the cable heads while attached to the tank but masked off the main part of the cable - not really much point, in my mind. Anyway, I'm sure it'll look really good when you are finished!

Kevin,

I went back and looked at a pic. I see what you're saying. Thank you for the tip. I'll go over them when I finish up the details. What would a normal color be on the tow cables? Dunkelgelb?

It occurs to me that continuing to make models and blogging about them in the current world political/economic situation is kind of like Nero fiddling while Rome burns but here goes anyway...

So now that all the major components of the build are in place I can start adding a few "extras." I cut open a computer cable to get the copper wires inside to make the wires that criss-cross the superstructure. It was quite the challenge threading them through the tie-on cleats but I accomplished it with a a trusty pair of pliers, a lot of patience and much swearing under my breath!





Next - the most difficult part of the painting IMO, the weathering. For the mud I made a mixture of spackle and Testors plastic glue and applied liberally to the lower hull, wheels and tracks. I painted mainly Model Master Raw Sienna with a few splotches of dark earth brown:









And now to use those wires and foliage loops... I made a number of pine branches using the technique I showed a couple of posts back. I attached them to the sides of the superstructure and wires using small amounts of superglue at strategic spots. I added three helmets to the inverted U-shaped loops around the superstructure and added the antenna to the right side. This completes the external part of the model. Just a few more minor additions to the fighting compartment and the Hummel will be done!

nice job !