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Armor/AFV: Axis - WWII
Armor and ground forces of the Axis forces during World War II.
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2nd try: Dragon 1/35th Panther barrel lenght?
GastonMarty
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Quebec, Canada
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Posted: Monday, June 28, 2010 - 09:25 AM UTC

Hello. Can someone spare the time to put a ruler to their 1/35th scale Panther? All I need is mantlet to muzzle brake, in mm, and the muzzle brake lenght itself, in mm...

Thanks.

Gaston
tatbaqui
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ARMORAMA
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Posted: Monday, June 28, 2010 - 03:25 PM UTC
Gaston, I've yet to build a DML Panther from the stash. The muzzle brake itself is 15mm. Hope this helps. Cheers -- Tat
padawan_82
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Posted: Monday, June 28, 2010 - 09:27 PM UTC
Panther G (smart kit 6268) barrel from muzzle break to mantlet 115mm (11.5cm)
Panther A (premium late production 6358) barrel from muzzle break to mantlet is 117mm (11.7cm)
Ant
GastonMarty
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Posted: Tuesday, June 29, 2010 - 05:19 PM UTC

Thanks to both of you!

This confirms the measurements I just got from Missing Lynx:

117 mm total for a 15 mm Muzzle brake. Here are some further conclusions:

In 1/48th 1 mm can be visible on smaller dimensions to me: It equals 2 inches, and in 1/35th 1 mm is not quite insignificant yet at around 1.5 inches...

The 1/48th Tamiya Panther is off by four inches, from measurements I took in the National War Museum in Ottawa... 2 inches in the barrel and two inches in the muzzle brake: Quite obvious...

Your measurements indicate 525 mm for the muzzle brake and I measured 488 mm, so 1.48 inches off: similar to the Tamiya 1/48th kit muzzle brake but a little less...

Your measurements for the gun barrel alone are much worse than the 1/48th Tamiya kit!: I measured precisely a lenght of 3403 mm full size, your 102 mms come out to 3570 mm 1:1, so a discrepancy of 167 mm!!!! A whopping total of 6.57 inches!!! (Or 97 mm for the G barrel: 3.8 inches...)

Total discrepancy of the Dragon barrel is 8.05 inches!!! (Or 5.28 inches for the "smart kit" G barrel...)

I always thought these 1/35th Panthers looked strange, hence my verification...

There were very significant hull/turret discrepancies in the 1/48th Tamiya kit, which compounded one another quite visibly in overall effect on the appearance, but nowhere near as large as these barrel measurements!

I will post more details later...

Thanks very much again!

Gaston
CMOT
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ARMORAMA
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Posted: Tuesday, June 29, 2010 - 05:39 PM UTC
Gaston you also need to consider that the tank you measured may be off due to something that happened to it.
padawan_82
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Posted: Tuesday, June 29, 2010 - 10:37 PM UTC
happy to help Gaston, will probably replace the dragon kit barrels with Aber barrels myself, love their multi-part muzzle breaks! just need to find a supplier for them on the net over here in the U.K. Hannants do the Aber PE sets but not the aluminium barrels
GastonMarty
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Posted: Wednesday, June 30, 2010 - 03:08 PM UTC

Quoted Text

Gaston you also need to consider that the tank you measured may be off due to something that happened to it.



-Always be careful with museum pieces, especially aircrafts... But the Ottawa Panther is not a re-build; it is all components of the same tank, and the main gun was correctly seated at the mantlet as the base flare indicate...

The Dragon kit barrels clearly are wrong (it is in fact because all kit barrels look so wrong that I took the trouble to take these measurements in the first place), but I would much prefer shortening a plastic barrel rather than a metal one!

Note the extra 2 inch lenght in the 1/48th Tamiya muzzle brake portion is all in the front slot, so likely the same thing for the 1.48 inch excess of the Dragon muzzle brake...

Plus 6.5" (Ausf A) or 4" (Ausf G) on the barrel itself... : I can't imagine doing all this delicate butchery on a metal barrel, unless the metal is uncharacteristically soft... Then you would have to putty and sand this hard metal, without the ragged sawed edges showing through the much more sandable putty...

I think these huge mistakes, blindly repeated over and over by these metal parts, disqualifies them from serious consideration, compared to shortening a soft kit plastic barrel...

Also, given how wrong all these Panther barrels look, I would rather go with what the real tank says...

Another issue: I am deeply sceptical of the disparate "A"/"G" barrel lenghts on the Dragon kit, probably an invented issue straight from the flawed Panzertracts drawings: Panzertracts also suggest a 4" difference in the lenght from screw-in point forward on the two-piece Jagdpanther barrel, compared to the SAME gun on the King Tiger: Very probably nonsense in both cases that also needs to be put to rest...

The far better Sergey ignatiev drawings show none of these Ausf A/G barrel discrepancies (but muzzle brake size is wrong, if memory serves): They are found in "Steelmasters" "Les Thematiques", the Panther special issue of about two years ago.

Gaston

P.S.: Interesting detail on the Panther barrel you may want to scribe in yours: 66 scale inches from the mantlet, a thin scribed line, lightly engraved on the barrel, goes around the barrel evenly: Again, much easier to do on a plastic barrel, and absent from any kit or AM barrel I have seen...

G.
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