Starting on the hull. My first real problem is to figure our how to form the diamond plate of the floor as I build wall/floor/cabinet structures.

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Starting on the hull. My first real problem is to figure our how to form the diamond plate of the floor as I build wall/floor/cabinet structures.

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Very "old school" and quite interesting project.

For the floor texture, I think you have three options:

1. Evergreen or Plastruc textured sheet styrene or ABS.
2. Etched brass sheet, like from Aber.
3. Scratching the texture.

I assume that options 1. and 2. are out, so here's a technique for scratching the texture:

Take a piece of woven wire screening (the finer the weave, the finer the final texture). Measure the size of your floor area, and cut a piece of aluminum foil the same size (or slightly larger).

Lay the foil over the screen wire and emboss the the foil with the screen texture. Use a soft rubber tool like a pencil eraser and a pressing motion (rather than a side-to-side scrubbing motion) to create the texture on the foil.

The foil can now be glued down to the styrene floor plate. Micro-Mask makes a foil adheasive for airplane modelers, but there are other options. You could even use CA, especially the slow setting type that can be spread. Obviously, the textured foil has to be handled carefully. You can't really press down on it when gluing, but sometimes you can turn the assembly upside down and put a small weight on it while the glue sets - just nothing too heavy, only enough weight to get the foil glued on evenly.

If you use a piece of foil slightly larger then the desired floor plate, you can trim the edges after the glue sets. Cut or sand down against the foil with the edge of the floor plate under it to guide the knife or sanding block.

The trick to doing this is finding a piece of wire screen with the right sized weave to make the desired diamond tread pattern. The final detail is also a bit "soft," but for an interior that's mostly hidden in the shadows, it works pretty well, and if carefully done, will even look OK on exposed fender tops, etc.

You could try to use the kit fender diamond tread patterns as the "die" for embossing the foil (instead of the screen), but I've alwasy had trouble "indexing" sucessive "pressings" and so the results have lacked a certain mechanical precision. But this will work, too.

Good luck!

Neal,
I will be following this one closely. I have this kit waiting in the wings and would love to model it with the hatches open!

Hi Neal

Could you do me a huge favour please.
Could you possibly scan (or even photograph) the Verlinden Pzr III engine instructions and send them to me? I bought this kit before Christmas and there were no instructions included in the box.
I´ll PM you my e-mail address. Thanks a million. Will be following your thread to see how this goes together now!! Talk about perfect timing!!

Good Progress so far, I find when building an interior little things like wiring, the addition bolt heads etc really add alot of detail.

Bolt heads will be especially important in your build, the Dragon Panzer 3 has no detailing on the hull sides where as the real Panzer 3 had lots.

S

Hello,

Is that a 50mm ammo round? personally I would have a go at cutting the shell out and making the ammo rack out of plastic card either that or sand out the remaining resin with some sand paper.

S

I really like the progress so far very nice build and you know how much I like internal details.

I am very disappointed with Verlinden though, they are releasing kits which are inaccurate and not to scale. I would have build this kit and hyper detailed it were accurate.