The kit comes together nicely but what's more important this 1:1 scale heir is beautiful! Congratulation and good health to him and his mother!

Steven,

Congratulations to you and your wife! A future modeler fresh off the assembly line

Hi Steven,

Congrats to both you & your wife & very pleased to hear that all ended well after what would have been a very stressful & worrying time for you!!

I hope you all get to enjoy being a family at home as soon as possible.

The 222 is looking great but not what is top of the important tree anymore, that now belongs to your little angel.

All the best
Mike

Congats on the birth to you both.
I'm in the process of building a 222 and am keenly following your progress.
Has anyone noticed the distance between the bottom of the driver's seat back and his foot pedals? I make the driver to be somewhere over 4 feet from waist to toes - a very tall German.

Tom

Hi all,

Thanks for all the kind comments about my cute little baby.

Tom the drivers chair is adjustable for the more vertically challenged soldiers !

You know its hard to spend 7 hours at work, come home and manage to spend hours watching TV, playing DayZ and modelling with a new born but some how I manage to pull it off. I can even manage to fit in time to ignore the wife

Anyway on with the update

I have mostly completed the interior of the lower hull and have begun adding some things including the windows to the upper hull. There is lots to add here because Tristar really neglected this area

I have also changed the MG ammo containers stowage, I cut off the solid plastic bases and replaced them with lead strip cut to the right size. They actually look ok.

I have been adding the completed PE to the hull which is always fun.

In answer to your comments about painting, I do plan to paint the tank in a DAK colour scheme and pray that it looks acceptable.

















Thanks for looking

Steven

Coming along in leaps & bounds Steven & looking really really cool.

Will keep watching with interest

Mike

Hi Steven,

Brilliant skill and workmanship on display once again. I hope your wife wasnt looking over your shoulder as you typed your remarks. I guess not or there wouldnt have been an update.

Well done Steven!

Gary

Hi Steven
compliments for your model, it's superb!!

Actually I'm painting my sdkfz 222 Tristar, do you see in this forum, the post is "wip 222 tristar and insigna question".
I have make the kit OOB.

Great work!!
mike

I've had the Tamiya kit for literally ages --- about 30 years, all told! Thanks for posting your step-by-step build, which I'll follow with interest!

Hi Everyone and thanks for all the kind comments.

I have been meaning to do an update for a while but the baby has other ideas. I dont know 5 weeks old and he claims to need cuddles all day.

I have more or less completed the build of the upper and lower hulls and they are ready for painting. Unfortunately it has been difficult to get hold of Tamyia Surface Primer which is essential to paint all the PE. The next main build elements are the main 20mm Gun and the turret.



I have added some fuel cans to the front of the 222 and 2 water cans to the sides. This will be a DAK vehicle so they would have carried lots of both.







I have added a PE and brass wire shovel, I think it looks ok.



This is the upper hull with the fuel and water cans removed





A few shots of the completed upper hull interior and the doors. I have added lots here as Tristar completely ignored this area and its packed with details. I particularly like the spare Notek headlight and lamp which I borrowed from a Panzer 38t that never quite made it off the production line a few years ago.





Maybe the fuel cans will act as additional armour protection



The 222 seems to have paper thin armour and I would not like to have had the thankless task of reconnaissance in this little armoured car.

Thanks for looking

Steven

I don't know, Steven, whether I'd prefer the protection of the basic balsawood nose "armor" or the risk of igniting five gallons of gasoline to ensure the driver's "protection" (and I use that word advisedly).

We've all heard of "shoot & scoot," and I don't think it's hard to imagine which we'd opt for in a Sd.Kfz.222!

Wow Steven!!! Every time i stop in and see your progress, i suddenly feel like a little boy standing among GIANTS!!!
Had I the time and money, i would fly there and pay you for a couple of "how to" classes. Brilliant work as usual Steven. Keep the good stuff coming! Between cuddles of course.

Gary

Thanks for the comments Fred, Gary,

Fred you are quite right maybe the fuel cans may not be the best protection, maybe I should add a few 88mm rounds I am sure nothing would go wrong if an American 75mm round hit one of them ?

Dont worry Gary if you came to London there would be plenty of time for moddling and cuddling

Hi Steven great work buddy, the detailing is superb, looking forward to seeing a lot more of this great build.

Tom

I have heard of cold soldering, is there any basis to this? Is it worth while investing money into this platform. Or a low heat system work better?

Thanks Tom,

Hi Trevor,

I have never heard of cold soldering is this some kind of epxoy glue? Soldering is fine but dont expect to be good at it from the start practice and practice.

Looking brilliant Steven; KUTGW

It's the 'iron' that's cold, not the soldering. It's more accurately called 'resistance soldering'. Basically, what you have is a battery-powered tool that has a two-pronged graphite tip with a thin layer of mica separating the two prongs. When you turn it on, a voltage is applied across the prongs, but because they're separated, no current flows. When you touch the tip to your work item, it closes the circuit, and the resistance of the graphite makes the tip heat up, transferring heat to the objects being soldered and the solder itself. You're still making the solder joint the same way you would with a regular soldering iron, but because of the small mass of the working tip, when you break the circuit by lifting the tip of the iron from your working pieces, the tip cools off very rapidly. The resistance of human skin is high enough that very little current flows if you touch the tip with your finger, creating minimal heating that is generally imperceptible.

Because the tip of the iron heats up only when you have it in contact with the material being soldered, you don't have a hot iron lying around waiting to burn you, and because they're battery powered, you don't have a cord that you can snag to flail the hot iron around.

Hi Everyone,

Lots have been going on since my last post including moving house which is always a pain not helped when you have a 10 week old baby to look after. Plus getting into work as been a real pain thanks Olympic games and LOCOG. Anyway we are now moved and set up in the new house and broadband internet has finally been set up. I also heard that I have passed my post graduate degree so thats four years well spent. The baby also seems happy.



I have been managing to put in a hour here and there and have made some progress. I apologise in advance for the colour and light quality, the wife managed to brake my spot light while moving and so I have to buy another tomorrow but I did not want to delay my update any longer.



I primed the model with Tamyia Fine Surface metal primer and the results were ok, not too much glue cleaning up to do.

I then applied the German gray to the floor and ivory white to the walls of the interior and whethered them with enamels. Its not quite finished though.









I painted the top of the interior at the same time following roughly the same process







Thanks for looking

Steven

Hi Steven.
Congratulations on the birth of your son. It was around this time I started modelling, when my daughter was born. She was 11 a few weeks ago!! Time goes by very quickly so make the most of it.

Awesome work on the interior of the 222. Love it. Its a pity the view will be limited when everything else is in place. Its really worthwhile taking so many photos ... both for your own pleasure later and ours now.

Hello Steven,

First off, that is one of the cutest pictures ive ever seen man! Gees, I cant remember mine being that small. My son turned 19 on wednesday and my daughter is 25. Steven, its a cute little costume now and keys to tha car before you know it! Oh how the time flies by. Hey, congrats on the degree man! Cheers to that! I know you have worked hard on that. Oh, and the build looks fantastic as well. Well done Steven, on all accounts.

Best wishes,
Gary

The 222 is looking great and I cant stop thinking about those etches (and the work you have put in making) under the paint and weathering

Congrats on your degree. Your kid is cute and as Gary put it, time does fly. My son is now 15 and all my missing tools / items invariably ends up in his room. I will be spending hours searching everywhere else....

Hi everyone and thanks for the kind comments.

I have managed to put in a few hours on the model and I have completed the build of the Gun mounts on the 222. The 222 was armed with a 20mm KwK 38 main gun and a MG34 as a secondary weapon and the mounting system is suprisingly complex.

As you can see the confined space interior gets alot more claustrophobic with the installation of the gun mount.

I have heavily modified the stock mount and guns. The MG34 is a Dragon Gen. 2 weapon with an ABER gun barrel. The kit 20mm gun has been modified with the Lionroar barrel and a few PE additions. Most of the rest is my interpretation of images that I managed to pull off the net

















There is alot more to add and then I have to prime and paint it.

Thanks for looking

Steven

I've been following your builds since your Pz I ...
amazing work as always, PE, detailing, painting...
mmhh I have a cunning plan, gather a kit + PE, fly to the UK, meet Steven, buy him a couple of , leave the kit, watch the Olympics, watch some Premier League matches, meet Sreven again, buy him some , grab the finished kit, fly back to Algarve and catch some sunny days

Cheers Steven ! Congrats on the degree, the baby and the 222 (not on that order.. )

Thanks John,

You might have to stay a while, it takes me ages to complete a model and I started this 222 back in March 2012.

However the Olympics are over and now we just have to wait for the £10 Billion credit card bill to come through the post.

I have been working on the interior of the vehicle and its almost completed. I did a test fit of the hull and noticed that with the gun in place you can see almost nothing of the interior.





Nothing is glued yet and I need to do one or two small jobs before I can glue the hull and add the front fenders.

Here are images of the interior:









I have added the 20mm magazines and cases as well as two MG34 boxes of ammo. I have also added the MG ammo containers which attach onto the gun platform.









Thanks for looking

S