Fresh off the heels of a review build, I dug into the stash to pull out an oldie in Tamiya's Marder 1A2. I was thinking of doing a mostly OOB build to try some weathering and painting techniques, but then I got a look at the power plant that comes with the kit and I started drooling, er, thinking. Thanks to some helpful souls, I have enough reference material that I can do some justice to the nice, albeit basic compartment and power plant. The kit itself looks to be quite nice, and the molds have held up well since the initial release back in 1977. I'll also be using Eduard's etch and quite possibly AFV's tracks.



I got some started by plugging up the motorization holes that are common to almost all early Tamiya releases. Cleaned up the road wheels and sprockets and did a whole lot of thinking. First off, the hood needs to be reworked to the extent that it's easier to scratch a new one. It's not so much wrong, it's overly thick and would be a right pain to try to thin down and add the braces and so on. I also needed to fill in some holes and will need to do some more once these pieces are dry.




Here's the basic power plant and compartment. I had decided from the get go to replace all the hoses and the cable run so I wouldn't have to try and clean up the mold seams. Before I started to block in the compartment, filling and a partial sponson was needed.




All this will eventually




Go into here.



I still need walls (and a butt load of other stuff) and to remove the molded on floor from the kit part. The idea is to have a sub assembly that I can paint and drop into place.

I also managed to get started on the rear hull wall and fenders. The kit parts need to be removed and thinned.



So I'll be going old school with styrene and what not to improve the power plant and compartment, while using etch and some new (to me) painting and weathering techniques. All comments, suggestions and so forth are appreciated and encouraged as always.

Kimmo

Hi Kimmo, what about a turned barrel, e.g. RB Models?

Almost forgot, have one of those too.

Kimmo

Got some time in today and continued plugging holes, thinning stuff and working on the hood. The hood is just a piece of 40 thou styrene copied to the kit's outline with a hair removed from the perimeter. The reason for that is the next step, running a strip of 10 x 60 around the outside edge. Once that's in place, I ran another strip on the inner side and sanded flush to produce a uniform lip. I still need to add a rubber seal.



Before I did that, I fashioned some reinforcing ribs from thick strip/stock and tapered the ends. Then a casing of 5 thou was added to build it up per references.






Started on the hinges, made from 40 thou cut to width and then sanded to profile.




A fuel filler port(?) was made from sheet sanded into a circle with a slice of hollow rod, another small piece of rod went into the centre, after the pic was taken of course. I also added the 3 rings present on the kit. Not sure what they are, but they were made from sprue that had a hole drilled and then sliced. Drilled small indentaions into the hood and glued the rings in place, they'll be sanded down after the glue has fully set. And lastly, the deflector was glued on, a spot of putty will be needed.





That's it for today's edition. More tomorrow hopefully.

Kimmo

Minor update, spent a couple of hours sanding, shaving and filling. The ledge for the hood needed to be thinned down quite a bit for a more scale appearance. All the gaps for the hinges and the catch at the front are now plugged. The hinge openings will need some more work after the the hinges themselves are redone. Doing some dry fitting, I noticed a gap at the front, a strip of 20 thou should take care of the worst of it. I'll brush on some primer next session and see where we're at. I also got the presumed fuel filler port done. I couldn't find appropriate sized rod or tubing so I sanded a bit of 20 thou sheet and drilled/filed the opening. Making circles from scratch is quite fun, in a challenging sort of masochistic way.





Lots of work ahead, next session I want to get the engine compartment sorted out so I can get on to the main fun.

Kimmo

Hi Kimmo,
the tiny opjects are the locking mechanisms for the hatch. They have square "hole" inside so that they can be opened with a "T"
key that´s located behind the drivers hatch.
H.-H.

I figured that's what they might be, so there should be holes along the lip for the latches to go in? In one of the reference shots I saw a bunch of slots/holes at the front of the compartment, but nowhere else. I thought they might be for drainage but only saw them on one pic and decided to not add them. Guess I may have to add some after all. Thanks.

Kimmo

I got the compartment sorted out in terms of basic layout. I ended up having to break out the motor tools to remove all the molded on stuff in the hull tub. You can get rid of it with elbow grease and chisels/knives etc, but I hadn't used the tool in ages and figured why not. Talk about messy, shavings and dust everywhere. I also got to test out some vinyl polishing tips, interesting little things. After I got everything removed, I glued some thin sheet to level everything up and added the rear wall and some torsion bar covers. I found some suitably thick strip stock in my Odds and Ends packs from Evergreen. Every scratch builder's best friend those things. The extension on the left wall is a best guestimate kind of thing. Now that everything is more or less roughed in, I can start to get some details going and work on the power plant.






Speaking of the power plant, I removed the molded on floor and cleaned up the basic piece. It's rather nice for a one piece mold. It is unfortunately too shallow and will need some building up. The transmission housing at the front will definitely need to be reworked too along with umpteen little details.








I also added the latch holes to the hood lip and blocked in the hinge openings a wee bit. The hinges were also glued to the hood, they still need final shaping.





I'm happy that all the basic plugging and shaping is now done so I can get cracking with details. I'm going to have to raid the spares box for brake housings and other useful bits, or then I'll break out the motor tool again and use it as a makeshift lathe. Lots of work still ahead, stay tuned.

Kimmo

Got some work done on the power plant today. I'm afraid I've gotten a little more involved than what I had originally envisioned. Studying reference pictures and the kit supplied piece I realized a bit more work will be necessary than just adding a few things here and there.

First off, I cut the transmission off so I could work a little more freely, then added a 2.5 mm thick piece of styrene to bring the height up. I made "bolt strips" from suitable thick strip stock, drilled holes for rods and glued the first strip in place. It still needs sanding to proper thickness and profile and a retaining strip added. I first noticed the problems with the kit after I got strip in place, namely that the strip should run around the perimeter of the unit. This in turn got me to looking at other angles etc and realized something was amiss. Long story short, I shaved off all the detail and cut out a section of the transmission housing and re glued it to better represent the shape of the real thing. A brand new razor blade worked really well for shaving the small detail parts so I could reuse them. Ditto for cutting through the plastic. I just used tape for a cutting guide and went freehand. I also got the transmission nose started from 2.5 mm sheet.







Next session I'll do some sanding on the unit to blend the angles in some, and start adding more bits and pieces. As I said earlier, the kit piece is really rather nice for a one piece mold, but the more I look at it, the more apparent it becomes that several short cuts were taken in terms of detail. The same applies to the engine, that will have to wait its turn on the bench. I'm fairly convinced that doing up the entire power plant from scratch wouldn't be that much more involved or difficult than modifying the kit parts. I may still end up going that route if I'm not happy with what develops over the next couple of sessions.

Kimmo

You are doing a massive hoverhaul to an old kit that have a good potential for it's age; I'll be following your progress; really interesting.

Thanks for dropping by Tom. We'll find out just how much needs to done in the coming weeks, the basic outlines and so on are pretty good and the molds have held up quite well. For 20 euros/dollars/pounds, it's a pretty good deal and a kit that suits beginners as well as those afflicted with AMS

Kimmo

Picking up where we left off yesterday, the unit got some squaring up and blending and the remaining bolt strips are now in place. The retaining lip and bolts still needs to be done. I added a couple of pieces to the side and rear as per refs and started on the hose connector. All in all, I think its taking shape nicely.











Should get another session in tomorrow, stay tuned.

Kimmo

We're getting there, another good session with the transmission unit. Bolt strips with bolts are now in place and did some reworking on the face. I repositioned the cut out a little further up, I drilled a line of holes in from the final edge, then shaved and filed the opening. Then I glued a strip of appropriate sheet and bingo presto viola. One repositioned cut out. I did a little contouring on the small cut out nearest the bolt strip as well. Next time, I'll add the missing details and profile the retaining lip as needed.






I also started head scratching for the engine. I decided I'm going to do that from scratch, there would just be too much cutting to the kit part to not make it worth while, plus I'll have a guide to go with. Even though the kit part is crude and/or inaccurate, it will serve its purpose by giving me rough estimates of where stuff should be. I actually mailed MTU to see if they had any info on the engine, but its long been out of production and nothing could be found.

So I did some rough work with Sketchup and will keep refining as needed. This might be a good project to try my hand at getting a master done for Shapeways. No promises though, I'm still learning Sketchup and I'm missing some key information. And it would definitely be down the road a bit.



That's all for now, next update will probably be on Sunday.

Kimmo

Excellent work, good references paid off!

Thanks H-H, all those lovely pictures did indeed help.

Kimmo

Thanks for the inspiration Kimmo. Just received a Tamiya A2 and an original 1A0 to complete the Marder collection (a Roland will be on the cards too)... If they turn out half as well as yours is, I'll be a happy chappy

Thanks for the kind words Michael. It's early days yet, still plenty of time for me to screw up something badly. I was trying to find the 1A0 as well, that funky remote controlled mg just looks very cool. Maybe Meng or Takom will take the plunge and bring us some new tooled Marders.

Kimmo

Hi Kimmo,
I think Tamiya`s A2 kit is basically the old A0 with only a new sprue. So the Scheitel MG must be inside.
H.-H.

Another short session today. More blending and shaping on the transmission unit and a basic start to the engine. I sanded the retaining strips as needed, cleaned up the surgery to the cut out and blended in the bolt rods with thinned Citadel Green Stuff (lovely putty BTW)applied with a brush and then primed to see where we're at. I ran extra primer into areas I wanted built up more. A little bit of clean up and then the rest of the details can go on.







The engine block got roughed as in my sketch and then I blu tacked the cover plate on to see if the geometry was looking good. You can see the relationships with the lines I added. The cover plates need thickening and reshaping. It might be easier to make them all from scratch because of the mounting angle. This will sort of be hit and miss because I don't have any good clear shots of the basic shape or a profile of the headers. Fortunately most of it will be hidden so I don't have to worry too much.




And that's it for today. I forgot to check the sprues to see if the remote mg is included or not, I'll try to remember to do that tomorrow.

Kimmo

1st rate work. It's great to see some old school modelling.
Following along with this one.

Excellent work. My 1A2 has a remote MG and the searchlight from the earlier model.

Thanks Patrick and Michael, good to know the optional stuff is there. And old school is fun school. Don't get me wrong, I love the new high detail kits and accessories, but nothing beats playing with sheet and strip for sheer enjoyment value.

Kimmo

A fiddly session done. Got the headers and covers more or less sorted out and did some more work on the transmission. My sanding stick is certainly getting a workout. The transmission got a few thickening plates and a divot for the hexagonal filler port. I used diamond burrs to drill out the divot by hand and then a drop of glue to smooth things out.




The headers were separated and cleaned up and shimmed with beveled sheet to set the square and blocked in with triangles. They all need filler, obviously, some other details and I'll need to add some thickness to the front of the block. This was another major hurdle, everything is a bit of a jig saw puzzle. You need to get one piece figured out so you'll know the size and placement of the next and so on.





That's it for today, more tomorrow.

Kimmo

More progress. I redid the headers slightly, I didn't like the angle of the sit. Got the spacing worked out, next up is filling/sanding and adding a strip to the top sides and a retaining strip in between each and at the front of the block. The heads aren't 100% accurate, but I couldn't be bothered making 6 new ones so I'll live with what is in all likelihood a pretty good representation of a very early production or test engine. The transmission got some more details and the front end blocked in. Again, the details are sort of accurate, there seems to be some variance between production batches in any case so I'm not too concerned. I also detailed the air cylinders(?) a wee bit, a few more doodads are needed.







So endeth another session. I should get a few more cracks at bench time this week. Next week I may need to take a break to start a blog for a review kit that's in the mail.

Kimmo

I'm going to be taking a bit of a break, I just received a kit for review which will be started on in the next few days. Hopefully I'll be back on this in 3 weeks so stay tuned. I say hopefully because the last time I thought I'd be done in a month, it stretched over twice that. The perils of AMS.

Kimmo