1/76th Panzerkampfwagen IV - The Sequel

If you had more endurance than sense or were seeking a cure for insomnia and have stuck with this so far you may have wondered what happened to the Cromwell Models Pz IVH turret? 

I have an ongoing project to build some Berlin '45 terrain and on looking at the Battlefront Flames of War website I noticed that they produced a Pz IV turret bunker. That solved that , I hated the thought of that nice looking turret being consigned to the spares box for eternity.

I pulled the page up on the BF site on my iPad as inspiration and then measured and cut the pieces.  The top part was plastic card and the bottom part was cut from the the back of an old picture frame. I cut the bottom off the Pz IV turret to make it flush and then drilled a central hole with the pin vice. I was a little overzealous here and ended up drilling all the way through. This actually turned out to be helpful though as I placed this in the correct place on the bases and just drillled through the lot with the old pin vice. 

To add some texture I glued some wet and dry paper to each rectangle and then stuck them together with PVA.  When it was dry  I painted with various shades of grey. I think I used Privateer Press Bane Base and then Coat D'armes dark grey. I then drydrushed lighter shades of grey. The turret was attached with a piece of brass rod. I carefully filled the drill hole with green stuff and built up the missing piece of rim with green stuff.

The turret was basecoated with a mix of VMC Middlestone and VMC White and then washed with VMC Umber Wash. I used Citadel Devlan Mud to add further depth where required. I then added highlights with Middlestone mixed with more white. 

 

1/76th Panzerkampfwagen IV - Pt 4 (of 4) The End or is it?

So after painting both models I though it'd be a simple thing to add the schurtzen. Think again. When I lined them up I realised that one side fitted snugly and the other didn't. So I ended up hacking off all the inner supports and in the process cutting off one of the support rails. AARRRGGGGH. Luckily I'd had the sense to give the models a good couple of coats of varnish so I didn't do too much damage to the camo finish. They fitted quite nicely after that with liberal use of Super Glue.

You'd have thought that by now I'd call it a day. No I wanted more pain so I cut some 1mm wide plastic card strips to make the schurtzen rail supports.I slightly shaped each end and fitted with not so liberal use of Super Glue.

With plastic card side supports added

And that my friends was that, apart from when I was showing boring my wife with what I'd done I saw that the turret was missing a schurtzen support. So I had to make a plastic card one. And paint it. And while I had the paint out I added a number of highlights to all the edges. And that really is that.

Cromwell hull, Fujimi turret

Cromwell hull, Fujimi turret

Cromwell hull, Fujimi turret top view

Turret and both hulls

Fujimi hull and turret

Fujimi hull and turret

1/76th Panzerkampfwagen IV - Pt 3 (of 4) - it's a saga now

Right with all the fiddly, fussy, fixing done (or so I thought) I could get down to painting. 

First off I painted the tyres and rollers. These got the usual coat of Vallejo Model Colour German Grey (VMC 995). By using a brush with a decent point and keeping a small moistened brush to hand I managed to do these without getting paint all over the inner parts of the wheels.

For the main assemblies both of them had originally been painted in my usual Dunkelgelb finish which was Humbrol 83 Matt Ochre and Humbrol 34 Matt White mixed to about 65/35 ratio. On digging through my box of enamels I found that both tins of the fore mentioned colours had dried out! So I reached for the Vallejo and mixed VMC Middlestone  (VMC 882) with VGC White to get an ok if quite light base colour.

Base coated and looking very light

Using the Osprey Modelling the Late Panzerkampfwagen IV I chose the model that had the most complete set of photos showing the camo pattern from the most angles. This was a PZIV H from 5th Panzer in 1944 which fitted my gaming period. 

I started with the Cromwell kit and drew the pattern on in pencil then painted the colours in. I used Citadel Calthan Brown and Knarloc Green paints that I got cheap years ago when the last local toy shop closed down and they looked ok. I wasn't really too bothered about the correct RAL numbers as I was going to do a lot of weathering. Once I'd got the camo on I then applied a watery wash of the base Dunkelgelb to tone it all down. This worked better than I thought. The final stages were to apply various washes of VMC Umber Wash and then Citadel Devlan Mud to the areas I wanted to add more depth to. 

Fujimi (L) base coat, Cromwell painted

Fujimi with basic camouflage

Fujimi with Dunkelgelb wash

Using the Cromwell kit as the master I then repeated the process for the Fujimi body. 

I then painted all the tools, exhausts etc. Here's how the Cromwell kit was looking prior to adding the schurtzen where you can see the tools more clearly.