We live and learn, or so they say, and this project has seen plenty of learning. My original plan for the turret armour was to create it in three pieces, as seen here.
In fact it simply didn’t work. I had planned to make the side doors by simply adding some superficial detail on top of what was actually a flat bit of plasticard. No such luck. In the end I was obliged to build the armour in the same manner that the Germans did.
First was the rear section around the stowage at the rear of the turret. This I cut down to size and added two brackets. I superglued the rear section in place and let that dry.
Once that was done, the two brackets were attached to the cupola.
After that I made the two forward sections and added brackets.
These I then attached with more superglue.
With that done and dry I made the doors and stuck them in the gaps.
Now, here’s a lesson learnt. The turret can’t rotate as the schurtzen support frame is too damned high. But hey, it’s a prototype; nil desperandum and all that. For the next model I adapted to side frames by having the supporting rail set below, as opposed to above, the brackets.
It makes only a tiny bit of difference, about an eighth of an inch, but it’s enough! The turret on this model now rotates fully, even when the turret armour is added.
In truth there are one or two niggles still. The front part of the armour sits slightly too high as I really need dogs-leg brackets, but that is way beyond my skills. I’ll shove plenty of stowage on that bit so it won’t really get noticed. To be fair, a lot of what will make this work will be a sympathetic paint job to highlight the bits that work and hide the dodgy conversion aspects. Two model completed, two to go, Now it’s time to prep for the third game in our 29, Let’s Go! campaign tonight.