Taigen Panther G with a British twist

[Meter rat]

Ok. Will yous lot stop trying to tempt me over to the dark side.. I’m now thinking about a Finish Stug, and a British Panther. One day.
Utterly superb work.

[Stormbringer]

Ok. Will yous lot stop trying to tempt me over to the dark side.. I’m now thinking about a Finish Stug, and a British Panther. One day.
Utterly superb work.

seemingly the French had them built for them to supplement their tank forces so a French 1 is doable

[LordLudikrous]

As always thank you everyone for the positive feedback, I’m glad the smoking barrel has been so well received, I find unlike a BB launcher, it never really gets old. Not to mention it’s a lot safer.

I have finished painting my commander figure. My painting background when it isn’t WW2 AFVs is Warhammer 40K where any figures are heavily stylised so this is my first real attempt to paint someone realistic, so I’m pretty happy with the result. Especially as this is my first attempt to paint human eyes - normally I just shadow them but figured the model was just too big to get away with doing that.



He looks much happier sitting inside his tank, and if the green paint and Allied markings weren’t enough really drives home the point that this vehicle has new owners.





I’d like to make the model more visually interesting which I’m already planning to do with some stowage, but I thought some patchy schurzen coverage would also work well. The concept I had in my head is that the tank didn’t come with any when they initially liberated it, so the crew has pulled some off knocked out/abandoned Panthers when the opportunity arises but didn’t have time to repaint them. As a result the panels will be a mishmash of different German camouflage patterns. This gives me more practice with my airbrush and if I don’t like how it looks I can always repaint them, plus the panels will be removable if I feel like changing them.

There doesn’t appear to be any plastic kits available right now and given I’m only using four panels I couldn’t justify the high cost of a photo etch kit, so following the example of others I opted to make my own with plasticard.

The measurements of the skirts are readily available online so I calculated their scale dimensions, measured and cut them out, but opted to do a test with a single panel before finishing the others. Its lucky I did because I then found out that the mounting points on the model don’t quite match up so all the panels I’d made were useless. Oops.

Started over again but this time while I kept the height of the panels to scale I made them a bit longer than they should be to accommodate the mounting points. As before, I opted to test with a single panel before going on to finish the others and success – I have my first schurzen.



I don’t have much experience of this so found cutting out the holes in each panel quite difficult so they aren’t as clean as I’d like, but I’ll sort that out by tidying them up or masking with some damage/weathering. I’ve got an idea in mind of how to mount them properly, and I’ll need to add some slight deflection to them so they don’t contact the tracks, but my local model shop has everything I believe I need.

This gives a rough idea of how I’ll have them, should look quite nice once properly painted.

[Stormbringer]

I like the idea of the mishmash of schurzen

[HERMAN BIX]

Great idea and lm watching in in admiration for all the nuances applied to this seldom seen subject.
There aree ed a few period film clips of captured Panthers being ripped around by new owners.
Yours would fit right in !

[Herr Dr. Professor]

Would this square punch or something similar be of any help? Round punches are easy to find, but square..? Yikes!

https://www.etsy.com/listing/244475641/ ... gle.com%2F

[LordLudikrous]

As always, thank you everyone for the encouraging feedback. I also had no idea square hole punches existed so I might look into that as a possible option.

I decided to spruce up the hatches a bit, seeing as a British driver figurine is now available from Forgebear. I know that while German vehicles were typically painted white the inside of hatches were usually painted to match the colour of the exterior camouflage. Clearly this wouldn’t have been done by the time the allies got hold of it as the exterior camo hadn’t been done yet and pressed for time the British team had skipped over it. Yes, historically its likely it would have been painted green but if I leave them green/red it just looks like I’ve done nothing with them, and this makes it look a bit more interesting.



The method I had in mind to secure the side skirts is to have a square 1.5mm rod attached to the back of the panel that fits into the gap between the mounting bracket and hull. The skirts would be held in place by pressure and can be easily removed whenever I want. After testing the concept was successful – but there was a problem.

There are tight tolerances in play and because I had made the mounting holes slightly oversized there wasn’t enough material left for the rod to glue to securely, so the connection was very fragile and prone to breaking. This rendered all the panels I had made unusable, so I will have to cut new ones but this time be very careful and precise with the mounting holes.

The good news is that they will hang on their own while the model is static, so I can use them for test runs to see if I’m happy with the look before I go ahead making new panels. Plus they’re flat so I can keep painting over them as much as I want.



The first batch, numbering 1 to 4 left to right. 1 is painted in Olive Drab.





I’ll be honest, I’m not as enamoured with the idea as I thought I would be. I like 1 and I also quite like 4, but 2 might look better with different shapes and 3 is right out.



Second batch. 1 and 4 are the same, 2 has been modified and 3 is new.

Still not overly keen. My thought at this stage is it might look better if I flip things round so they did have time to repaint the skirts that had been salvaged except for the latest one with the ambush camouflage on.





So in line with the above, this is with two Olive Drab panels.

I’m interested to see what people’s views are, but at the moment I’m leaning toward two Olive Drab skirts on one side, with one Olive Drab skirt and one Dark Yellow/Dark Green/Red Brown skirt on the other. The Olive Drab panels will have some chipping applied to the finished product to show traces of German colours underneath. I might also try pre-shading a camouflage pattern to make it look more like something that’s been painted over.

[Stormbringer]

I like your hatches they look good
As for the skirts olive drab might be what to go for

[HERMAN BIX]

If you get into it as far as you can, look at the actual vehicle(Panther) that was captured..........

Where ( combat location by engagement)
When (thats related to the above)
German Unit ( narrows down the paint options)
British unit that captured it (can expand on the above for period context)

Not all Panthers were created (or painted) equal, so this kind of checking should confirm the options

[LordLudikrous]

Based on my Panther’s attributes it’s a late 1944 model and was acquired in late 1944 or early 1945, so any German pattern is likely to be ambush camouflage. Which isn’t a problem because I liked that one the most, I just need to add the dots.

Something to note, Imgur has completely geoblocked the UK, so if you’re in the UK and this thread is full of placeholders saying “content not available in your region” that’s why. Hurrah for VPNs.

It took some experimenting but I finally sorted out a system to attach the side skirts.



The rear of this skirt is a bit of a mess because of the experiments and failed attempts, but that won’t be visible luckily. I’ve polycemented two small lengths of styrene square rod together and superglued it to the skirt.



These gently pressure fit into the gaps in the mounting points and securely hold it in place, but can easily be removed at will. Initially these rods were longer and attached at a right angle to the skirt for a more secure hold, but the rods would break at the glue point when repeatedly removed. I now just need to make the other three and I can start painting them.



Another small thing I did was use some plasticard to block the small gap between the upper and lower hull above the sprockets. It probably wasn’t going to be an issue but I was worried about the possibility of water being flung up inside the hull when the tracks were in motion, and this was an easy fix.



I’ve been busy with other aspects too, I obtained some stowage which I’m experimenting with painting, and a driver figurine which I’ve painted in the same fashion as the commander.







I also decided to try and improve some of the detail at the rear of the model. It’s been brought up in the thread before and for some time now its irked me how the spare track is just hanging from the rails with nothing to keep it in place, though it is substantially better than the Heng Long Panther where the spare tracks just magically stick to the side of the hull.

I got some 0.6mm nickel rod from my local model shop with the idea of cutting them to size and bending them to form the holding pins for the track holders. As there is very little room to work with given how little the holders protrude out from the track I was less interested in true scale size and more with what looked right but would fit.



Drilling the top hole was easy enough, but the drill bits snapped every time I tried to drill the lower hole. I suspect this is down to how thin the drill bits are and the slight flex of the plastic as the drill bit bits is just enough lateral force to break it. I decided this was a lost cause and opted to drill the top hole and have the pins touching the bottom one so aside from close inspection it looks like the pin is going through both parts of the track holder.

All done, and all in all I’m rather pleased with how it turned out. My local model shop is getting some chains in and I’ll look at adding some if its feasible, but if not I’m happy to leave as is.



Another thing that was bothering me was the lack of detail on the stowage bins at the rear, and how they’ve got these two great bins but with no way to get into them. I looked online to try and find a solution but was either photoetched parts or something from Christian Ludwig, both relatively pricey and would involve tearing the existing ones off and re-doing the rear hull plate along with decals – not a desirable solution.

Instead I decided to attempt to make my own access hatches using plasticard for the hatch doors and some of the metal rod I got for the retaining pins to act as hinges. Something to note though that unlike the real thing (at least from photos I have and other models) the bins have a slight trapezoid shape as they extend from the hull, so any access hatch will look wonky if I try and align it to one side or the either. I decided to align them to the rear of the hull and the bin, so if the angle looks a bit odd, that’s why.



I’m very happy with how this has turned out. It is missing details such as the opening handles and securing latches but I don’t have either the skills or materials to fabricate those at this stage – it was difficult enough cutting the tiny bits of rod and getting them into position. It’s a lot more detailed than the plain surface it was before, and should those skills and materials become available I can revisit it in the future.

Still waiting for the exhaust smokers to come back into stock, so there is still interior work to be done.



Much better.