RC Tank Warfare community hobby forum

Overview of the zimmerit job.
The Heng Long plastic cupola had warped ring and missing the small hatch, it was replaced by a metal Mato one, available for a few dollars. Looks good.
PanzerFile graph showing the roof layout of the new gunners hatches opening towards the sides, and the mount point location for the remote control machine gun.
Showing the PanzerParts Modellino hatches and MG mount, the mg can easily be made servo operated. The MG34 with shield will be installed later.

The PanzerParts Late Stug model conversion kit can be found on this link below;

http://www.panzerparts.com/product_info ... usatz.html

The model as it stands today.
Next step, the saukopf mantlet and barrel.

regards,
Louis

Looking good Louis. I'll have to get back to my Sturmi once the Sherman is finished.

That waffle Zimmerit is real hard to get right using putty.
I made a stamp out of wooden dowel cut with a hacksaw to get some sort of a repeatable method to get the pattern right.
The STuG III is such a blank canvas, a builder can run wild with options that will make an outstanding subject build.
I reckon that the Assault Gun brigades of the day were like the U-Boat teams ............unconventional, rugged, and equally determined despite the odds.
Great insight into the application of ATAK Waffle Zimmerit mate

Thank you Estnische and Herman, indeed, many variations are possible. A builder can make one that is unique.

This post is for the Saukopf mantlet and gun barrel.

The cast Saukopf (pig head) mantlet is a feature of some Late Stug models, replacing the original one that was triangular shaped. I could not find much research on it. Looking at references and artworks, it seems to look different from one picture to another. Other than the late version with the coax machine gun, i suspect there might be some further subtle variations. There are a few 1/16 Saukopf conversions available; PanzerParts, Tank Modellbau, ATAK available. They are different. The one from PanzerParts is a bit larger and rough, while the Tank Modellbau and ATAK are slimmer and more glossy. I used the one from PanzerParts, mainly because it is available.
The interior and old electronics are removed and cleaned up for installation of a Clark recoil unit with TK60.
The HL mantlet base need to be reused with the Panzerparts Saukopf. No issue here.
I trimmed it a bit, sanded the rough aspect and created a more subtle finish.
Showing below the 3 types of gun barrels available to me.

- At the bottom is the original HL Stug barrel, way too bit.
- In the center is the MATO replacement i bought but i did not like it because it is too large at the base and does not realistically reduce in size towards the muzzle tip.
- At the top is the Trumpeter Panzer IV Ausf J barrel sold separately on eBay by a US vendor and showing good size and shape. As i plan to use the superb Aber Muzzle brass tip designed for it, the choice was obvious.
The main issue with the Trumpeter barrel is that it is not hollow. As i want to have gun flash, i had to spend an hour drilling end to end through its 20cm of solid aluminum with an extra long drill bit. Its really important to start dead center at the tip and make it strait through carefully. Its done 1mm at a time and i managed to make it through with only about 1mm of misalignment at the breech.
The Clark 3D printed recoil unit is installed to the back of the mantlet after much reconfiguration. The inside of the recoil piston was drilled to accept about 5mm of the Trumpeter barrel for a good and strait connection.
At first sight, the basic installation looks good.
As the hole was way too large because it is designed for the HL barrel, i gave the mantlet a metal internal sleeve made of aluminum tubing for a solid and strait gun recoil.

Regards, Louis

I'm sure that this is a stupid question, but is it a good idea to have the aluminum barrel sliding within an aluminum sleeve? I was under the impression that doing so will cause the two surfaces to gall and start to "weld" themselves together. I always thought that you had to make the sleeve from nylon or brass. I hope I'm wrong, and the thought is in no way meant to detract from your job - you ALWAYS do stunning work on your builds!

sassgrunt wrote:'m sure that this is a stupid question, but is it a good idea to have the aluminum barrel sliding within an aluminum sleeve? I was under the impression that doing so will cause the two surfaces to gall and start to "weld" themselves together. I always thought that you had to make the sleeve from nylon or brass. I hope I'm wrong, and the thought is in no way meant to detract from your job - you ALWAYS do stunning work on your builds!

Very good observation. It depends on the shape of the barrel, the recoil unit used and the builder himself. I personally like aluminum tubing. It is a soft and tender metal that can actually be cut with a blade, sanded and polished. When cleaned and polished, two overlapping parts will slide with much less resistance than other material.

In a perfect scenario as shown below on the top, the gun barrel is properly shaped and when its recoils through the sleeve, it goes in centrally and there is no part of the exterior of the barrel that touches the sleeve. Its pretty much like the real thing and the paint job is protected.

In the second scenario that is actually the situation for this build, the cone shaped portion of the barrel is much longer than it shows externally due to a very long mantlet. It forced me to put in a small aluminum ring at the tip of the mantlet to ensure the gap is visually correct.
Here is a picture of the gun at full recoil. The barrel centrally enters the sleeve and is kept clear of the side. Tip is polished and there are no sharp edges. The barrel need to be solid and strait in the recoil unit. This is the reason why i always make my barrels go very deep into the piston of recoil unit. If it was only attached at the tip of the piston, it would likely bounce in all directions.

You can actually see the structure of the tubing for the mantlet. The middle tube is the sleeve, the interior tube is the small ring for the visual explained above, and the exterior tube is a plasticard spacer tube for mounting of the sleeve on the resin mantlet. Finetuning and primer will later ensure this arrangement has a smooth and seamless finish.
regards, Louis

Hi,

Continuing with the build, mainly with the components that are making it through the postal service during the pre-holiday rush.

With the Clark recoil installed, i put in a recoil servo with metal gears. These small and cheap servos can be bought by the dozen on Amazon but are not created equal, some units are better than others. Selection must be made and do not hesitate to discard one that is not working smoothly.

Gun elevation is provided by a large servo running a bolt head with a brass ring through the Clark elevation channel. I did not provide horizontal adjustment, not really worth the trouble.
The original closed Heng Long air intake were previously replaced by Asiatam open intake replacement set available from the Asiatam website for 3 euros. These are designed to simply plug in place of the original, a 2 minute operation and a perfect fit.
Grills are required.
These are the Panzer III Taigen air intake grills available from welshdragonmodels, either on their eBay store or website for about $12. They are not perfect but does the work. The mount for the bolt need to be reduced in size and made squarer. The provided bolts are too large and need replacement.
The reworked Taigen grills. I also sanded them a bit to give them a rougher finish.
They look good and are simple to install.
I replaced the original bolts by brass M1 bolts.
View of the planned Notek light and the travel clamp
The brackets seems to differ a bit from one Stug to another.
continuing on following post

A beautiful Mato Notek light is dissasembled to better clean up the parts and also reposition the LED to face upward.
The working Mato light in metal is a major improvement compared to the original Heng Long molded in bracket and plastic part. These are the cheap and simple type of improvements that are really fun to do.
Humm, the LED needs some adjustment.
This is the Modellino PanzerParts.com Stug gun travel clamp kit. Parts are cleaned up and ready for assembly. Very nice, only the tiny bracket that connects the spring to the hull need replacement by a thinner brass strip that allows a hole to be drilled into for the spring end connector.
It allows for a fully working travel clamp in about 1 hour of work.
View and position of the Point defense installed on late models. Its some sort of gun shooting a nasty canister round at any enemy soldier that climbed on the tank. It can be oriented towards the target.
The Modellino Late Stug kit comes with a metal part that resembles the needed component. It's ok but i might want to replace it by a metal one available for the Tiger.
That's it for now.

Regards, Louis