Taigen Panther G with a British twist

[LordLudikrous]

Seeing as its Black Friday I decided to pull the trigger on my next project. You may be familiar with my Tiger 1 (thread here viewtopic.php?t=34395). While I’m very pleased with how it ultimately turned out, it was a journey that started way back in 2007 with numerous lengthy hiatuses and a lot of mistakes and learning along the way. I was eager to build a new tank with all the knowledge and experience I’d gained from the Tiger, but this time without all the costly and time consuming mistakes.

The M4A3 Sherman and King Tiger were considered but I ultimately settled on a Panther G, but with a slight twist – this will be a captured Panther operated by the British and directly inspired by “Cuckoo” and a second lesser known British Panther "Deserter". My plan is to build a Taigen Panther G with Heng Long 7.1 electronics and Taigen 7:1 gearboxes.




The paint scheme is going to be solid Olive Drab all over with wheels and sprockets in Red Oxide, with the lower hull sides having a soft transition from Olive to Red. I’m not 100% decided on all the markings but it will feature the Allied star on the turret sides, upper front plate, and possibly one on the rear somewhere. These high quality drawings should give a rough idea of what I’m going for.




The concept in my head is that this Panther got into the hands of the British unused and coated only in red primer, so they’ve slapped an Allied paintjob and livery onto it and are now using it against its original owners.

To keep costs down around Christmas time and to stave off the temptation to rush through things to get it running, I’ve only ordered the hull, turret and road wheels to begin with. This is going to be a bit of a slow burn to start with; I’ve got some prep work to do to the hull before I can begin painting, and the weather conditions are now so poor painting opportunities will be limited or non-existent.

The parts have arrived and I put everything together to make sure it all fits ok.



First impressions are positive and it’s the sturdy quality I’ve come to expect from Taigen and theres a lot of quality of life features this has over the Tiger. There was a couple of snagging issues - it seems that somehow the corners of the turret have managed to scuff the upper hull slightly. Nothing that can’t be easily rectified but I might add some glide dots to the underside of the turret to prevent it from being able to catch on anything.

I also noticed the upper hull fitment was a bit off on one side, as the rear right side of the hull wasn’t flush with the lower hull. Ultimately rectified by some hot water, clamps and a hairdryer.



I’m glad that the tools aren’t all moulded into the body on the Panther although it is annoying that Taigen saw fit to glue the spare track segments on, as this makes painting them substantially more difficult. Upon inspection it seems they might have used superglue instead of poly-cement to attach them, so with the application of some IPA and a knife I might be able to get those off so I can paint them separately.

I opened up the turret to take a look at the mechanism inside, and it was then I realised I had made my first big mistake. My Tiger 1 with airsoft works very well and with its servo driven recoil system was a simple swap over to HL 7.1. Assuming the Panther was the same, I opted for the airsoft version, somehow managing to not ever notice at any point that the Taigen airsoft Panther has no recoil. Whoops.



Not the end of the world and I’m sure I can sort out a recoil system, given there is plenty of room to mount servos, but I’ll know more once I’ve fully disassembled the turret for painting.

My current activities are now just getting the model ready for painting, so my to do list is as follows:

• Remove any flash and leftover sprue plastic.
• Drill out the aerial mount.
• Disassemble the turret.
• Remove all tyres from road wheels.
• Blank off and seal power switch openings on the hull underside.



Once again I have deployed my tins of baked beans, so lets get this show on the road.

[jarndice]

You do know that at the end of the great unpleasantness a Panther Tank factory was captured and rather than destroy everything to keep the workforce busy the REME Officer Commanding had them use up all the available parts and build half a dozen Panthers for the British Army, some found themselves being targets but I believe one ended up in the Tank Museum, I would welcome confirmation of that.

[Herr Dr. Professor]

I'm watching happily. By the way, the bean cans are fine, but at the U.S. IPMS this year, I picked up a modeling stand. Here it is on Etsy: https://www.etsy.com/listing/1680818276 ... -jig-stand?

I put mine atop an inexpensive plastic turntable that I found at a department store (Target). I can work on a tank with it propped up right in my line of sight, turning it as I need. I used the same type of cheapo turntable with cardboard over it for painting.

[Ecam]

Great start! Your slight turret rub could be the heavier metal version causing the deck to sag enough for some contact. I had to reinforce a couple decks to support metal or even heavy resin turrets. Similar to this...

[LordLudikrous]

Thank you all for the kind feedback, its very encouraging.

You do know that at the end of the great unpleasantness a Panther Tank factory was captured and rather than destroy everything to keep the workforce busy the REME Officer Commanding had them use up all the available parts and build half a dozen Panthers for the British Army, some found themselves being targets but I believe one ended up in the Tank Museum, I would welcome confirmation of that.

Thats correct, they built a bunch of Panthers and Jagdpanthers out of leftover parts for evaluation. One of the Panthers is at the Bovington Tank Museum, specifically this one.



I believe one of their Jagdpanthers is also British built but I'm not sure which one.

Not a huge amount of progress to report on given the aforementioned poor weather. I’ve disassembled the tank into its component parts, pulled all the tyres off the wheels and prepped the model for painting. We did actually get a few hours of sunshine over the last week so I’ve been able to give the turret body its first coat of etching primer and its second coat of Red Oxide primer.




The red is quite fetching I think and I’m glad it will be left in place on the running gear.

Unfortunately it became apparent upon taking the turret apart that a recoil system similar to my Tiger was not going to be possible without extensive modifications that I have neither the tools or experience to perform. The Tiger utilises a two piece barrel system with an internal barrel that is fixed in place to the airsoft unit and internal mantlet housing. The actual visible gun is a separate barrel that slides over the internal barrel and is connected to a servo unit with a flexible rod.



When the gun fires, the servo pulls the main barrel back and forth over the internal barrel. It works very well and it’s a shame Taigen hasn’t brought this over to the Panther as there is ample room in the turret to do so. You can see how the Panther system works in the image below.



Initially I was a bit despondent, wondering if I’d made a costly mistake but it turns out to have been a blessing in disguise. Heng Long makes a metal recoil unit that is a straight swap for the airsoft unit, and is compatible with the Panther’s elevation system. Image courtesy of Forgebear.



The Panther barrel isn’t affixed to anything; once all components are assembled it cannot move backward as the barrel is too thick to do so, and it is prevented from moving forward by a bracket (which I’ve removed in the image).




With the bracket removed the barrel will literally fall straight out the mantlet, so all I need to do is drill the hole in the internal mantlet housing wide enough for the thick portion of the barrel to go through, and there will be nothing to stop the barrel moving backward and forward. The only other modification required will be to drill out a couple of holes at the end of the barrel for grub screws to secure to the recoil system. The diameter of the thick part of the barrel is the same as the internal diameter of the mantlet, so this will stop the barrel from moving anywhere other than straight forward and backward.

The Heng Long recoil system is designed to be paired with their barrel smoke system, so I’ll definitely be installing that as well.

[LordLudikrous]

Not a huge amount to add since the last update other than that I’ve been struggling through the poor weather and the main coats for the hull and turret are now complete.





I’ve been able to make some progress painting the wheels as well.



Still need to add all the detail, decals and weathering but I think its going to look quite fetching in Allied colours.

[MrChef]

Oh shes coming along nicely. lovely work sir. I also like the colors.

[HERMAN BIX]

I'd be going with Dunklegelb for the wheels though. Unless they were replaced with standby stock and assembled in primer an in-service Panther would have been sporting dark yellow wheels that the Allies would either have left as inconsequential but sprayed the upper in Olive Drab, or also gone over the wheels with drab as in Cuckoo.
Going to look great whichever way you take it

[LordLudikrous]

Thank you everyone for the positive feedback.

I'd be going with Dunklegelb for the wheels though. Unless they were replaced with standby stock and assembled in primer an in-service Panther would have been sporting dark yellow wheels that the Allies would either have left as inconsequential but sprayed the upper in Olive Drab, or also gone over the wheels with drab as in Cuckoo.
Going to look great whichever way you take it

You’re quite correct though this is one of those times I’m taking a bit of artistic licence. Reason being I saw a model of Cuckoo that someone made with Red Oxide running gear and I really liked how it looked, so I’ve shamelessly stolen the idea.

Progress is still slow owing to Christmas and the new year but I’ve been working away targeting the wheels and lower hull so I can get those assembled, and I’ve just finished the first set of road wheels.



I’m very happy how these have turned out. I’ve tried to not go overboard with the weathering as this isn’t a tank that would have been used for all that long but wanted to represent the dust and dirt the wheels would pick up through normal use, along with the damage the primer coat would suffer without a top coat to cover it.

I do have to say though that mounting the tyres on these is an absolute nightmare compared to the Tiger which in contrast was an absolute breeze.

[LordLudikrous]

So, rather embarrassingly I have discovered the reason why I had such a hard time mounting the tyres. Turns out that while the wheels and tyres are all the same on the real tank, just mounted in different ways, the same isn’t quite true for the model. The rim size is slightly different on the inner pair compared to the outer pair with a corresponding difference in the tyre size, as evidenced below.



By sheer poor luck every tyre I plucked out the box was the wrong one. Luckily I released my error when I tried to mount the tyres to the second batch of road wheels, so I had to pull them all off and do it again. Turns out when you try to mount the correct tyres they go on without any trouble whatsoever. Whoops. In any case, all road wheels are now finished.



Next up is the lower hull. The main colour layers are finished, so I attached the decals and sealed them in. As is often the case with paints, Olive Drab from the pot is ever so slightly different to Olive Drab from a can, so through a mixture of foam dabbing and drybrushing I’ve attempted to give the surface some imperfections and scratches. This is mainly on the lower front plate where foliage and debris would damage the paint but not enough to penetrate through to the primer coat, and the same for the sponson undersides. I’m aware that Olive Drab was a very tough paint so I’ve kept chipping and scuffing damage to a minimum with the exception of the exhausts. I’ve made use of Ammo by Mig’s Olive Drab drybrush paint to lighten edges and its absolutely brilliant – I wish I knew this existed when I built my 1/35 Shermans.




I’ve still got some touches to add but once that’s finished I’ll be doing the shading and adding grime and additional weathering. Now I’ve settled on what decals I want this high quality illustration gives an idea of how its going to look once completed.