LSP_K2

OK, thanks. I'll need to look into the availability of those.

Since I've been having nothing but issues with Gunze and Tamiya clear coats, both acrylics and lacquers, I decided to try some "old reliable", Testors Glosscote, and it worked a charm. This will now make the job of adding washes and pigments much easier for me.

That's an excellent yellow, not too pure. Are the SMS paints acrylic?

Yet more stuff to like about the Gecko kit. Unlike the Das Werk kit, where the central moveable shield flops all over the place, the Gecko kit has pins and slots (P15) that only allow for vertical movement, making that shield much easier to paint. Also, the vision slats (N9-N10) have the screw heads correctly molded into the outside, with separate operating handles (RE7) of what appears to be the correct design. All in all I'm now leaning heavily toward the Gecko kit for my second gun.

Shields doctored up now and all remaining bits attached. Time to fire up the airbrush. On the next gun, Das Werk or Gecko, I'll paint the central moveable shield prior to assembly, as it's now wanting to move all over the place. And spritzed with some German grey. I also went ahead and repainted the breech as the Tamiya paint was getting all dinged up.

Shields now all glued up, with central armor piece moveable as it should be. Once I clean up the inner and outer seams, I'll add all of the other bits and get ready for painting.

Here I've randomly spritzed a different grey. Photo, somewhat doctored, doesn't really capture it well though, unfortunately.

Inner and outer shields now cleaned up and glued. I also reinforced them with .015 x .080 strips and a healthy dose of superglue.

On the Trumpeter kit at least, the safety track you refer to runs along the starboard side.

Tires/wheels now very carefully repainted and awaiting a gloss coat of some sort. Once again, wheels appear much darker than they actually are.

I also built the gun firing button for the kit as it's not included, though it is present in the Gecko kit.

Instead of screwing around with the kit parts, which didn’t work too well, I just built my own vision port covers. I'll select the best one or two as replacements for the kit parts.

The horizontal canister on the lower left shield, that I believe houses the bore swab, has three screw heads that were missing so I have now added them.

Central plate, which I now know should remain moveable, has had the four tiny brackets securely glued in place. These get swing arms attached to connect to gun frame assembly, but won't actually get added until I'm ready to attach the entire shield assembly.

I had questions about what these gizmos were before, but the answer has now become perfectly clear. They're positioned to allow securing the vision plates once the gunner has selected them to the optimal position that he desires.

A couple of things about the Gecko kit that I like. The outer shield is molded in one piece, eliminating, what on the Das Werk kit are two very delicate butt joints. The inner shield parts have tabs molded in that provide what I'm sure will be a much more solid connection between the three segments. Also, Gecko provides the conical bolt heads as separate pieces, each with a hole in it to allow for stringing wire for foliage placement, if one should so choose.

Happy B-Day!!!

My Model Monkey nameplate arrived today and looks just great. I'll be ordering another for a Pak 40.

All manner of cool stuff. Thanks, Kev.

New shield components now being prepped for assembly. I'll reinforce these prior to sandwiching together.

If worse comes to worst, I still have all of the pieces from the second kit to build another gun shield.

Looking back at the very frail method of joining all of the gun shield pieces, this was almost inevitable. Note to self: on next gun reinforce inner and outer plates with superglue before sandwiching together!

And more details. The vision port slide handles are attached to the plates via a large screw. The Das Werk kit does not depict this.

Bottom line seems to be that there was no standard as such, so whatever we choose to model may well be accurate and would be difficult to prove not accurate, though there probably was some rhyme or reason to time-frames.

Yet more weirdness. This is the open eight spoke stamped wheel from the Das Werk kit, whereas Gecko has a completely enclosed ten spoke stamped wheel.