Sd.Kfz.11 (late) towing leFH 18

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Ian Shumsky
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Sd.Kfz.11 (late) towing leFH 18

Post by Ian Shumsky »

Right, time for me to jump in! After some questions on prime movers and colour schemes, I've decided that for my first (and only?) contribution to the GB will be AFV Club's LeFH 18 10.5cm Howitzer:

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likely to be towed by AFV Club's Sd.Kfz.11 Late. Both will be finished in dunkelgelb and hopefully placed on some sort of scenic base depicting late spring / summer 1942/3, but we'll see if that is an ambitious step too far!

Right, first off some sprue shots of the artillery piece:

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It looks like a nice and simple kit with some good detail, and the pressings look good with very little flash or mould slippage. There are some nasty ejector pin marks and some, err, robust, gates, but more of them later. The kit does come with a turned barrel, metal recuperator and metal spring. I expect to be building out of the box.

So we might as well start! Stage 1 builds up two sub-assemblies:

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with some nasty ejector marks as mentioned:

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Nothing really to worry about and after some cleaning up the parts went together well:

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... and that is where we are. My build speed is glacial, so I'll update when I can but I'm really hoping to get this done in the next 3 months!
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Philipp Gross
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Re: Sd.Kfz.11 (late) towing leFH 18

Post by Philipp Gross »

Very nice :D This will look fantastic :)

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Shawn Ramsey
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Re: Sd.Kfz.11 (late) towing leFH 18

Post by Shawn Ramsey »

Philipp Gross wrote:Very nice :D This will look fantastic :)

Philipp

Yep Im looking forward to it.

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Raoul Kunz
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Re: Sd.Kfz.11 (late) towing leFH 18

Post by Raoul Kunz »

Nice! :mrgreen:
I'll be looking forward to the leFH 18 since I have one sitting on my shelf here :mrgreen: .

The thick ejector marks at first irritated me as well but eventually they will prove pretty harmless, it's fairly hard plastic so they are easy to remove and clean up! :D



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Rob Matthews
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Re: Sd.Kfz.11 (late) towing leFH 18

Post by Rob Matthews »

The Gun looks very promising and the Sd.Kfz is a super build - the rubber tracks need replacing though.

Nice one Ian - really looking forward to seeing this 8-)

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Vincent Power
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Re: Sd.Kfz.11 (late) towing leFH 18

Post by Vincent Power »

Excellent choice Ian and good progress so far. :)

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Ian Shumsky
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Re: Sd.Kfz.11 (late) towing leFH 18

Post by Ian Shumsky »

Philipp, Shawn, Vincent, thanks all for looking in and your interest! Hope I do a good job :)

Raoul, yeah, the plastic is quite hard (but not brittle) so cleaning up is pretty easy.

Rob, indeed. One look at those tracks and I was off looking at options! I think Friulmodel may be the only way to go... unfortunately they cost as much as the kit!!!

With Step 1 complete, on to Step 2! This involves adding the Part 1 sub-assemblies together with the elevation mechanism

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There is a nice degree of detail, but some very thick gates and ejector pin marks again

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There is also a guide rod in the assembly which I replaced by styrene rod - much easier to clean up!

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... and assembled

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Step 3 adds more around the elevation mechanisms

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Though I did notice a nasty seam in the parts assembled in Stage 1

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I fixed this by inserting a thin 2mm x0.25mm strip of styrene.

... and all assembled at the end of Stage 3:

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At this point everything that the instructions say should be movable is, however I'll be gluing them in position shortly. This will be very much a 'static' display and I don't want anyone fiddling with it!

Next up will be detailing the shield - will post photos when done.
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Shawn Ramsey
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Re: Sd.Kfz.11 (late) towing leFH 18

Post by Shawn Ramsey »

I have to get me some of these AFV Club kits. They look really good. Plus the PE barrel and metal springs. Nice. :D

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Ian Shumsky
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Re: Sd.Kfz.11 (late) towing leFH 18

Post by Ian Shumsky »

Hi Shawn, it is a nice kit and it is going together very easily. The thick gates and pin marks are easily addressed with some care and there is lots of nicely engineered detail which means you don't get too many fiddly little bits as you can do in some Bronco kits (such as Vlad's QF 25pdr). I will clarify, though, that the spring was not actually a spring but rather a piece of corrugated vinyl tube -- still affective though!

Right, managed to make more progress last night. Stage 4 has you adding a bunch of details to the gun's shield

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including these two little 'hooks'!

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There is no way these would survive my handling of the model in the painting process so I decided to replace these with some brass wire, here along with the rest of the assembly

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I've left the pickaxe off for the time being. AFV Club provide the pioneer tools both with and without clasps, so I need to decide if I'll scratch some clamps to add to the kit or go with the moulded solution. Either way I'll be leaving the tools off for ease of painting (and may even follow Vincent's excellent tool painting SBS).

The next step will be fixing the gun to the shield. I had thought about leaving them separate for ease of painting, but looking over the remaining parts in this area there are too many pieces to add post painting, so I'll push on and hopefully get that done tonight.

Cheers
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Rob Matthews
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Re: Sd.Kfz.11 (late) towing leFH 18

Post by Rob Matthews »

Nice.

Ian - if you have a Dragon 251 D kit - don't forget that there are 2 sets of tracks in each.

They'll fit perfectly.

Rob
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