Tamed Panther: "Cuckoo"

First piece of ATAK Zimmerit applied to the lower hull. I had to enlarge the three holes in it slightly to make it fit, but that was easy enough. 

Now also Zimmerit on the back of the hull, and the suspension arms are in place. The Zimmerit took a lot of dry-fitting and fettling, and I cut the torsion bars off the suspension arms because they’re pointless if you glue the arms to the hull like I did. Though there’s of course no need to cut them off, I figure they might come in handy sometime in the future for scratchbuilding stuff 🙂 

Zimmerit on the turret too. 

I attached all of these pieces with superglue, by putting a good amount over the back of the part and then pressing it into place. This spreads the glue out, but the light area you can see here is where the glue didn’t creep far enough under the part.  

The gun is also on, though the mantlet (from ATAK) is still loose. It has an air bubble in it, but that will end up out of sight under the rain cover. 

I had to take off the mudguards because they were dented and bent on the real tank, which will be hard to replicate with plastic parts. 

The Zimmerit on Cuckoo’s glacis was damaged, so I drew a template from which I could trace the line of the damage onto the ATAK part, which is translucent enough that you can see the template through it. The template is the next “picture” in this album. 

Here’s the template you can use to get the damage “right” in case you also want to build a model of this particular tank. 

And the damaged ATAK part on the tank. It still needs the machine-gun opening to be cut out, of course. 

All of the Zimmerit is now on! 

Engine deck and turret mostly finished. Photos of the real Cuckoo show an antenna on the turret, which Panthers did not normally have, so I put a British antenna mount on top of the Nahverteidigungswaffe, as that seems the most logical place for it. 

Cuckoo had a Jagdpanther stowage bin with vertical ribs on the left rear, so I converted the kit part with some plastic rod and strip. (The ATAK set also includes Zimmerit-covered bins, but Cuckoo had plain ones.) 

I had some great news on another forum tonight: Cuckoo’s loader’s hatch was apparently stuck open — and I glued it shut a few days ago … When it didn’t want to come out (no surprise there), I went for plan A instead and got out the jigsaw. 

After drilling a hole, I stuck the jigsaw through it (see previous photo) and then sawed through, taking care to remain inside the hatch outline on the inside. 

I then cleaned up the hole so it matches the inside diameter as closely as possible. 

Next, I very carefully cut away the remains of the outside part of the hatch. 

And then removed the part that sits in the bevel of the opening. This was the easiest part, I’m happy to say, because I could just follow the glue layer between the two bits of plastic. 

New hatch made from plastic card (white), an unused bit of the ATAK Zimmerit set, RFM Panther parts (tan) given to me by someone else, and Dragon parts (grey). The inner hinge is from the kit, but needed a shim to fit around the RFM bar; the hinge pin there is plastic rod. 

The outer part of the hatch is a 15 mm disc of 0.75 mm card, the inner part is a 14 mm disc of the same but with the edges bevelled; between them is a 13 mm disc of 0.25 mm card. Some 0.25 mm thick strip forms the base for the locking mechanism. 

The inside hinge is glued into the turret here. The hatch can still open and close, because I still need to add the latch that holds it open. Also, I made a grab handle on the turret roof from copper wire because the kit part went flying and has not been seen since 🙁 

I replaced the strip over the side skirt mounting plates with one I cut and bent from aluminium sheet, so that I could bend and distress it like on the real tank. 

And the same on the left, which was in worse shape than on the right. (Incidentally, if you intend to paint your Cuckoo in white winter camouflage, or as it was used in Germany in early 1945, it should not have the strip on this side at all.) 

My father made the front mudguards for me from the same aluminium sheet, as he long ago was taught metalworking in school, and I don’t think my skills were up to replicating the kit parts. I then cut them to size and dented them to match the photos of Cuckoo. 

The strengthening ribs are 0.5 mm plastic rod with a flat scraped to it to make it (more or less) half-round, while the rivets were made with a punch-and-die set. 

I made a start on the tool racks, this is on the right. Dragon gives you both full plastic and mixed etched and plastic parts for them — I chose the latter but corrected bits Dragon got wrong or missed. 

On the real Cuckoo, the two lower tubes on the left were not present, going by photos. Neither of the tool racks is finished yet, though. 

To replicate a patch of damaged Zimmerit on the turret, I made a template by tracing over a photograph again and printing and cutting it out. I then dabbed paint through it to mark the damaged bit. 

I cut along the outline of the paint with a sharp knife and then removed the Zimmerit inside the cut to make the damaged area. 

I’ve been cleaning up a set of Rye Field Model Panther tracks. Just removing the links from the sprue is easy, but … 

… there is also an ejector pin mark and some mould lines on the inside of each link that I filed off. At the bottom a link after removing from the sprue, at the top one I’ve filed down to get rid of the marks. 

Six links assembled as a quick test. They fit nicely around the Dragon drive sprocket. 

Front right tool rack, with the towing shackle upside-down as on the real Cuckoo, which is also why the axe and fire extinguisher are missing. After taking the picture, I cut off the etched tool clasp at the bottom (for the axe) and replaced it with a plastic one (see next photo) because those etched parts are just too damned hard to fit. 

Rear right tool rack, with only the idler adjusting tool in place. The tool clasps are from the plastic tools from the Dragon kit, which I cut off before drilling out and opening up the plastic clasps themselves. 

Left front tool rack, which only had a British shovel in it on the real tank. The part for it comes from a Master Box set of British paratroopers, and I cut it in half to fit on either side of the tool clasp from the kit. 

On the left side, I noticed there was a patch without Zimmerit, which would have been below the tube for the gun cleaning rods and spare antennas (which was missing on Cuckoo). In the same way as for the side of the turret, I made a template and cut away the unnecessary part. I also added the etched hangers for spare track links on the rear hull sides. 

For the jerrycans on the sides, I replicated the string or rope they were tied on with, using thin copper wire from an old electric motor. I drilled holes in the backs of the jerrycans to fit the wire, because it’s easier to get it in position that way than by just wrapping it around. 

The two jerrycans on the right of the tank. 

And the one on the left, plus an RFM track link as a spare.