George Collazo shares his excellent results on this Jagdpanther. It looks great George! Be sure and visit George’s blog, Model Kits Review.
First, I build usually 1/35 scale armor and 1/48th A/C. As per my photography background, I’ve taken the ‘Photography Series’ to my workbench. That way, I can create an certain era of war hardware to the same scale. That allows a story telling on a shelf (without diorama) with friends and family that venture into my man cave. The 1/48 Jagdtiger will be on display with some 1/48 late Luftwaffe A/C. I will also add to my series a 1/48 Russian KV-1 with the proper wings
The 1/48 Jadgtiger is molded very clean with no visible flash and half lines from the molding process are very well aligned. Unlike most of Tamiya’s 1/48 armor, this one came with a styrene lower hull. To add some weight, Tamiya provides 4 metal plaques and the needed parts to secure them to the hull. Speaking of hulls, nothing wrong with the die-cast (as long as they don’t crumb ala Dragon) but I prefer them in styrene. Tamiya claims that die cast hulls are highly detailed, but (for *my* taste) I’ve seen better in their styrene counterparts.
This is a fairly easy model to build, some details are molded on but doesn’t mean that they don’t good on your finished project. The tracks are made of styrene which I like for the detail (for the scale). Styrene tracks are (at least in the beginning to me were) intimidating. The secret with styrene tracks is patience, and before I keep going, please DO follow the track sections by the instructions. There are 2 sections on each side that ‘almost’ look alike but they aren’t the same. I confess that I messed up and instead of fixing the issue, I kept assembling to find out at the end, that the joining indentations (which also look alike) wouldn’t fit. A 5 minutes fix took me 45 minutes and lots of patience to avoid damaging the tiny indentations. Tamiya Extra Thin cement took care of the problem. Lesson learned
Don’t fight with the tracks
You need to have the running gear and ‘sprockets’ (for the lack of the proper name at this time) in order to assemble the tracks. The front sprocket goes on with a poly-cap which is removable, but the rear one requires cement. Whatever you do, DO NOT glue the rear one. If you glue it, you will put a lot of stress on the front track sections while removing it. So, better remove them from the front and back a LOT easier for painting and weathering. When you’re done painting and weathering, the tracks will go on very easy and that’s when you actually glue the rear guide.
The kit goes together so well, that you couldn’t tell the upper hull was attached and cemented to the lover hull completely finished and weathered with no touch-ups needed. I was asked in the other thread if I was going to weather it. This is exactly how I wanted it. Not new from the assembly line, nor heavily abused .
Painted free hand with my loyal and trusty AZTEK A470 Metal Body dual action AB.
I’m not a rivet counter, I love the end product. What I would love to see is at least is a humble Photo Etched Grille set. I know that Pacific Models has one for the 1/48 Tamiya Tiger I. If anyone knows about a set, please do drop me a line.
