Panther Company; Second Platoon

At long last, my computer behaves for enough consecutive minutes to let me finish up my photo editing! I am having quite a task making it behave, but sadly getting a new one requires funds I don't have at the moment...

Enough about that, let's talk about pretty models!

The 2nd Platoon is made up of late-model G panthers. They have the flame hoods, red oxide primer showing through, ambush camo, and lots of fun stowage. Here's the platoon leader:

As you may be able to recognize, the commander is the DAK radioman, with his webbing shaved off, and lower half delicately removed. Painted in black gear, the uniform is similar enough (at least the visible parts are), and it's certainly a 2iC worthy pose. I admit, once I saw him in the turret, I was very tempted to make him the CO, but I quite like the idea in my forces that while the CO gestures and orders, it's the 2iC doing the work to make sure it gets done right.

This tank has quite a bit of unique stowage. the bedroll-on-tracks on the turret is from a photograph, and the ladder off the side is as well. I am not certain they rode into battle with said ladders in place, since it seems they could be used by daring enemies, but it makes for a more interesting model. This tank also has the universal bucket, and a spooled up towcable on the hoods, and, for the fun of it, a wash basin attached to the turret side. This too is from a photograph and I knew I had to carve one for my company!

Tank 422 also has a ladder on its rear, again based on a photo I saw. I like the idea that this one ends on the flame hood: Any soldier trying to use this ladder while the tank is running is going to get a face-full of exhaust, and possibly some 2nd degree burns to boot! Another boom-box arrangement of wheels, and a full turret's worth of spare tracks makes this tank well defended in the crew's mind. I have also added more of the rear deck stowage bins on this one.

Tank 423 has an interesting conversion I had to try. The minor details are, of course, numbers crudely painted over the tracks on the right side, and a towcable slung oddly down the right flank of the tank. Most notably (and fully visible in the rightmost inset image) is another relatively rare crew conversion.

As the allied airforce became more dangerous, strafing and bombing, the Panther crews (allegedly) found their engine decks exposed to a possible telling hit from the planes' .50cal MGs and bomb shrapnel falling among the cooling fans, messing up the engine. To combat this, they cut up sections of Schurtzen, and welded them in place as a kind of covering, hinged in the case of the main fans, to help keep them clear.

They also would cut up and weld together plates to go on the top of the turret, to add extra protection from these attacks for the crew. It's not really something that would have provided much benefit, but it is a thing that looks fun to convert. (And, with all its difficulties, was quite fun!) I'm sure you can see now why so few of my tanks have Schurtzen anymore! The metal plates were far thinner than any material it was worth using on these, so rather than trying to suffer the degradation of paper or tinfoil, I just carefully beveled the edges of the thinnest plasticard I have, so that when painted, the light and highlight methods would help reinforce just how thin these plates were.

As with most of the rarer field conversions, there is but one tank in my entire company thus converted, as a way of saying "this did happen, at least once". Stowage-wise, I also have wooden beams for assistance unbogging the tanks in muddy going.

The final tank of the force, so far, is what I like to call the Cook's Vehicle. I know each tank crew was responsible for cooking their meals for the tank, but I like the idea of a panzer brigade's fast movement and tight knit group style having the entire company eating together where possible. To this end, the crew has attached a cooking pot and pan to the side of the turret. This tank also has a camo net (tinfoil) strung over a large oil drum (plasticard with liquid greenstuff ridges), some jerry cans, a spare wheel, and more wooden beams for unbogging. The left side of the turret is as much as I can manage a recreation of a specific tank, with the combination of stowage and beat up spare tracks.

And that's the company! I still have a bergepanther and a nachtjager panther that just today got spraypainted, and once I've amassed enough models to make an airbrushing worth it, they too shall join the ranks of the company, allowing me to relegate Barkmann to his proper hero status. In the meantime, I am eagerly painting a Viktorias crew for Malifaux as I finish up final kimono details on Misaki, Ototo, and Yamaziko. I am so eager to try that game!

Panther Company; First Platoon

I return with more edited photos!

First platoon is equipped with early-model Panther G tanks. As such, they don't have the chin armour, have zimmerit paste, and have their back ends modified with the Panther D nozzles, with armour plating.

Panther Tank 411 is the platoon leader. His tank has a traditional style of camo patterning, and has been renumbered from a previous assignment. (As was often done, it was painted over with dunkelgelb, and new numbers applied, leaving the old numbers barely visible through.)

Custom gear on this tank includes the looped up tow cable, a rifle over the tools, extra stowage again cast from other PSC or BF parts, and another custom ammo crate. The oft-converted stowage for extra jerry cans (on either sides of the exhaust) is visible here too.

If you click on the image to get a bigger view, you can see how the zimmerit paste technique has worked, and with careful drybrushing it actually looks quite convincing. You can see again on this one how the mud mix applied to the lower quarter of the tank makes it looks like it's seen some things, and I personally love how the tow hooks look painted. It's such a minor detail, but sells the scale.

Tank 412 is a fairly standard build. Ubiquitous bucket added to the back, towcable strung across from the front towhook to the back of the tank, ammo crate and spare wheel/gear.. As you can see on this one, the tracks mounted to the tank side were applied after the hull got its camo (in fluff; obviously it was glued to the model pre-paint).

Also clear on this one: Using the PSC D-mantlet unmodified is slightly wrong, because they have the binoc gun sight, as opposed to the monoc later one. I had covered the hole with liquid greenstuff before adding the zimmerit paste, and am happy to say the hole isn't visible at all.

Tank 413 is sadly missing a side: The photo was blurry and to be honest the image is pretty standard. This is what I jokingly refer to as my "boombox" or "Mickey Mouse" tank, because of the twin roadwheels. Every photo I saw with two on the turret thus made me think of either massive speakers or the aforementioned mouse. This tank also has the rear deck stowage bins, which were cobbled together out of spare bits of schurtzen. Tank 413 also has its side-turret numbers painted on the tracks, which was a relatively common practice once the tracks themselves became ubiquitous.

The final tank for this platoon is, obviously, 414. Another relatively straightforward build, but one of the spare cut-off tank jacks was thrown on the back as extra stowage. I have also puttied a camouflage tarp such that it's attached to the gun cleaning rod case, which I've seen once or twice. Sadly, whichever crewman owns the helmet on the back-left of the tank will be unhappy when he next looks at it: It's taken a shell hit at some point (a resin bubble I decided not to fill) and won't be much use!

With that, First Platoon is done. I do have Schurtzen painted up for them, and may put them on, if I prefer the way they look with. I also am debating adding foliage, but I do kind of like the look of them pure. I'll dry run a few, and dig back through my photosets to see what was most common. Any thoughts from you folks as to with or without foliage?

2nd Platoon will be up when I can get their photos edited, which will hopefully be by Thursday. enjoy!

Panther Company Done at Last!

It is finished! I finally have the tanks at a state where I am not frustrated with their look! (As always, there's something to tinker with forever...)

There's enough photos, and they're taking long enough to edit, that rather than doing one post I'll split it up roughly by company. To start with, a group photo!

Astute eyes may notice a plethora of different paint schemes. I decided that, since these are likely the only 10-or-so Panthers I'll paint, I would have fun and try all sorts of different ones, minus the few truly bizarre, single-battle schemes. I did roughly split the scheme by platoon, however, helping to identify which tanks belong to which platoon.

I am a huge fan of the late-war ambush camo scheme, so the late-model Panther G platoon got that as their mock-up. The slightly-older Panther G variant gets a more standard brown/green/gelb, but one has the more snake-line pattern, while the others have a more blob-like appearance.

And now, for the by-model breakdown. First up for your viewing pleasure, the 2iC, Barkmann!

I left Barkmann's model mostly alone, conversion-wise. The schürtzen, being the easily-warped pewter version, got a bit of worrying, as well as the two mudguards at the front. Other than that, I added an extra wheel on the turret rear, a custom ammo crate, and bedroll. The most frustrating part of this tank is that rear hatch crewman. He's not especially difficult to paint, but God is he easy to overlook!

Even though he breaks the standard number scheme of my company, I kept Barkmann to his historical tank's number of 424. Eventually I will replace him with my nachtjager panther, and would then want to be able to play him as his special character self.

Following swiftly on the treads of Barkmann, my company CO:

My tank commander is meant to double as a possible panzer ace, and as such I gave his tank a bit of extra loving. He's got a modified location for the barrel cleaning rods (a rare, in-the-field upgrade), a bucket in the 'standard' position hanging off the back middle, extra fuel cans, flame hoods, an mg34 on the turret for his personal use, and, on the hopefully rare occasion he is forced to disembark, a 'borrowed' panzerschreck to claim vengeance!

Now with it painted, you can see my liquid greenstuff zimmerit works fairly well. I try for a realistic paintscheme, so I haven't really accentuated the folds, but they are deep enough to catch washes, and sharp enough that drybrush highlights work quite well.

I have painted the tracks hung on the sides in two different ways. Often tanks would be hung as extra armour from the turrets, and then overpainted with the rest of the tank. For this purpose, the camo patterns and tank number (401) are on the tracks, but they've been hit with a 'rust wash' as well to show the lack of priming done for them.

The command figure in the turret is from the Kfz. 251 crew kit purchased from Battlefront. I carefully removed the legs, shaved him to fit, and knew at once I had a good strong commanding figure. Other stowage is either custom-made (the crates), or is from the PSC 251 kit, cast and used. Helmets are painted in late-war Heer splinter camo net style, or left as their standard panzer grey. Here you can also see how the mud mix was applied to the tracks to hide mould lines, and on the lower rear of the panzer itself, from splatter.

If you have any questions regarding particular elements of the conversion (or painting) don't hesitate to ask! I'll hopefully have the rest of the company up, as soon as I can edit and upload the photos.

It's finally done! It feels so good to have them off my desk.

Visions of Night

As I struggle with my first significant source-light painting, and with finishing off an entire company of Panthers, I moved once again to my freeform scratchbuild/conversion. Every now and again I feel an urge to build things. It's a puzzle where the 'pieces' are whatever bitz I can find or get, and the 'picture' is as many historical or contemporary photos as I can hunt down.

With that said, I ended up with one 'unassembled' Panther from my two boxes to make the company. I figured I would turn it into a Tank Ace, until I made my company commander cool enough to make him a Tank Ace enough in his own right! It was during my Panther research I came across the Panther with night-vision setup, and the guys at Missing Lynx do a great job of detailing it and showing photos. I knew I had to have one. At first I contemplated doing a "Solution C" but it seems the prevailing belief is that Solution C (three scopes, one each for commander, driver, and gunner) was about as likely as a KV-5. Settling on the Solution A, I first set about making the back bin (which is the easiest), and then after significant delay, set to work on the scope. Here's the pieces I used:

Kudos to anyone who knows what that bottom-centre piece is from!

I clipped the back end of a leftover part from another model to form the base of the scope, which was glued to a plastic cylinder, itself on a small triangular piece of plasticard. The lamp is a leftover piece of pewter something which I was lucky enough to find in my scrap bin and almost exactly replicates the size of the device.

So hard to hold on to..

Assembled, this entire device is still only maybe 3 or 4 mm square, and while unfinished, it is now ready for mating to the panther ring.

Peekaboo

First, a commander from the Panzer IV H box was shaved down and slotted into the cupola. After that, the assembly was glued in place, making it look as though the commander is trying to line up the turret.

Finally, liquid greenstuff helped to make the various locking rings for the night vision scope itself. With this complete, the Night Panther is ready for stowage, and then painting!

Big Cats On The Block

It's time for a halfway update on Panthers! I had airbrushed them, and was not 100% on how they're painted. I put them aside to paint the Malifaux crew, but was motivated to give a second look by a friendly reminder on WWPD. I have pulled them back out, and am working to get them finished:

As you can see, I've done one zug with the earlier three-colour painting, (the platoon with zimmerit) and a second platoon with the later scheme where they just saved on dunkelgelb by leaving the oxide undercoat showing instead of brown. Annoyingly, my green and brown didn't entirely come out clean-edged, and I may yet go back and touch them up with my dunkelgelb colour by airbrush.

One thing that did help is a thinned coating of Agrax Earthshade mixed with water. It helps to add definition to the plates and cracks, and dulls the green and brown more realistically. In this lighting, it looks like it darkens the dunkelgelb too much, but it doesn't seem that off in person. We shall see.

By now, you can also see the effects of the zimmerit paste to some extent. It is a subtle, perhaps more realistic (than stylistic) effect on the armour.

Also currently on the table are my remaining Ten Thunders models. I'll be trying a source lighting effect on Yamaziko, Misaki will have gold traced patterns on her garb, and Ototo... I will figure something out for. I've made Shang about as bright as I can possibly go without him looking like popcorn, as befits a creature of fire!

And finally, my lady-swords faction for Malifaux: As you can see, they are not consistently painted but have echoing motifs across the entire group, I paint the base colours this way to help make sure I'm getting some of the same colour on different models in the crew, before they get the paint bottle treatment you can see with the heads of the Ten Thunders above, when I'm down to final details.

Since these photos were taken, I've been painting the tools and stowage on the Panthers, and will probably end up doing a post on how I paint the tracks. I've also gone back to attempting to make my final two Panther vehicles: A Bergepanther and a Nachtsichtgeraten Panther (night fighter). Once the table is clear of that stuff, well... Then I start to dig into the pile...

Panther Masterclass 4: Stowage and Detailing

For my final post in this series (the painting post won't be a masterclass; there are many fine blogs and forum posts regarding that) I tackle adding stowage and odd little elements of detail to the Panther. It would be highly unusual for a tank to not have stowage, and I'll go over each tank in my force, and comment on certain features that are unique.Almost all my bits of stowage are based off photographs, and I'll try to suggest how common each part would have been on tanks, based on either photographs or documents.

I wish I had a better excuse for the delay on this post, but it was a case of 'something always came up'... On to the models!

First something universal on my Panthers. Here you can see the all-weather plug for the MG slot, which was attached to a cord by the radioman's head, pulling which would open the MG mount and allow him to attach and then fire the MG. On all my tanks I attempted to make the modeling wire look like string in how it lay, and the plugs are somewhat the right size.

Similarly, all my tanks have tow hooks attached using the same modeling wire, carefully bent into hook shapes before being clipped and glued. While fiddly, the end result was well worth the time.

These next few photos would have been photomerged, if CS4 wasn't somehow worse than CS3 for attempting photomerges. My hope was to just have all the rear ends in one go so I could talk as I went down the line. Ah well. Here on the leftmost you can see unbogging logs strapped to the back, and a bucket attached to a rear tow-hook. Fun fact about tanks: I have yet to see a Panther that isn't a wreck without a bucket. Every tank had one in some form or other. The second tank over has a tow cable wrapped around the flame hood, which was made by bending the ends of a length of wire over on itself, then looping the entire thing.

Here you can see a second tank with unbogging timber, and an interesting element on the tank next to it; I have a photo of a (wrecked) tank with a ladder welded on over its exhaust! At first I wondered why the heck they'd want to have to climb over exhaust pipes to get on, until I figured it was probably to deter enemies climbing up during battle, and still let them get up and off when the tank itself wasn't running! Also, note the plethora of buckets along the back end. Since these photos the ladders got a coating of liquid greenstuff, partly to dull the edges of the wire, and partly because I was having some trouble getting the glue to fully adhere. Hopefully that'll work!

Now for the above shots. Here you can see two incredibly common elements of stowage: extra tracks on the sides of the turret, and the sides of the engine deck. This was because the crews believed they would help deflect shots or help with protection. It's up for debate whether it actually did help, but it was common. The other element that was incredibly common is what I call the mickey mouse ears, or awesome subwoofers; the extra wheels on the turret. These were part protection (again) and part 'somewhere to put them'.

Also of note is the last element of my vent project that wasn't finished in time for the last shot; the slat covers on the right hand vents. It took some doing to make this work, as you can see on this one I have the wrong number and width of the pieces.

This was a 'fun' mod to make. At some point the crews were officially allowed to, and started to make anti-aircraft covers for the tanks' vents. These were again fashioned out of pieces of schurtzen, and on the rear deck were meant to help stop lower-calibre bullets, and shrapnel, from entering the engine through the relatively unprotected rear vents. At the same time, they often added a similar spaced armour piece to the top of the turret, making sure to leave a hole around the anti-infantry projector slot, and turret hooks.

Rather than cut incredibly thin pieces of brass to bend into shape, I just took my widest plasticard (1mm or so) and beveled its edges so that when glued in place, it would look to be only as thin as the upper edge, sloping away underneath. The rearmost vent covers are stacked two tall because of their shape.

Here is my 'company cook' tank! He has a pair of cooking pots (one frying pan, one deeper pot) as well as a non-specific burlap sack filled with who knows what kinds of goodies. There's a tarp covering the bag, as well as an oil drum, a pair of jerry cans, and one of my cast extra roadwheels. (The tarp was necessary to cover a massive air bubble in the wheel!) While I've not necessarily seen pots and pans on the sides of turrets, I wanted to add something characterful, and I sadly have a very limited number of german helmeted heads!

One of my platoon commanders sports a piece of stowage I knew I had to add when I saw it in a photograph; There is an image of a Panther tank with a wash basin attached to the turret! How could I not include such a hilariously random bit of kit?

One of my other platoon commanders here with duffel, spare wheels, and a jerry can beside the rear turret hatch. Also with this panther are the rear-deck extra stowage bins. I have seen only one or two photos with these on the vehicle, in part because they were crew-crafted bins made from pieces of schurtzen or other scrap metal. As with the anti-aircraft plates, anything I've only seen rarely, I added just once to the company. Enough to try it, not enough to seem historically inaccurate.

My CO, and hopefully my tank ace, has quite a few bits of fun stowage. First he has a helmet on the back of the turret, so he can replace his fine officer's cap in a hairy situation. You'll also notice none of my Panthers have the AA MG, in part because Flames of War doesn't have it, and in part because it's historically a rare element. Despite that, he is equipped with a personal-use MG34 which I am claiming he has held on to in case he needs to defend his tank, or exit it under dodgy situations. It was common for crews bailing from their tanks to remove the in-tank MG34s to help ensure they got back to their muster points!

More fun stowage on this one is a box containing extra tank shells (over-bright in the shot, alas, but painted it'll be more distinctive) and another relatively rare field-modification of moving the barrel cleaning rod tube to the back deck. The last fun element of borrowed/pilfered stowage: A German Panzerschreck! I had to replace the empty space of the cleaning rod somehow, and had a bunch of these left over from my Kfz. 251s.

Here's the modified back end of the early-G with metal armour plates. Also visible are buckets, tarps, bread bags, a canteen, and a spare wheel. I tried to vary up where and how the wheels were applied so they weren't always ears/stereos, since it was often just one wheel on the tank.

This tank was modified the other way, with the lower, lateral-mounted jack, and two jerry cans in its place. At first it may seem like I missed removing the mould line on the jerry can, but considering the way it was fabricated, this is how I can best represent the curious manufacturing folds.

 Finally, this tank displays another of the ammo stowage bins, and is a good example of what the slide-covers on the right side vents ought to look like. All of mine are open, as I must assume they would have been for battle, and here you can see the proper five slats, offset slightly.

Well, that's the Panther series done, until I get around to finishing my night-vision 2iC to replace the special-character Panther I'm currently using. (I think it's Barkmann?)

I did get a chance to use the crazy heat and humidity we've been having here to bury myself in the basement airbrushing, so the Panthers have since been airbrushed! One platoon is painted with the red oxide colour as base, and the other platoon with the three-colour brown/green/dunkelgelb. At the moment, I don't think I'm quite pleased with the green in some of them (being frustratingly translucent, it came off too dark on the red, unsurprisingly) and the brown misbehaved a bit out of the brush, so I'll be touching them up. Rest assured though, there'll be another post up sooner than this one, as I have another project that just finished the conversion and is happily moving on to painting!

Panther Masterclass Part 3: Filling the Vents

Okay, slight delay on stowage for two reasons. First, I am still adding some, and second I realized I had yet to do this post.

One major difference between the Battlefront Panthers and the PSC Panthers as far as detail is the mesh grille on the engine vents. While I think the PSC ones would be beneficial for wrecks, and allow greater modification, the fact of the matter is that a running Panther would have had a mesh layer on top of any of its vents. Most egregious in this regard is the crew heater modification, which is hollow in the PSC model, lacking any of its critical internal geometry.

To rectify this, I set about making my own grille covers. At this size, any actual mesh weave wouldn't have been fine enough to fill it, so I decided to use greenstuff, and a stamp.

You will need, essentially, three different types of stamp. For the boxed one, I cut plasticard. For the round ones, I discovered to my glee that one section of an Ork Bomma gun was good for both diameter of vents!

To actually make them, I first dragged them along one of my files not across the teeth but along them, to groove the surface. This was deepened and lined with a craft knife in a proper cross formation, so I could get an appropriate mesh look.

Whenever I use greenstuff I tend to work from the 'safest' to 'least safe' part of the model, as far as later damaging the work I've done while it's still malleable. In this case, the crew heater gets a ball of putty that mostly fills, and is a bit higher than the space it needs to go in.

Lining up the grid to be parallel to the tank, I push it in just until the greenstuff starts to extrude. Careful to keep the punch a bit wet so the greenstuff doesn't stick to it.

Next, while the round tool is still at hand, I did the other circular vent. In this case, I used a sculpting tool to lay on as thin an amount of greenstuff as would fill the space. I nudged it into all the cracks and flattened it as much as possible.

To ensure the smoothness and shape, I lick my finger and rub the top. After this, the process is much the same as with the first.

Likewise, the square vents are managed with the tool first.

Flatten this section with the tool, squaring it off. At this stage I try to remove any excess that doesn't fit the rectangle.

This one is an easier one to line up, and I press firmly, rocking back and forth, to ensure a good grid shape manifests.

After all four vents are applied (or in this case, two for the sake of images) I use a craft knife to cut the edges away while it's still wet. For both the round vent and the box ones, cut off anything that would overlap into the joins.

To easier save the putty, while removing it I keep a small ball in my hand which I can use to pull it off the blade, keeping the blade clean for future cuts.

And here's one I prepared earlier! This was one of the first I tried it on: my company commander. You can see that the ridges pick up enough that with painting they should be distinctive.

Similarly, you can see that I have done a similar stamping with the flame hoods on the exhausts. Luckily, I had plastic rod of an appropriate diameter, which I grooved like the vents, and then drilled a small hole in for the nub.

Next time, I promise, stowage. I am adding a ladder or two, and will shortly be using liquid greenstuff to make sure it doesn't fall apart!

Panther Masterclass Part 2: Modeling the Early-G Variant from PSC

Today, in part 2 of 4 (or 5?) of my series on getting the most from the PSC Panther box, I show you how to make an early-variant Panther G from the box, which shows only the default-D, default-A, and late-G versions.

Primarily, my information comes from Germany's Panther Tank: The Quest for Combat Supremacy by Thomas L. Jentz. This book is incredibly detailed, and I highly recommend you attempt to get your hands on it if you're a Panther tank fan. It details all the steps that led up to the Panther's creation, as well as all the important points in variants, official modifications made during the run of the Panther, and after-production field modifications the crew made. In most cases, these are backed up by photographs of Panthers, and where these are unavailable, sketches are provided.

First and foremost, we must talk about what the initial fundamental changes to the Panther justified the modification from "A" to "G".

The A modifications were primarily the additional exhausts on the rear, because of an issue with engine cooling, and the commander's cupola, which now featured a fancy 8-view telescope system, and a hatch that, rather than on hinges, popped up and slid around.

The Panther G, internally, saw some crucial redesigns to the engine layout and cooling, removing the need for three 'exhaust' vents on the left side. Along the same time, the back deck engine cover was redesigned, and the driver and radioman's hatches were redesigned to not be on an angle. This then, gives us an "early G" with what look like the same exhaust pipes as the D, and a modified upper deck.

The famous chin mantlet, defining characteristic of the Panther G, was only introduced about halfway through its run (in Sept 44) and even then wasn't a universal adaptation. Similarly, the other distinctive feature, (Flammvernichter Exhaust Mufflers) were introduced in October of 44.

Another important change, and the first thing I modified on mine, was that the binocular vision slits for the gunner on the D were replaced with a singular view port. Since the chin mantlet wasn't introduced by this point, I used the D and A mantlet, and just eliminated the second view scope using liquid greenstuff.

 I put on more than might have been needed, so that when it dried (and inevitably shrunk) I could just scrape off the excess with a craft knife.

The next change, of course, was modifying the rear-hull to take the D-style mufflers. Unfortunately, the hull shape between the D and G Panthers changed enough that you can't just swap in one for the other. On mine, I used the G rear hull, but then delicately cut the bracing piece of plastic between the two exhausts, cleaning it so the two would mesh properly:

As you can see, at the same time for this panther I've cut off the jack from the back end. The G did generally store its jack between the two exhausts, but I have photos of at least one with the jack mounted on the engine access port, and two jerry cans slotted in to that place, which I had to recreate on one of the ten:

With the bracing arm removed, luckily, the two pieces mesh together cleanly and smoothly, requiring nothing more than a bit of superlgue:

After this, it was glued to the hull, and the rest of the assembly is pretty straightforward "G" assembly, as listed on their instructions, until I had applied the zimmerit.

Before the Flammvernichter were applied, the exhausts were given extra armour plating, to stop a random shot from penetrating into the engine compartment. At the point of connection of the exhausts, this took the form of the armour plates you see already on the vehicle. For the latter part of welded-on armour plates, I used some leftover pieces of photo-etched brass framing. (Throw nothing away, folks: You never know when you might need it!)

I cut two sections that looked to be long and wide enough, and bent to curve them before gluing them in place. On this one, you can see the modified jack and fuel cans I mentioned.

Finally, here's a shot of another Panther G early with the exhaust covers, but in this case with the jack in its as-issued position.

if one doesn't have access to photo-etched metal, I'd recommend either durable paper (more than printer paper, less than a birthday card) or even two layers of tinfoil bent over themselves. Another advantage of tinfoil is that it could be bent and mangled to look like the flimsy metal of the exhaust covers has been dinged and damaged by use, as it often was.

Next time I will cover stowage, and true rivet-counter details, though I am still adding stowage. As a teaser element next time, remember that every tank I've ever seen a good detailed picture of, had a bucket...