From Schnuck to Mephisto

Construction on the 4 wall panels and lower hull was completed then I discovered I had overlooked the rivet differences on the side walls @$%$$ &^%## these were corrected along with various others on all 5 body panels until I was dreaming about rivets. I had to create new hinges for the main doors and the lower track access doors as Rochling used 3 hinges while Krupp used only 2. Various other little tweaks here and there and it was all test fitted ahead of final construction.

I now worked on weathering the interior and creating the damage from the explosion then I was able to zip it all up finally.

Moving onto painting now she was primed all over with Tamiya rattle can primer then given a base coat of green. A european modeller gave me some really useful info on colours from research he had done for his own build of Mephisto as a brand new tank painted grean only. The cammo colours were sourced from Belgian railway supplies according to his info so I was able to match them for how she looked at the start of the Battle of Villers-Bretonneux where she was bogged and abandoned by her crew.

I had only proceeded with the build once I had confirmed I was able to source the soldier created artwork decals. The owner of the decal company assured me he would supply me with what I needed and he came through, what a legend. The downside of having such large decals was that the film was thick aaaand Mephisto has 100s of rivets, you get the drift- half a bottle of decal solution and 8 hours of work later and she was looking awesome.

Weathering this beast was a lot of fun with those 100s of rivets and the fact that she sat outside Amiens for months allowed me to go nuts with rust streaks and muck, downside was she was difficult to hang onto while doing pin washes etc so I came up with a solution.

Once all the weathering was completed I took a couple of glamour shots and started on the display base.

I hate doing figs but these 2 Aussies came out quite good for me. They came from the ANZACs at Gallipoli set by Revell.

 

And finally the completed build. The kit is an absolute joy to build with great detail and perfectly fitting parts. I really enjoyed pushing my scratch building to things I had never attempted before so learned a lot in the process. Thanks for looking and I hope I've done the subject justice. Cheers.

Amazing research and execution. A very enjoyable read. Thanks for sharing.

Awesome stuff, love it!!