With the upper hull fitment conundrum behind me it was time to move onto the turret.
The gun breach and cradle parts are exactly the same as on their interior kit. Although not called out, a few other interior items from this kit can be found on various sprue trees. There appears to be a few different boxings of this kit which will have slightly altered sprue layouts. Unfortunately, although the rotating turret floor moulding is present both are missing the crucial bracket parts that would enable you to add it to the turret surround. However, even with what is available, there is still plenty of detail to eyeball, shoud you model any turret hatches open.
It
would have been nice to see a metal barrel although the slide moulded one is
easily cleaned up having only a very faint seam line. You do get
a choice of three plastic muzzle brakes. As of writing, looking on the Scalemate’s
site, I don’t yet see a metal barrel option available for this kit but I'm sure in time there will be!
The upper and lower turret mouldings are nicely engineered with nice weld line detail hiding the joint. The gun breach and cradle fixes to the lower part so you can paint the interior easily enough before joining the turret halves together. Although not called out for on the gun tank option, it would also be appropriate to fit the front panel with the vision port. Plenty of late Ausf J's still had it present. If the instructions are followed and the vision port delete panel part is chosen, the four screw head detail moulded onto the turret roof, above and behind where it sat need to be removed.
In step 24 part S17 (the Nahverteidigungswaffe cover) is orientated in a fixed position on the turret roof. In reality it could rotate 360 degrees from inside the turret so can be fixed in any position. Repositioning it is simple to remedy. The part has two pips underneath; the larger one is to fit into a 1mm hole in the roof that you have been instructed to drill out in step 23. The smaller pip sits centrally so just snip off the larger pip and simply choose your orientation. The cover hides the 1mm hole even if that was drilled out.
The turret schurzen are accurate for a N-Werk built vehicle in so far as they have the correct brackets and appropriate bolt fixing location points to both the turret and the panels. N-werk vehicles had a unique feature and differed to the earlier Krupp built vehicles. The side plates of the schurzen were mounted 50mm further forward which changed the door position and different support brackets were used. This also meant different mounts held the splash guard protector for the cupola base. The exposed bolt head pattern on the exterior of the front schurzen panel is the visible clue to the manufacturer. The middle bolt will be rearward of the upper and lower bolts on all N-Werk vehicles.
Unfortunately, as soon as I snipped my turret schurzen panels off the sprue gates it was apparent that both the front sections bowed inwards quite badly. I soaked them in warm water and left them overnight under a weight, but they simply sprang back the next day! I am hoping that the fixing of the brackets to the turret will straighten them out.
As with the hull schurzen the turret brackets were fixed to the panels first to get a nice clean fitment. As there is very little room between both the rear curved panel and the turret bin these areas will require an airbrushed shadow coat before final fixing to the turret. Photoetch storage trays at the rear of the schurzen are added by way of either plastic or PE brackets. As they would be hardly visible, I opted for the more durable plastic option and thinned them down.
The cupola assembly is a comprehensive model in itself. It contains a myriad of parts, but they all fit perfectly, and it looks exquisite once built up. You get two main cupola contruction options; one to build up with the armoured visor covers permanently open, and one so the covers simply slot in and can be left moveable.
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