Bergepanzer III Conversion
In my grand plan, May is Bergepanzer Build Month. Despite the flurry of web activity the Bergepanzer build has started. Actually, TWO builds (maybe 3) of the 'pickup tank' as my boys call it have started. How did a multiple build start? Well here's how....
The Bergepanzer III Juwa Conversion Kit
Believe it or not this was one of the first resin conversion kits I ever purchased and have only now got round to building it. At the time it was one of the cheapest kits available and remains so to this day.
Also around the same time Profiline also produced a Bergepanzer conversion kit which was more expensive but that kit to the best of my knowledge is now unavailable.
The Juwa kit contains both resin and brass parts along with some metal bolts and chain. Unlike Profiline kits there is an actual paper construction guide included which gives DIMENSIONS where needed.
What I like best about this kit is the distressed/weathered look of the wooden box along with the large wooden beams. I was inspired to build a berg from all the examples of heavily weathered and beaten up examples out there. The Profiline kit looked far too nice but it did have a much better crane assembly. When I finally got round to starting the build I must admit I was feeling a little tired of filling in resin imperfections. Unfortunately, for me there were a few areas on the resin parts that needed addressing. This is normal for ALL resin kits and by no means a reflection on the overall kit quality. Somewhere along the line I got it into my head - Wouldn't it be a whole lot easier to replicate wood by actually using WOOD?
As a conversion the Bergepanzer is probably one of the easiest to do from scratch. There are many scratch built conversions in all scales out there on the web and in magazines. Basically just a big wooden box and a crane plonked on top of a Pz III chassis.
So...... ta-daa...
A Bergepanzer made of WOOD (she's a witch, BURN HER!). Using the Juwa parts as a guide it was very simple to recreate the wooden box out of wood and styrene. I had thought of using brass and may still do so. The problem with using brass angle is that the cheap stuff from K&S is folded and DOES NOT have a nice sharp right angle. MIlled brass angle from Albion metals would have to be used BUT it is not produced in the size needed. Suitable milled angle is available from some O/S stores but I doubt it will get here by the end of May.
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I'm going to let some machine do that for me now.