The Panzer Mecha is made from resin and has a number of metal parts. The first thing you need to do is an inventory of the parts. This is not just a quality check but serves to familiarize you with the pieces. If you find yourself shaking your head and wondering "where does *this* go?" you can find out before you've got glue on it. The next step is to wash all of the resin pieces with soapy water and rinse them thoroughly. This step cleans off the release agent used to keep the resin from adhering to the mold.

1. The model is top heavy due to the amount of metal used for accessories. SOTR1949 doesn't specify base sizes for mecha so I decided to adopt a four inch diameter circle. The wood I used I picked up at Hobby Lobby for under a dollar. I found a coaster in the house that was close enough to the size I wanted and was a regular rounded shape. I drew around this with a pen and then cut it out with a craft knife. (I cut as close to the edge as I could because I thought it would reduce the amount of cutting I had to do. Once the pattern was out, I used sandpaper to smooth the edges and round off any mistakes (and there were several....)

2. Now you have the base cut out, it's time to mount the beast. Regular superglue works fine for this. Once it was a solid mount, I glued large pieces of cork on with white glue to serve as large rocks. When this was dry I smeared the rest of the base with white glue and poured parakeet gravel on the base. I pressed this down with my fingers to ensure it sets into the glue and let it dry overnight. Next cover the gravel with a thinned down layer of white glue using a paint brush. I did this step first as I wanted to have the arm extended and I did not want to snap the arm off trying to get the basing right.

3. The arm came next. I wanted this to be pointing straight ahead as if the mecha was about to engage a target rather than pointing down. There are four pieces to the arm, the long piece, two cylinder shaped pieces, and the guns. There was not too much work involved in getting this put together if you have trimmed off all of the mold lines and made the openings in the cylinder fit the arm. The more difficult part was getting the guns onto the arm well. When I dry fit it the joint was exceptionally wide and I had to file down connectors to fit. The popup is labelled with the specific joint that was troublesome.

4. The gun required some study to fit together.Once I had it dry fit it assembled well with super glue. The fit is shown above.Problems I ran into are shown with the fixes below. The barrel suppressor had a piece molded improperly but a small piece of green stuff fixed the problem. If you get a barrel fashioned this way, it's probably going to look OK if you don't fix it. In the heat of battle, a lot of odd things happen to metal and this could represent a round misfiring right outside of the barrel. It's also something that could happen in a close combat with another mecha, so fixing it is optional. The other spots I had to fix did not fall into this category. The center picture shows where the tubing comes into the back of the gun. There was a badly misformed hole here and I decided that I'd just fill it in and flatten it, putting an edge around it for looks. On the right side of the elbow joint there was a hole that looked like it was supposed to be there but I didn't like so I filled it in with green stuff and flattened it out. If you go this route, do the sides and back *first* and let the green stuff dry/solidify before tackling the barrel.

5.While the gun is setting up, you can work on the torso. The pictures below show how the metal bits are to be attached to the body. The kit comes with a German operator but I decided not to put him in. I have seen one model (Jim Bailey's) that had the hatch set up at a 90 degree angle with the operator looking forward from behind it. Either way the model looks good.

6. Once the epoxy or the super glue dries you can finish the overall assembly prior to priming and painting. I used Krylon Ultra-Flat Black as my primer (a friend, Brent Collins had suggested this as it dries quickly). It took several applications to cover the model and given the irregular shapes, there were several places in nooks and crannies that were not covered. This was solved by looking at the model closely and using a water-based black paint to cover missed areas.

7.The nice thing about black as a base coat or liner is that it pops other colors out more than a grey or brown liner. When doing the drybrushing seen below, I used several colors in a random application - two colors of grey, two of brown, and one of tan.The greys were used more heavily on the rocks. The parakeet gravel is larger than normal grit and makes for an easier job of dry brushing.

8. The next step is painting the base color and deciding if you want to camouflage it or not. I wanted a single color which matched the paints from late WW2 German vehicles. The Flames of War site has a good article on the variations of paint used. I used the Vallejo Model 882 as I liked the green tint to it.The hardest part here was keeping the recesses from getting painted over. You may find that you have to apply a light black wash along some seams and then do some touch-up painting of the basecoat to make it look good. The key is to be patient and not rush the work. The pictures below show how the model looked after this step. If you want to forego the weathering this is a good place to skip to the decals.

9. I had a used brush with which I did the weathering. You'll notice in the picture below that it was not a new one but one that had seen a lot of service and had frayed edges.  I dipped the brush into black paint and wiped it off on a paper towel. You don't want the brush completely dry but with a small amount of paint on it. Draw the side of the brush along the edge the joins on the model where possible. Then drag it from the panel towards the join.The frayed edges of the brush will give you a broken pattern that will look like wear. After using the black, go back and do the same thing more lightly with silver, leaving a lot of the black showing.

10. I used the Tamiya Weathering Kit for the areas below. There is a separate review on the site. You can accomplish the same look with a brush but must use a brush with a small amount of paint on it to feather the paint.

11. The next step is putting the decals on and weathering them (as shown in the photo to the top right and above). I do this after I get the rest of the weathering done as then I can focus only on those spots. The decals came from Company B. I placed two in the front and two in the rear on opposite sides. Once applied and dried I covered them with GW's Hardcoat, let it dry, and gave them a light brushing with the techniques in 9. above.

12. I used a couple of the GF9 static grass mixes to finish off the base. Once it was all done, I sprayed the model twice with a generic clear gloss (Krylon or GW) and followed with two coats of Testor's Dullcote. There are other matte coatings which might be better aqs I understand that Dullcote turns slightly yellow after 30 years or so, but I like the way it tones everything down.

So there you have it. If you've read this far, drop me an email message using the contact form with "Company B" in the title or message body and I'll enter your name in a drawing for a set of the decals I used (provided by Company B).