Attaching Plastic Schürzen

Attaching Plastic Schürzen With Jeremy With the release the GBX10 Panzer IV H platoon we see the introduction of the new plastic Schürzen. These attach in a completely different way to our previous metal Schürzen and open up a bunch of new opportunities for modelling your Panzer IV H tanks.

Before you begin to attach the Schürzen to the tank first assemble the hull by attaching the tracks, track rear guards and hull MG.

Step 1 On the hull sides you’ll find a series of slots for mounting the Schürzen brackets to. There are three on each side; the fourth longer bracket will butt to the hull where there is a slight indentation. Check the slots see if they are clear and remove any excess resin.

Then carefully cut out the brackets from the plastic frame/sprue. It contains 6 short brackets and 2 long brackets, as well as 2 rails and 2 sets of Schürzen plates. A set of clippers is probably best for this, but remember to cut well away from the parts. Then trim off the excess plastic with a craft knife. You can then dry fit (without glue) the brackets with the slots to make sure they fit well and don’t stick out at funny angles. The flat slot at the end of the bracket goes to the top. When happy with the fit glue them in. The long bracket glues to the front side of the hull as shown in the photograph. You want all the bracket’s slots to be level so the rail will rest on all of them. You can use a straight edge to ensure this.

Step 2 Then you can glue the rail on. The angle at the end of the rail goes to the front of the tank and the tags on the rail go to the inside. The ‘V’s point up. The tags are for aligning the rail to the brackets and they should be positioned to the inside of the end brackets.

Alternative You may like to glue the rail to the Schürzen plates first. The rail is positioned underneath the tags. The tags also indicate the top of the Schürzen plates and go on the inside. The rail bend should align with the down angle of the front Schürzen plate. Then attach the rail and Schürzen plates to the brackets as above.

Step 3 Attach the Schürzen plates to the rail and brackets. The tags at the top of the Schürzen plates sit on top of the rail and align next to the ‘V’s of the rail (which face up). The downward angle of the rail aligns with the similar angle on the front Schürzen plate. They just repeat the process on the other side.

Variations In the field Schürzen was often seen on tanks with a few plates missing. You can model this by cutting up your Schürzen along the break lines and removing sections before gluing it to the rail. The plates can also be damaged from gunfire or crashing into buildings and trees etc. A quick bit of knife work can make your Schürzen sufficiently battle damaged. Late in the war the German started to fit some vehicles with mesh Schürzen. You can do this by using the plastic rail and making new Schürzen from some metal mesh from a model supply store, an old sieve or an old coffee plunger. More pictures of the Panzer IV H…