Sturmgeschütz III Ausf.B Sd.Kfz.142 [WIP - Assembling the Jack & Toolbox + Attaching final Upper Hull parts]

 With these steps you see here, the assembly of the Tamiya 1/35 scale Sturmgeschütz III Ausf.B Sd.Kfz.142 is now essentially complete. These simple steps should've been lumped together with my previous post. However complications with the commander figurine meant the final two steps had to be uploaded as their own blog post even though minimal work was involved in these steps.

Final pieces of the Upper Hull parts have been attached to the Sturmgeschütz III Ausf.B

Steps 18 and 19 of the Tamiya Sturmgeschütz III Ausf.B Sd.Kfz.142 assembly process

 Admittedly it's nice to wind down the assembly process with straightforward steps. After struggling with the commander figurine, I was in no mood to fiddle with anymore tricky parts. That being said, I think I assembled the tiny 1/35 scale Jack (see below) in a slightly wrong orientation. It shouldn't be noticeable to more casual observers ... I hope. Almost all of the parts involved were molded plastic except for the final photo-etched metal piece, namely the right air intake grille.

Closeup view of the Jack (left) and Toolbox (right), which were assembled in Step 18

Last of the parts yet to be attached onto the Upper Hull; largest of them are the tow cables on the left

Said parts will be attached on right side of the Upper Hull, except tow cables which go on the back

 As with the previous step, the Upper Hull was first detached from both the Lower Hull and Fighting Compartment. This made assembly much easier because the process became a simple task of gluing or dry-fitting parts onto a flat surface. It's a big help considering extremely tiny parts were involved.

Upper Hull was detached from the rest of the vehicle to facilitate the assembly process, in fact ...

... to make things much easier, the Fighting Compartment was also detached from the Upper Hull ...

... before all the relevant parts were either glued on or dry-fitted onto the Upper Hull.

 All the parts in these final steps were glued on except for the tow cables (see above) at the rear of the Sturmgeschütz. The tow cables were only dry-fitted onto the back of the vehicle. Later on, they will be removed and painted separately before being glued back onto the Sturmgeschütz.

This is how the fully-fitted Upper Hull looks with the Fighting Compartment back on

 My next upload of the Tamiya 1/35 scale Sturmgeschütz III Ausf.B Sd.Kfz.142 project will be photos of the vehicle dry-fitted as best I can to showcase it in its entirety before being painted. Of course there will be some hatches I've yet to glue onto the vehicle because I'm planning to paint them separately. But on the whole, you'll see a fairly representative image of a fully assembled Sturmgeschütz prior to it being painted. Until then, stay safe, stay busy, be well and be happy.