Another late night update.
I was able to add the tread plate texture to the fenders today. If you guys aren't familiar with the 21st Century 1/32 Panzer III, it has smooth surfaces on its fenders, and the real thing had treadplate; so I rectified that with Archer's water-slide decal AR88050 "Resin Panzer Treadplate".
I primed the tank, so the decals would stick to something, and then cut out the shapes that would need to be applied (that took a while
). And some of you are probably wondering, why did you put the decals on before you painted the thing? Well these are the only type of decals that I know of where you put them on under the paint. Since their purpose is to give you the texture as opposed to something visual, they can go on whenever. Below is the shapes I cut for the fenders and the results (which are kind of hard to see):
After that I worked on the schurzen. This was a b*tch and a half. I had originally put this part on hold while I waited for some material to arrive in the mail, but I actually happened upon some at a local hobby store while buying some primer. I guess the stuff I bought from Amazon will go into the extras bin at home. Anyway, I set to work turning that brass angle strip into the two rails that support the schurzen on each side. After many multiples of various expletives I was able to get the desired result below:
Following that little adventure into the world of soldering, I went on to begin finishing the schurzen themselves. I got them roughly fitted to the mounting rails, and now they just need the holes in their centers where the fender braced plug in. I will try and do that tomorrow.
I also did a few other minor things like add the towing clevis extension on the bow armor, and the brackets for the spare tracks
That's it for tonight guys, and I really appreciate all the compliments.
-Kevin
... I see you've used the turret girdle of the 21st. Pz.IV 
, I'm still waiting on that little project you keep putting off, well, big project 
