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A short history
Not much is for certain concerning the history of the Krupp Räumer. Only a single prototype vehicle was manufactured. It was designed as a mine clearing
vehicle and tested a few times. It was captured by United States forces in 1945 at the Hillersleben test site and dismantled at some point. Its final
disposition is currently unknown.
The kit
This is a double kit boxing, containing one Krupp Räumer along with one Alkett Vs.Kfz.617. This review covers the Krupp Räumer only. A review of the
Alkett kit will come at a later time.
Inside the box there are a total of six sprues of very hard, medium grey styrene like plastic, divided into three sprues per vehicle. One piece
slide molded parts are provided for the chassis pan and turret of the Alkett vehicle and two large upper body parts for the Krupp vehicle. A small fret of etched
brass supplies vent and exhaust covers plus a small decal sheet. The instructions come as a small landscape format pamphlet, devoting 3 pages for the Alkett build (5 steps) and
4 pages (6 steps) for the Krupp vehicle. There are 4 camouflage options for the Alkett vehicle and 3 for the Krupp vehicle. Most are fictitious. For the Vs.Kfz.617
the only valid option is for the unmarked, overall Panzer grey vehicle. Somewhat accurate is the overall red-brown oxide primer Krupp vehicle, though the large
white serial number and circular gunsight like factory markings provided on the decal sheet appear to be spurious, as I could find no supporting photographs
(a sum total of 4 that I could find).
The slide molded parts are absolutely exquisite with no ejector pin marks, no low spots, next to zero flash and extremely nice detail, whereas the sprue
parts aren't quite as well done with some exhibiting minor mold shift and seam lines. Nothing difficult to overcome, just somewhat disappointing in that the
excellent execution for the slide molded parts didn't carry over to the traditionally done sprue parts.
The build
I chose to construct the Räumer first as it appeared to be the easier of the two to build. Once started the quality of the molding allowed me to proceeded quickly with
the build. The only thing that slowed me was removing the seams present on the suspension, exhaust and hydraulic cylinders. Due to the plastic's hardness, scraping
the seams dulled the blades quickly. I've listed a few items to watch out for below.
- The pair of pyramid like blast deflectors (parts 13 & 14) are switched in the instructions. As you can see below,
placed as directed, the tip extends well past the body panels (left photo). Swapping them removes that unwelcome extension
(right photo). These parts don't fit quite flush so some filler will be needed here.
- Drill out the end of the four exhaust mufflers.
- The fit of the two part wheels is very tight, making it very difficult to separate them and try again should you not get them
aligned quite right the first time.
- Getting a good join between the top and bottom pieces of the driving units requires incremental clamping and gluing over short distances
to a good looking seam.
- I thinned the underside of the light mounts to reduce their over sized thickness.
- Those wishing the ultimate of detail could look at adding weld lines, but exactly where they should be placed will require some
research along with some guesstimating.
- As the aphorism says, "There's more than one way to skin a cat", I chose not to build the hydraulic assembly separately as suggested
in the instructions, but instead
added the major parts directly to the hull before painting. This allowed me to easy paint the silver on the rods, but at the cost of having the parts interfere
with spraying paint into the crevasses between and underneath parts.
Conclusion
A very nice model kit. Outside of a few minor issues, its fit and detail is exceptional and it builds up quite quickly. Seeing as there was just a sole example built,
and it never saw production, this kit would make a good starting point for something hypothetical, as evidenced by the numerous modification others modellers
have done to this kit and its larger 1/35 scale brethren.
References
[1] www.wettringer-modellbauforum.de (Takom 1/35 scale build thread)
[2] www.themodellingnews.com (Takom 1/35 scale build thread)
[3] wikipedia
[4] www.kfzderwehrmacht.de (in German)
[5] Encyclopedia of German Tanks of World War Two: A Complete Illustrated Directory of German Battle Tanks, Armoured Cars, Self-Propelled Guns and Semi-tracked Vehicles, 1933-1945, Peter Chamberlain & Hilary L. Doyle, Arms & Armour, London 1993 ISBN: 1-85409-214-6
Review sample purchased by the author.
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