75mm KwK 42 L/70 Barrel
for Panther Ausf.D, early Ausf.A
armorscale Set No. B35-001
1:35th Scale
Review by Terry Ashley
The metal parts are finished to a high standard without any surface blemishes and the resin mantlet has subtle cast texture included.
The barrel features fine rifling in the hollowed out muzzle as well as threads on the outer side and the small muzzle collar and muzzle brake are also threaded and these parts simply screw onto the barrel without the need for any glue which is quite impressive although the thread isn’t to scale if you want to get real picky.
The muzzle brake has the rear and forward halves separate with a small round grommet fitted to the inside, this in turn has two small etched flanges added for detail and the small etched retaining bolt on the top of the rear muzzle brake.
Assembly of the muzzle brake is straightforward but ensure you line up the two small flanges on the inner grommet and this should be attached inside the front muzzle brake part and not the rear part as indicated in the instructions as this makes fitting the two muzzle brake parts together much easier.
The assembled barrel fits very snugly into the resin mantlet although it won't
fit the Dragon or Tamiya kit mantlets without modification as the base of the
metal barrel is slightly larger than the kit barrels. We are only talking fractions
of millimetres here but enough so it won’t fit the other mantlets so
any adjustment will just be reducing the diameter of the barrel base marginally
to fit as required and shouldn’t be
a big issue.
The instructions indicate the modifications needed to fit the new resin mantlet
to the Dragon or Tamiya kits so this issue won't be there if you use the resin
mantlet provided and why wouldn't you?
Conclusion:
A nicely machined and detailed barrel with the threaded screw on muzzle brake
quite impressive with only minor work needed to fit the new mantlet to
the target kit for an fairly simple update.
Highly recommended.
Thanks to armorscale for the review set.
Page created 4 June 2005