28mm Great War Tank Hunter Part II The T-Gewehr

     In an effort to give the Great War Panzer Jagers a fighting chance I decided to build them an anti-tank rifle. The famous Mauser T-Gewehr, a 35lb, 13.2mm monster that was essentially an upscaled Gew-98. It was the very first gun designed from the ground up to kill tanks and its performance at armor penetration was certainly up to the task. Capable of punching a hole in over 18mm of armor at 500m it was enough to take on even the heaviest of French or British tanks.

 

from deep in the recesses of The Vault, a 1/35th scale kit 

don't worry, we are just stealing a part

  

a 1/35th scale Mauser K-98

 

this will be the basis of the conversion,

 the T-Gewehr being essentially an oversized G-98

 

first I need to stretch some sprue, this gun has a lengthy barrel

 

cut the K-98 off just in front of the second barrel-band

 and cement on a much longer barrel (it will get trimmed later)

then carve a pistol-grip out of an odd bit of sprue

 

the bipod has little feet on the legs,

 take some sprue that has been stretched very thin 

and heat the end next to a candle, the tip will curl back like a pin-head 

make two they need to be about 2.5mm long when they are cut back

 

trim the rifle back to a scale 1.69m and attach the pistol grip

 

carve a tiny block of sprue and attach it just below the end of the stock 

the bipod legs attach to this block

 

I just need to add a front sight

 

now for the poor lad who has to carry this beast, first we need to craft an arm to hold the rifle, this one is in the right position but the hand already is busy with a G-98, the kit provides an open left hand but the arm it is on is positioned all wrong

 

the easy answer is to swap the hands from one arm to the other,

 I find it much easier to cut the arm at the top of the cuff, 

28mm hands can be tiny and easily lost, so off they come

 

swap the hands and glue them in place

 

now for his right arm, 

I took the right arm holding the entrenching tool and 

chopped the shovel off so he could be holding a grenade

 

the kit provides about a dozen extra grenades on each sprue

 I took one and trimmed the handle back

 so that it would look like it was held in his hand

 

a couple dots of tube cement and his right arm is all sorted out

 

the left arm with the open hand added is attached to the figure

 and allowed to dry before adding the scratch-built T-Gewehr

 

the gunner and his loader are ready to go tank-hunting

       Next we will give a Wex Flamethrower a try