Rex, your role in my tanking universe as the scratch-building Buddha is very present, and your words of encouragement are very much appreciated! (Don't worry I had to read that a few times myself.. . )

Anyhoo, good news everyone! I spent a couple hours this morning starting on the turret! My main goal was functionality, accessibility, strength and of course moderately good looks. I want to reuse as much as the original turret as possible internally for elevation and such and hopefully in these pictures you can see what I'm up to.

The turret exterior I measure and cut somewhat by eye and by what fit the original Panzer III turret base. I'm VERY sure the Japanese nearly copied the Pnz 3 when building this tank & turret, nearly everything lines up and has very similar angles.

You can see I only had to adjust the side angles slightly
Lining up the angled plates. They almost went together naturally with minimum adjustment.
Oh hey, it looks like a turret now!


I gutted the airsoft mechanism and cut the bottom flush for hull clearance. I modified the gun mount and raised the entire thing about 1.5cm giving it the proper profile. I plan on having the gun mantlet mounted more or less directly to the front of the airsoft housing. The elevation unit will be mounted from the bottom, and most of the turret roof will be held down with magnets!


Off to bed now!