LADIES AND GENTLEMEN!

I want to thank you all for helping us get this far. 1,000 likes is an incredible milestone and it feel amazing to have this much support for our project. It will only get bigger as we go forward, and I look forward to the day that we roll out of the shop in a Panzer 38(t)!

I want to thank you all for helping us get this far. 1,000 likes is an incredible milestone and it feel amazing to have this much support for our project. It will only get bigger as we go forward, and I look forward to the day that we roll out of the shop in a Panzer 38(t)!

Its the support from all of you that help us keep going. That and the expectation of a tank, because come on it’s a tank. We all want a tank.

Its the support from all of you that help us keep going. That and the expectation of a tank, because come on it’s a tank. We all want a tank.

Its the support from all of you that help us keep going. That and the expectation of a tank, because come on it’s a tank. We all want a tank.

So while I have your attention, allow me to spell out our basic plan for the next 12 months! It’s a busy, action-packed schedule that we’re super excited for!



ENGINEERING

Engineering is a bit behind due to a hiccup in the works, such as it is. But they’re back on schedule to have the tank fully engineered in short order. They are confident that the November completion date is still viable. With the last details of the Final drive in hand, there aren’t many hurdles left for us to get hung up on. We are reaching out to a few museums across the pond for some measurements on the turret, as well as organizing a trip out to visit some real-world examples in September or November.

We’re continually striking conversations up with foundries, machine shops, and specialty shops to poise for the actual construction, if you know a shop that may be interested in doing an item at cost, let us know. We are in ongoing negotiations with a foundry and a machine shop at the moment.

Nate continues to work with the Graebe’s on the finer things in life. He’ll continue working with the final drive components until we have it 100% modeled and able to be reproduced.

Beckett is working on finalizing the plans for the chassis/frame, tweaking some things to make it easier to manufacture and cheaper. Optimizing, he calls it. Because his National Guard obligations got in the way of school this year, he’ll be able to work on Project38 as much as he likes. I’m excited to see where that goes.

Tristan’s turret designs are being tweaked a little bit. Details about the cannon are, of course, rare. We are going to be building an actual cannon so it’s understandable that it’s difficult to find information on the operation system of the gun. Things like true bore size, twist rate, and breach mechanism would have been classified at the time, and destroyed after the war. Still, we’re designing it to fire 37mm blanks, not projectiles, so we can essentially just make a chambered out part of the barrel, throw a hinged lid on the back and call it a day. Tristan has a side-hobby of gunsmithing research so he’ll be able to design a safe and operational cannon for us. Because of course we want it to go BOOM.

MARKETING

Of course, 1,000 followers is just the start. Our Schedule is filling up again as we power this flywheel of momentum up. From Tank Farm to Battleship New Jersey, we hope to be in a little 10×10 spreading the good news all this year. Let us know what events you’re heading to this year, we’ll try to meet you there!

As we build up speed, we’ll hit a point eventually where we will need financial support just to keep working, as this slowly eats away time that would otherwise be spent doing something productive that normal people do. With that in mind, continue to keep an eye out for a Patreon. There’s a lot of scrambled raw data that we could give you guys access to… for a price mueahahahaha!

Speaking of money we still plan on starting the fundraiser in the spring. Our engineers are confident that the $100,000 goal is appropriate and that they can build the tank for that much. That’s only 5,000 people giving $20 each, totally doable! So share this project because we’re going to need all the visibility we can get! As we get nearer, more details will be published.

The fundraiser is slotted to begin April 1, 2019. Mark your calendars. 220 days.