PzKpfw. VI Tiger  - 1/35 - Tamiya.

This is the Tamiya Afrika kit with a bit of embellishment. I replaced the kit rubber bands tracks with Anvil's late tracks. 

The spare track mounts were created from plastic card. I decided to not go all out and replace the exhaust covers with foil ones as the rear end will not be visible in the completed dio and time is becoming a factor. The chalking about the lower extremities is pastels ground up to powder, liquefied in Tamiya thinner and airbrushed on using an Iwata airbrush.

The fenders were created from lead foil as the Aber ones were too ridged no matter how much annealing I did to them. The foil ones bend easily. The wiring for the lights are from Hudson & Allen lead solder. The connection at the lamp (Royal Model...by the way) is the muzzle from an old Tamiya MG-42, wilst the connection at the rosette on the top of the hull is from a pair of old Tamiya Schmeisser muzzle bases. The wingnuts for the dust cover over the hull machine gun is form Royal Model's excellent set for the Tiger. The barrel is from Elefant and turned nicely. Both of the hatches in the hull are resin, and again from Royal Model. The damaged smock discharger is from Royal, tricked out with some twinned fine electrical wire with a few stretched sprue securing bolts. The smoke discharger covers were made using a Waldron punch and a couple of photo-etched grab handles from an old The Show Modeling set from the parts bin. The hanging tow cable is from Karaya and cannot be praised enough, they bend every which way. The tow cable heads are of lead and were in a Hudson & Allen set.

Modeller: Rhodes Williams (USA).


A nice side view. Note the various caliber shell and small arms hits. These were done whilst roughing up the texture. I prefer to use Testors model glue and old brush to roughen up the plastic. This was then sanded roughly. The large and small hits were done with various sized moto-tool drill bits and then widened with an exacto depending on the caliber. During the painting phase well thinned flat black as blown at a very low psi in up to eight thin, thin coats. The road wheels got a heavier dose of dusting. Each rubber rim was bashed up with the moto-tool and cleaned up with an exacto blade for additional field wear. 

The deck and chipping process shown to good affect on the turret bin. Royal Model fasteners were used on the bin. The rear deck was firstly sprayed with flat black over the dried base coats in the area where exhaust staining occurred. I then took round up and thinned pastels and with an 18/0 (aka 18 ott) brush outlined everything! This is time consuming and is best broken up over days as it makes you potty! I do not have the luxury of time so I did it in one evening (suck!). The nice thing about pastels is if they look too strong once dry they can be scrubbed with fresh Tamiya thinner and a thicker brush. When it re-dries the sand look is much more disrupted.
 
The latches and mounts for the missing tow cable are a mixture of Aber and Royal Model. The mounts for the fenders visible where the fenders are either loose or missing are resin bits included in the Anvil tracks sets (very thoughtful!) The crosses are Archer dry transfers whilst the numbers are the Tamiya wet slides trimmed individually and then the interior red hand painted in a red/brown dulling down colour. The decals were removed where shell impacts were located.
 
The wiring for the smoke discharger units. I used soder wire for the extensions and fine copper wire for the wires connecting to the individual smoke dischargers. I opted for the Royal model discharger mounts as they were better in detail. Note the middle canister is not attached at this phase in the construction as it is going to be shown hanging be it loose wires from the fall. The miskit chipping is also visible clearly in this shot.
  
The Anvil tracks shown to good effect. They were painted off the vehicle and then placed onto the kit. The tracks were painted in a primer colour with a heavy dose of brown to create a filthy red brown. They were lightly washed with plat black and then got a wash of ground up rust pastels to simulate wear in the field.  Tracks are bare metal and rust quite quickly. Once the pastels dried, and the Tamiya thinner evaporates rather quickly They got a nice wash of light coloured pastels which were mixed to roughly represent desert colour.
 
Close up of the commanders cupola. I had a lot of fun with this. The interior direct vision blocks are from the Aber set with plastic card blocks cut to size and inserted behind them. These were all painted before the exterior whilst the turret top was still loose. All the welds were improved with Testors glue allowed to set for a bit and then impressed with the blunt side of an exacto blade. The weathering is shown to good effect here. Royal included a replacement hatch, but the Tamiya hatch in nicely detailed. I did opt for the Royal securing handles, however.

 

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