ABE'S EARLY TIGER 1 BUILD

[HERMAN BIX]

Wouldnt worry me if ya used your shaved privates in the mud mix mate .............looks great
Admire your confidence to do the weathering texture before all the alterations & paint are completed.
Assume you have a completed image in mind ...............care to share the concept ?

[Abe Froman]

Looks great let's hope your beard trimmings have stopped growing.

Me too or this will be one hairy Tiger. Every time it gets fueled up, the crew will have to give it a trim!

Alwyn..cheers man

David, thanks for the info, confirms my measurements from the Achtung Panzer mag.

Got lucky yesterday and found a post on another site from a wonderful guy...he posted the relevant pages from the modellers guide to the Tiger Tank...looked for one of the books but had not been able to find this definitive tome, so well done to that kind gentleman. Respect for sharing.

If anyone wants to look at the thread, its here:

http://intscalemodeller.com/viewtopic.p ... f29650e997

Cut and paste away...BTW I tried downloading the images but I could not open them later so copy the images and paste them into a word document.

Again thanks for the posting dude. Salut.

D

[Abe Froman]

Herman...I am doing an early ( ish ) grey and whitewashed Tiger 1.

My thinking is that as the Tiger evolved and alterations were brought in, some tanks had bits from early and some from upgrades, hence being a hybrid. I have seen photos of Tigers showing early and mid phase parts. Need to do some more research.

On this build I have a detailed image in my head of what I want it to look like. I did consider the hairspray approach to the whitewash weathering but I think it looks great on a 1/35th tank but unrealistic on a 1/16...too pretty and not real world. So I have come up with my own approach which I have tested two panels of german grey plasticard and it looked realistic and in my opinion...blood good

Hope the final finished tank lives up to the image in my head of the finished tank!!

D

[DavidByrden]

the relevant pages from the modellers guide to the Tiger Tank

Well, it doesn't take long to find a few errors in this "definitive" book. I'm looking at the first few photo captions;

"These Tigers were first shipped to Sicily"....that's wrong, they were shipped from Reggio to Tunisia.

"road march from the embarkation point".... that's wrong, the tank has been in Tunisia for some time, and it is at Jedeida, well inside the country.

"23 November 1942"...that date is wrong, the photo shows 27 November.

"tanks were painted with stocks of captured US olive drab".... that's a legend, I have seen no evidence of it in 300 photos.

"tactical numbers became red with a white outline".... evidence tells us they were black.

There are a few errors in the diagrams, too; for example, they shows 2 kinds of S-mine launcher, but there was only one. They show one kind of loader's periscope, but there were 2 kinds.

I don't have a copy of that book, but it seems to be derivative; the textual information all seems to come from other books, and the diagrams have been in Japanese magazines before.

David

[DavidByrden]

My thinking is that as the Tiger evolved and alterations were brought in, some tanks had bits from early and some from upgrades, hence being a hybrid. I have seen photos of Tigers showing early and mid phase parts.

There were a few "hybrids" indeed, especially towards the end of the war. But the most common cause was a turret swap.
If you want to discuss your ideas, I'll do so.

David

[jarndice]

There I was approaching the finishing line with "813" from the Tunisian campaign, just received the decals from "Elite" the numbers resplendent in RED over WHITE.
I have just read David's piece about ABE's Tiger 1 where he tells us that the TURRET NUMBERS ON TUNISIAN CAMPAIGN TIGER 1s were "BLACK", BU*GER.
The lady who rules my life, has just popped her head round the door asking if some thing is wrong? shaun

[DavidByrden]

I draw my conclusion from 2 things;

A Pz.3 of the battalion, following the reassignment to 10 Panzer Division. Only the first digit was changed, on the Tigers, so I assume the same for the Pz.3



A postwar photo of Tiger 712, which I believe, for several reasons, still has its wartime paint. The small logo at A is an example of original red paint.



David

[jarndice]

David I want your solomn promise that if I put my "Elite" Red over White decals on the turret of my Tunisian campaign Tiger 1 and take photographs in black and white you won't spill the beans? shaun

[Abe Froman]

And this is why I will be making something that is plausible..but not from an exact tank ( photo of ). If there were about 400 early Tigers, and there are no details of each one built and their exact configuration, then its purely conjecture based on what was normally done whilst not taking into account upgrade overlaps ( hybrids )

This is a dip in model for me, not a genre I am obsessed with ( i have enough of those already )

I want to produce something that looks accurate enough ( for me ) and is I hope a work of art. People ask me what I do with my projects and I always say " what do you do with a painting....you look at it...but with my projects I can play with them too "

So if I do not have all the reference, and if I do make any mistakes, I apologise now

Hey ho...cracking on.

D

[PainlessWolf]

Abe,
No need for apologies. Last time I looked this thing was about having fun. ( well, different fun for different folks ) You already said it, the vision of your tank in your mind. There are all kinds of builds to suit all kinds of folks. Make sure that what you are building is what you want to run when all is said and done. There's nothing wrong with Historical, Semi-historical, Done for fun and Paper panzers. They all have their place.
regards,
Painless