My Late Tiger I with a little makeover

[jarndice]

Tom your comment on the high level of maintenence of German armour opened an old wound with me, I have made the point in the past that apart from the exhaust system and battle damage, no platoon Sergeant would allow rust on his vehicles and anyone not looking after their Tank would be in serious trouble, this is true of every Army in the world, it's what senior NCO's do!!! shaun

[tomhugill]

I totally understand that, I've always tried to avoid going OTT with rust on my vehicles. The other side of the coin is we are building models and you can take artistic licence to give the vehicle more visual impact! Ultimately if the builders happy who am I to disagree!

[scalawag]

I totally understand that, I've always tried to avoid going OTT with rust on my vehicles. The other side of the coin is we are building models and you can take artistic licence to give the vehicle more visual impact! Ultimately if the builders happy who am I to disagree!

I have to agree with you Tom, very well put.

A tank should please its builder in terms of finish and weathering (unless it is a commission when it should be to the customers taste).

I like to have very little damage and weathering on my models, that's how I like them. I tend not to have too much rust, just where I think it would be. I use the old 6B pencil trick to add a little wear and tear to some edges and surfaces, I like the sort of dull bear metal look this technique gives to areas that get a lot of usage. :thumb up:

[scalawag]

This is an amazing weathering job you did. It looks very real. You even got the rust on the mufflers precisely correct, its a superb job really. The cable and handle from the hatch is a surprising touch, even though it makes perfect sense that the real thing would have had it. If it were photographed properly you would not be able to tell it from the real thing!

Only one thing caught my eye and it would be about perfect (if it were mine i wouldn't touch it as there's no way i could every improve it)...the gun would be blackened around the muzzle but like i said, perfect!

Hi Marc780

I'm glad you like this Tiger, and thank you for the positive feedback. I like to try and spot details and reproduce them if I can.

I have to agree with Tom on the barrel blackening though. It is something you see quite often on models, but not in photos of real Tigers. When researching details like this I tend look at pictures of actual vehicles, and if possible from the time period being modelled.

I think in the modelling world what happens is someone will include a feature which they like and think is correct or logical but is in fact not a feature of the original vehicle, someone else will see the feature and copy it from the model, someone else will do the same and after a while it becomes accepted as a "correct" feature. This effect can lead to other peoples models not being a very good reference source sometimes.

I try not to add anything which would not have been on the original, so if I see something on a model which I like I will always try to find a few examples of this on pictures of actual tanks before including it.

At the end of the day although I have talked about this in terms of correctness and incorrectness what you add or don't add to a tank is entirely down to your own taste. Any model you make for your own pleasure should look right to you

I am glad you liked the rust on the exhausts too. I think when trying to recreate rust texture is as important as colour :thumb up:

[scalawag]

Hi Paul, I love the detail on your Tiger but of course there is an error, I know because I did the same thing as you with the tow hook pintel, Just like you I took the Heng Long pin and attached a chain to it, but then being nosy I decided to try and find out where the other end of the chain went, I found a German website/forum and someone was asking about towing pins on Tigers, the person replying included some pictures of Tigers with their towing pins and I was surprised to see that the pin was STRAIGHT with the chain clipped to the top by a hole near the top of the pin, the pin then passed through the eye's of the towing assembly and the other end of the chain was clipped into the bottom using a hole near the base of the pin, the pin has a shoulder 1/4 of the way from the top to stop it from dropping through the eye's of the towing assembly, you have no idea how much I swore when I found out, I have been looking for the site where I saw this, I have found the site but I cannot find the particular reference? The site is - Tiger im focus, I hope you have more luck, and now I shall be watching with eagle eye's how your early Tiger 1 turns out take care my friend. shaun

I got round to working on this at the weekend Shaun. I still could not find any decent detail pics so I hope this is more as it should be working from your description



Made this up from a cocktail stick, a few bits of heat shrink sleeving, a piece of chain and some wire

[jarndice]

Paul I would be interested how many times you said f**k you shaun f**k you as you manipulated your craft knife the chain and the superglue I watch your progress with interest, primarily because I might be doing a build on a late model myself, I wonder what you used for the pintel, a long time ago I discovered that coat hangers are 2mm in diameter which is a universal size in 1/16 and easy to use and it is exactly right for the Pintel. And while I am a great believer in rust on the exhaust I will continue to disagree about it's use on other undamaged parts but you, Tom and I all agree that freedom of choice in how we build our Tanks is one of the strengths of our hobby. Take care old friend, shaun

[PainlessWolf]

Good Morning,
I am with Scalawag on the weathering aspect. Many of these vehicles were not in service long enough to take appreciative amounts of wear before destruction or abandonment. A good case is the Sherman I am working on. Sgt. Pool had his third version of 'In The Mood' barely a month before it was shot out from under him. The most important factor remains the Builder. The tank is his vision brought to scale life and should be honored as such.
regards,
Painless

[scalawag]

Paul I would be interested how many times you said f**k you shaun f**k you as you manipulated your craft knife the chain and the superglue I watch your progress with interest, primarily because I might be doing a build on a late model myself, I wonder what you used for the pintel, a long time ago I discovered that coat hangers are 2mm in diameter which is a universal size in 1/16 and easy to use and it is exactly right for the Pintel. And while I am a great believer in rust on the exhaust I will continue to disagree about it's use on other undamaged parts but you, Tom and I all agree that freedom of choice in how we build our Tanks is one of the strengths of our hobby. Take care old friend, shaun

Hey Shaun,

I think I must have posted my last pic just before you posted this. I did cuss ya a little bit, but actually this was not too bad to do. I used a wooden cocktail stick covered in heat shrink to build the pintel. I figured this would be nice and easy to drill the hole for the retaining pin. Built up the shouldered end of the pintel with more heat shrink and used wire to make the retaining pin. Found nice pieces of wire from a jewellery making kit some years ago which have flat ends on them so used a piece of this to attach the chain to the pintel, which also gave the pintel a nice flat top. a bit of dunkelgelb and a mid grey filter wash and job done. Did my early tiger too while I was at it :thumb up:

As to the rust I tend to agree with you, crews would have taken care of it, if they had it long enough for it to rust. If there was enough use in a particular area to take the paint off then it would have surely kept the rust down too, hence my use of the graphite pencil weathering trick. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder though and it has to look right to the builder at the end of the day. I certainly appreciate the effort and skill that goes into some of the heavily weathered models I see

[scalawag]

Hi Shaun,

Might have to think it through again As I have just found this

http://www.tiif.de/thread.php?threadid= ... 6ace0ca2b7

Is this the post on Im Focus you mentioned before?

[scalawag]

I have both volumes of Tigers in Combat arriving soon, so will be scouring these for pics of the tow pin. I am a bit reluctant to make changes based on one example, and it strikes me that the chain being attached to the hull could be a field modification or repair as the pin may show evidence of a hole in the bottom of it for securing the chain. It being completely removable seems to make sense too as it would go some way to explaining why so many Tigers don't seem to have the pin in place.