Scratch build Tiger 2 Part 1

[walter]

Up till now,my main activity was mainly model aeroplanes and boats.
Just from a mechanical point of view a tank project looked very different and challenging.
When a boy I always liked meccano sets. All those nuts and bolts were just marvelous.
I wanted a tank tank project where everything would be screwed together just like in a meccano set.
I picked Tiger 2 as a 1:35 scale plastic model kit and just increased the scale to 1:16 scale.
Using aluminium as the main building material and brass for the smaller parts. Keeping scale thickness as much as practical that roughly required aluminium plate from 1.5 mm to 12 mm .
Searching the internet I was surprised how many parts there were for sale and some were very good in detail like tracks and road wheels and decided I would buy those.
As it turned out I bought a lot more more small parts, but found out I had to replace many of them for quality reasons.
Something else I found out the hard way was, zinc parts do not work with brass parts for very long if moisture is around. ( Galvanic reaction)
So I started to replace almost all zinc parts that had contact with brass, with brass.
But here we go I suppose life was not meant to be easy.

[walter]

Side fronts.

[walter]

Sides back.

[walter]

Bottom plate and upper side parts

[walter]

Front bottom plate 6.5 mm thick.

[walter]

Front bottom plate inside view. As can be seen I had to take material out to fit the gear boxes.

[walter]

Upper front plate is 9.5 mm thick.

[walter]

Back plate 5 mm thick.

[walter]

Assembling the lower body.

[walter]

Parts of the suspension arms.