As I was looking into how I was going to finish these models I decided that I would do heavy mud and that I could not justify hanging onto the side skirts completely intact, also many of the photographs of this tank show at least some of the skirts off, however most of the photographs are also being taken while they are repairing tracks in which they could have possibly taken off the side skirts and then could have put them back on.
So I decided to remove the side skirts and only put a few on each side of each tank. This was easy on the Trumpeter King Tiger as they are a simple glue on part.
However this was not the case with the Henglong.
It is actually part of the entire upper, one huge molded piece of plastic.
I wrestled with the decision and finally decided to stay true to the original goal which was to make both of these tanks identical. So I cut the bottoms off the Henglong leaving a gap as you can see in the pictures.
I put new styrene walls inside and then filled the gap with Apoxie sculpt - it’s the best, there’s nothing even close to as good as it is. I smoothed it and shaped it and then let it dry for about 25 minutes where it becomes less tacky and then I pressed in the Zimmerman pattern. (Yes this KingTiger had Zimmerit all the way down under the sideskirts)
I had made myself a template stamp using Amazing Putty that I stuck to the side of the tank to get the exact pattern. This was a lot of work but it turned out good. However it is not perfect and if I was the modeler I was eight or 10 years ago I would’ve been deeply depressed, probably sanded it all down and tried over and over to make it perfect. However with hundreds of tanks in all scales under my belt I realize that what really matters is the end result and I understand when building models and finishing tanks that small imperfections like the Zimmerit not exactly matching in some spots can be fixed in lots of ways other than redoing it.
In this case it’s going to be lots of mud, mud mud and more mud, also some skirts will be put back on.
Going back to the skirts themselves you can see in one of the pictures that the Henglong skirts are so thick that if they were to scale it would’ve been 1000 pounds per skirt piece of steel and would’ve ripped the little bolts right off
The Trumpeter skirts are much more realistic as they are much thinner and true to scale so I’ve decided to use those on both models. I discarded the Henglong skirts all together and divided up the Trumpeter skirts, two sections per side per tank. Next is camo, decals and white wash followed by weathering and then the glorious mud!
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jon newsom, on Flickr
Trumpeter with no skirts
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jon newsom, on Flickr
The Henglong gap...
Untitled by
jon newsom, on Flickr
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jon newsom, on Flickr
New Walls
Untitled by
jon newsom, on Flickr
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jon newsom, on Flickr
Pattern Template Stamp
Untitled by
jon newsom, on Flickr
Untitled by
jon newsom, on Flickr
Apoxie Sculpt
Untitled by
jon newsom, on Flickr
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jon newsom, on Flickr
Stamped Pattern
Untitled by
jon newsom, on Flickr
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jon newsom, on Flickr
Henglong vs Trumpeter ~ Henglong too Thick!
Untitled by
jon newsom, on Flickr
Attach sideskirts and paint camo next!