Converting a HL king tiger into a e50 build 6/3 update

[Bigwheels_inc]

Any updates ?
great work so far
I like the green putty what is it ?

all the Best with this one
Pete

[mustclime]

mostly been working on details.....like that silly hl light with the bubble on it...



Hit it with a razor saw and ....



I am kinda thinking about making it into a "ir" light...late in the war the germans were looking at ways they could move and fight at night to avoid air power. To do this the "right" way, they would need a ir tight for the driver, one for the gunner and one for the comander.I am kicking around the idea of making the front light larger( cutting up a ball point pin body) and adding a red tinted "lense"....since the tank is going to be a fighter, I can make the ir bulb from the battle system into a light on the mantel sorta like the t55's( where do you think they got the idea?) and then rig something for the comander...this is a good sitefor german ir stuff

http://www.hmvf.co.uk/pdf/Tabby02.pdf

I am also looking at what kind of mantel I am going to use as this will effect the turret.....here is the stock one...





I am thinking about getting rid of the curve or doing something like center drilling a chess peace so I have something like the prodction turret kt.

I will post more work this week.....

[mustclime]

back to the e50 build.....time to put the drivers and hull gunners to bed...lets make some handles...









add a spring and nut and you have a working hatch....





next...on to the rear deck....the e50 was supose to have a july 45 kt rear deck....kinda like this...



so the hacking begins





I need more gas for my torch...so that it for the rear deck for tonight..

[mustclime]

Time to "mess" with the turret....and loard knows the turret is a mess.....

First I changed the rear plates angle...so now my side plates do not fit....



then I removed the rest of the hatches, vent and empty shell hatch and made some patches to stranthen the old turret roof...







Time to get the gun in place....old hole is 23x30mm so i find the center point and open it up...





mantel needs work...angles are all off



still need more work.....here is a temp roof....with the stuff placed on it....





Thats it for today....almost looking like a tank....almost..

[caddyshack]

I have to ask..where is the 2nd angled bend about a 1/3rd in from the rear turret. As yours is going straght through from front to back of the turret. At the moment its looking a bit weird because of that.
Well very E50 pic i have looked at has that shapped turret,unless yours is going to be different.

[mustclime]

The e50 never had a turret designed for it. The tinnie turret that was for the panther f was designed for the panther's 75mm gun. For some reason peole always assume the panther f turret would go on the e50 since the e50 was to replace the panther and the tiger 1. IMO the panthers 75mm was obsolete by 45 with the m26 and js2&3 comming onto the battle field. That would mean the king tigers 88mm would be the next choice ......but if you put a scale drawing of that gun into a tinnie turret it looks something like this....



note the shell aganst the turret ring.....not good. There was a turret designed for the e100 that looked something like this....



the E100 turret was designed for the 126mm gun in the hunting tiger so this design would leave a bunch of room for the 88. Since the e-series tanks were designed by Adler( a car compeny) for ease of preduction. My thought would be that there would not be bent or curved armor plates used in the turret. The fastest way to make a turret is sand casting it like the allies were doing it on both fronts. The next fastest way to make a turret is to just burn through a lot of armor plate steel and fit the peaces togather in a jig and weild them togather.....but who knows, its a paper panzer. thats half the fun.

[Andy in Cheltenham]

Could you not drop the height of the turret roof a bit more?
Nice work by the way

[mustclime]

It will be a little lower but not as much as I would like. The heng long recoil unit is kinda large...look at this pic....



the recoil unit is the long black box comming off the gun tube.....the box behind it razes and lowers the recoil unit/tube with a curved "ramp gear". The tab on the back of the recoil unit that rides on this ramp gear...you can see it here...



If I lower the roof of the turret that much, I run out of room for the tab on the end of the recoil unit( it will hit the roof)....You might ask why that would be important? I am going to be IR battleing this tank with a DBU3RC system in the club I am member of. One of the key defance "tricks" is something they call the "slope defance"( sorry if you alread know about this). With the slope defance you need a tank that will give you a good down angle on your gun tube so you can shoot your opponet and they can not shoot you. The hl king tiger does not give you much of a down angle out of the box. You can improve this shorting the tabs that hold the elevation unit( to get it closer to the roof of the turret) and you can heat up and bend "down" the tab on the end of the recoil unit ........but you are still limited by how long the recoil unit is( kinda like the real 88)....

[Andy in Cheltenham]

So it's more for the actual gaming that you need to make compromises, that's understandable.

[mustclime]

Welllll.....its also some twisted kind realism....If you look at the kt in the old patton musem that has the side of the turret cut away, the hl recoil unit is not that off to scale with the L41 88 gun...look here

http://www.peachmountain.com/5star/Tank ... _Tank.aspx

Having a low turret roof = very little negative gun tube angle. I was just reading an account of the battle for the golan hights where some t55's were not able to shoot down on some isrealie tanks that were coming up to the hights because they could not get enought negative gun tube angle, as a result, the got shot to peaces.