RC Tank Warfare community hobby forum

Atak kits are good for zimmerit.

PainlessWolf wrote:43rdR&R!
A beautiful piece of kit that will run wonderfully well. I loved the older style gearboxes for the Tamiya King Tiger. It was hard to find anything that was more of a mesh between steampunk and Rube Goldberg. Yet they worked! Engineering run amok! Those new gearboxes that your kit has will run even better and you'll get the benefit of two motor drive instead of one. Don't feel bad about the non brushability of those acrylic tins of paint. Even the Model Masters I favor isn't that good when it comes to acrylic paint. I spend just as much time shaking and stirring as I do brushing it on if I find something that enamel flats won't work well on. Following along!
regards,
Painless

Many thanks, Painless. This build has given me itchy feet- metaphorically. Every time I do a bit, and sit down, my feet take me in the direction of the model again. It's a remorseless process. I have a growing backlog of recorded foreign movies to catch up on, as this project has gone through my daily routines like a snow plough.
I see that most builders here opt for a three colour camouflage scheme. Well, vive la Difference. I'm going for this Eastern front pattern: No, you're not losing your balance, the pic is on a slight incline. I didn't quite scan it properly.

A bit earlier..before the primer and first topcoat, I couldn't resist a shot of the Tank with 'Verrückter Josef '(Crazy Joe ) on board. Then I had to mask the gun, tracks, MG and gaps/ joins in the tank where spray might get in..

Must eat something soon . Here's the first attempt to give the Tiger its stripes. I cut various shapes out of Amazon book packaging to serve as stencils, and used Tamiya Dunkelgeld / Rotbraun rattle cans.. I must be hungry. The colours remind me of a toffee bar they used to sell here in the 50s and 60s, with a 'banana split' pattern and taste..yum. Anyway...This is just a start. There's lots of decorating and testing to do..and then there's the maiden 'voyage', of course. I must get a miniature bottle of champers to crack over tha turret. Hmm..given it's fragile state, that'll be a purely symbolic gesture. The champagne will be going down my neck, not the front of this expensive, and delicate model
Catch y'all later

Until it died a couple of months ago, I used to do my painting with this asthmatic piece of kit. It required paint to be thinned to the point where it was almost transparent, before it could produce a decent stream (like an Airbrush with prostate
problems ...ironic really, as it's made by 'Proster' ). However, it was hopeless at covering an area bigger than a finger nail. Finally, this underpowered waste of money from the Orient finally gave up the ghost in a puff of vallejo white!
Here's my new unit, below the Proster. I've not had the opportunity to test it yet, as the rain is persistent. I really don't want attempt to run an extension electrical cable to my shed in the rain, in case I end up medium rare! So it's back to the Tamiya Rattle cans...

The new unit is a compressor with mixed reviews; but it should be a vast improvement on the wheeze box I had before.. I might splash out on a bespoke Iwata or similar brush, but (waste not want not ) I'll see how this goes first... preferably not up in smoke!

These Tamiya weathering packs turned up in the post yesterday. Following the theme of building a Tamiya KT by the book, and by using Tamiya products (almost.) exclusively, it seemed a natural choice to use these products to finish the tank..
This will be the first time I've used a dry brush weathering kit. I picked all the colours I thought I'd need for oil stains, rust, etc., along with general wear and tear. I have all these in Vallejo model air colours, but again..this is a Tamiya project.

Son of a gun-ner wrote:This truly is a blitz build, coming along nicely.

I have an old DeVilbiss mini spray gun, never used it, had it about 20 years lol, are they any good?

Mick.

Well, Mick, it would be an interesting challenge to see how quickly someone could build a Tamiya full-option kit. Of course, the time would vary slightly from model to model; but I reckon it could be done in 20-30 hours if all the necessary bits were available.
In my case, I've never had a working Tamiya, and I really felt that impatient schoolboy urge to get one working as quickly as reasonably possible. By 'reasonably', I really mean without f***ing it up . I'm sure a committed Tamiya egghead could put a real blitz tank together in under 20 hours. Hmm..and this calls to mind the celebrated and documented (filmed) WW2 project where a group of willing workers assemble a Wellington in under 24 hours; from panels to flying condition.
As a by the by, I really miss that generation: my Dad, his brothers, and all the others who were young when I was a boy; standing there in their 'Sunday best' (former) de-mob suits. We'll never see their like again.

As for DeVilbiss, I always associate them by Cars. In my petrolhead days, I sprayed quite a few cars (often badly!) with my own spray gear. But I do recall having access to a proper spray booth once or twice, and this sported DeVilbiss equipment.
I see they now make airbrush compressors. Ordinarily, I'd assume that these were Pro models- on the basis of name alone; but the chances are they're re-branded oriental stuff like everything else is these days. But maybe not.
I used to rebuild Mini Cooper 'S' cars as a hobby (Mk ! and 2: real Mini Coopers, not the BMW impostors). Loved driving the Cooper 'S' too, and my old BMW R80RT motor bike (ex-police).. I painted all of those too. Sometimes well, often
not so.

Son of a gun-ner wrote:After saying 20 years, I realised it was 22, I inherited it when my brother died, he was into RC cars and planes, I lost my older brother too not long after, he was into RC helicopters, they even had flight simulators on their computers where you plugged in your radio control, fed in all your settings and relevant information, and found out if your plane or helicopter would fly. Anyway, they never did their hobby on the cheap lol. I'll dig it out soon and check it out, but thanks for the input.
I often think how they would have loved this hobby of mine.

Sadly my parents were young in their families, and I was a late baby, I only remember lots of funerals, oh well.

I had the pleasure of owning a tuned up mini estate for a year or so, was good fun, and my friend had a Cooper, yes, those old ones were good ones.
Hopefully you'll do justice with this KT and not make it like a blitz paint too

Mick.

Sounds as if you've learned about bereavement the hard way. I lost a brother here three years ago. He'd come up here to Wester Ross to share his dotage with me, and it was never going to happen.Victorian kids were used to extinction; but it's the hardest fact of life to accept. On the plus side, while you can't choose your genetic legacy, family or roots, you can choose your friends, and one of the benefits of being on this forum, or the Net, is reaching out into the ether,and finding like-minded souls, or simply meeting people in life that you like. Also the plus side, is that whilst you're still in the land of the living and compos mentis, there are plenty of interesting things to discover in this bizarre universe.
Right, well, I'm derailing my own thread, so it's back to the world of things in 1.16 scale...
I need a few days of Sun and final wind to get the KT clothed and kitted out. Then I'll have to create a Youtube account and film the launch,,

With the weather letting up briefly, and the Pz IV waiting for bits to arrive, I thought I'd finally 'finish' this project. Then again, some projects seem to possess that ongoing 'nearly finished' quality for years: there's always that last tweak, or upgrade...that quest for the ideal look.
Anyway, finally got round to adding decals. I'm happy with the campaign in the East two- colour camo scheme (Poland Sept. 1944 -ish). Quite a few here opt for three colours, so I thought I'd try something different. I still need to add a bit of weathering and metal highlights. Also, two bands of Rotbraun on the right side need freshening up to get rid of a patch of overspray. Other than that, it works faultlessly (for the moment ), and is, therefore (in my terms) complete.
The build was really a blizt. It took around a week or so from unpacking to field trials (well...carpet trials, but you get the idea.. ) The finishing process..ahem I use 'finishing' loosely ... has taken months. But I blame the weather!
Click to enlarge the images..