heres DML's Kingtiger Porsche turret with pre-molded zimmeret. Cant wait to start painting.



heres a close up of the zimm






thanks for looking, all comments welcome of course

Looks like a clean build so far.
Only complaint is that when I used ATAk zim on my Panther A that a few did not like the pattern as no damage to it, not beat up enough.
I guess some folks don't like that "Factory New Look"

yeh i agree it does look a little to clean but i didnt think I would be able to make realistic battle damage on the zimm so i just left it how it was.

Ethan it looks great. I'am doing the same build. The space behind the malet, should that have Zim on it?

thanks for the comments, and mike im not sure i couldnt find a picture of the mantlet from that view so i just left it how it was.

Mike, I have a couple of pics that show that area of the turret and at least in these two photos there is no zim behind the mantlet. I don't have the kit but judging from the pics it appears Dragon may have left a little too much area clean, but that might be because the area without the zim stands out that much more on the kit. (I hope that makes sense )

Ethan, I'm one of those guys who isn't quite convinced that the molded on zim looks "right" to my eye. Never-the-less your build looks good, nice work so far.

Cheers,
Mike

here my progress so far...



Im pretty happy with how the camoflage has come out (being the first hard edge camoflage scheme ive ever done) next up im going to paint the tools and the decals followed by weathering.

thanks for the info and comment mike (kelly)

more to come hopefully tomorow.

Looks good, Ethan.

Really cool and unusual camouflage. Did you use any specific references for this scheme?

Looking forward to see more

No offense meant Ethan.
I like clean builds as shows off any mistakes not like slapping 20 pounds of mud on it.

Looking killer every day.

2 points:

First, it isn't a Porsche turret, Porsche had nothing to do with turret-development, apart from making sure the turret ring in the hull had the right diameter. In fact, this turret was being developed already when Henschel was designing their first Tiger-2 (VK-4502(H)) which was a project to equip a Tiger-E based vehicle with the longer L/71 88mm gun and having sloping armour.

Second, these first 50 Tiger-B's were all par 2 sent out to be painted by crews in the field, thusly, no hard-edge camouflage on them. I recognise the camo as the one seen on some early Tiger-B's on railtransport to Arnhem, September 1944, however, that is soft-edge camo.

And I agree with the notion Dragon actually made the Zimmerit TOO good, it is very well visible, where it should actually be less obvious. Look at pics of tanks with Zimmerit, and you see that even from a medium distance, that Zimmerit patters tends to "blur" and become rather unnoticable.

I would recommend every to not add washes to these kits, nor any drybrushing over the Zimmerit as that will no doubt make it stand out WAAAAAY too much.

I have the earlier kit, the Tiger-B with Serien Turm and the Zimmerit. I do tend to see that on the edges of the hull and turret, it is too neat, too clean, too well done. Pictures show that Zimmerit was applied rather messy in certain cases, but in average, either the edges were almost clear of Zimmerit, or it was blotchy. But not razor-sharp as on these kits.

As to damaged Zimmerit, unless you portray your Tiger-B as having taking heavy fire, Zimmerit on Tiger-Bs generally looks untouched. Contrary to Panthers, where you DO see damaged patches. It makes me think Henschel applied the Zimmerit differently than MAN, DB or MNH.

Anyway, looking forward to seeing the end result and my advice would be, add some softedge to the camo. Not much, but it was there. Here's a tip, drybrush the Dunkel Gelb over the edge with the Oliv Grun, that will blend in the edge and give it the right look.

thanks for all the comments, the camoflage scheme is one of the kit options. and Mike thanks for all the information good to know.

thanks everyone.

heres some more pics almost done now. just a few more things to do now.











thanks

As far as I know, the reference of Porsche in regards to the turret is merely meant to indicate the turrets were made for the Tiger-E based vehicles you reference, which (as you know) did not go into production. the Tiger-E and related chassis are a Porsche designs, hence the turret name - it was intended for a Porsche chassis. I think it is perfectly acceptable to denote the turret differences for the King Tiger by simply referring to a "Porsche turret" - much easier than saying "the early king tiger with the turret that was originally made for the Porsche chassis that was not selected for production that replaced the standard production turret because they didn't want to waste production effort"

Me too. Especially since practically everyone and his dog calls it a Porsche turret.

Okay it isn't strictly accurate, and if you want to be pedantic about it you could call it an "early" turret and the "Henschel turret" could be referred to as the "production turret".

But does it really matter?! Everyone knows what's meant, it's become so embedded into everyday parlance in modelling circles.

After all, a Hetzer was never officially called a Hetzer and the Germans didn't call the Bummbär the Bummbär either. And I don't think that the King Tiger was ever even an official designation of the Tiger II (correct me if I'm wrong).

But does that mean it's "wrong" to call 'em that?

Oh and Ethan - the KT's looking good, Old Son!

Your king tiger looks great!

AlexanderK

A really nice model, well built, well painted and after all we build to have fun and relax right?

Darryl

thanks for all the comments, I know it might not be 100% historically correct but that doesnt really bother me.

thanks again

I am really enjoying your WIP posts. I am 80% done with the Henschel turret version. looking forward to seeing your finished product. Are you going to give the Zim a light oil wash to make it stand out. I had actually thought of dry brushing the zim with a lighter shade rather than wash it. one of the previous post commented that the zim is a little deep and a wash may make it stand out a little too much, what do you think? Are you not going to put the spare tracks on the turret? Your tracks looke awesome, how did you do them? Look forward to future post

Awesome build! I really do not see anything wrong with it to be honest.

thanks for all the comments glad you like it

Fred, im not going to put the spare tracks because out of all the photos ive seen of the real tank none of them have the mounts plus theres no indicatores as to where to place them on the kit.

The tracks- first I sprayed them tamiya flat black followed by red brown and then a dusting of tamiya buff. Later a mix of CMK dark and light earh pigments and a little drybrushing with model masters Steel and scrathed with a 6B artist pencil hear and there.

thanks again everyone.

I feel the same way, as long as we have fun and we are happy with the result. Looks great so far.

Looking forward to see more

Very nice there man.
I was almost tempted to buy one of these the other day but got a 1.48th scale tamiya t34-76 and panther g instead.

looks sweet, makes me want one now.

thanks for all the comments, hopefully ill have the finished pictures up tonight or tommorow, ive been a little busy lately.

very very nice Ethan , this build has inspired me to start my own Porsche tiger, ER tiger 2 ,ER tiger b, hmmm ?. OK Porsche tiger , cant wait to see it finished. a great looking model and a free pedantic history lesson into the bargain what else can a modeler want . ps it dosnt have to be correct to be good , as the other guys have said just enjoy it .