im in need of help im in the process of building a german king tiger porche turrret , in the instruction manual it says to use, Tamiya polyester putty for the zimmerit coating ,is there something that i can buy instead of using the putty?. or do i have to use what is specified any help would be greatly appreciated

Plenty of zimmerit tutorials. Here's one

http://www.track-link.net/articles/15

Verlinden makes an A.M. zim. kit for the King Tiger. There are other AM's out there, but that's the one that comes to mind first.

If you what to do the putty thing, might I suggest you try dry wall spakle(??), forgive the spelling. A thin layer of that over the sides may work. You might have to do some light sanding in order to make it stick better to the model.

These are my thoughts.

You can check out this thread, very informative.

DML#6383 Tiger 1 Turret Zimmerit Mod

Or you can purchase Resin zimmerit sets from places such as Cavalier or Atak.

Or Photo etch sets from Eduard or Voyager.

cheers from the sandbox

Personally, I think PE zimmerit doesn't look good in 1/35 and requires lots of puttying of the seams to make it right -- with that you might as well go for Atak or Cavalier.

Glad to see that the author of the article that Roy Chow linked to said he preferred the putty method. See the feature I submitted on the Pz.Kpfw.IV Ausf. H where I started zimmeriting this kit almost 30 years ago - recently I was slightly amazed to see that people were spending money on buying etched sets for zimmeriting, and I must admit I have now seen some models with this type of coating and - sorry - it looks too perfect.

Putting on the putty is worrying at first, but look closely at photos of real zimmeritted tanks, especially close-ups, and you can see places where there are imperfections, smudges and blobs where the pattern has been disturbed before it set. It was done by some bloke in a factory with something like a filling knife you'd use for filling a crack in your living room wall. So don't be afraid to make little mistakes and imperfections. It's wasn't done by some precision machine.

Get some plastic card, or bits of unwanted kits, even the inside of a tank hull that won't be seen, and practice on that first, until you're happy. I just used the tip of a small *thin*-bladed electricians screwdriver to add small areas of the putty at a time (depending on how fast the putty dries) and the same tool to emboss the pattern, dipping in water to wet it and wiping off in between a few strokes to keep the blade clean. Probably depending on the type of putty (I used Humbrol model filler which is sticky) you may get little tails and peaks that look too big, like I did. Wait until it is set, then sand or chip bits like that off with a knife. If it all goes wrong, you can always scrape it off or sand it down and start over again, or even just repair or enhance small areas if they don't look right.

You could use the hot knife method, nothing to buy but a $10 USD soldering iron. You can do the entire tank in less than 2 hours, no putty no mess no tools etc. Heres the job I did on my Tamiya T2 early turret:

first draw out the pattern with a straight edge and a 7mm pencil:


Then using only 15W setting "draw the pattern, just stay in the lines:


You can acheive a very realistic look:







I f you want more details just PM me, I use this method exclusively now, it is easy, foolproof and fun!

regards,
Steve