There is nothing like a fresh coat of dunklegelb! I'm working on Dragon's King Tiger Henschel Turret w/zimmerit. To be honest I'm not a fan of having the zimmerit molded into the kit, but it was on sale at my LHS so I couldn't pass it up. It is an excellent kit I must say and went together well. I'm building vehicle 313 of sPzAbt 501, which is an early run of the Henschel turret, thus the lack of spare track hangers. There is no markers on the kit to show where the hangers should go (like there is for the tools and cable hangers) which seems to be an over site.

The first thing I'd like to note is I actually got the cables on the model correctly (pictured below). Which I view as a minor miracle. The tow cable is the one that came with the kit. The track cable was replaced, because the one that came with the kit is too rigid and would not anneal enough to allow the correct bends.



The track cable was replace by very carefully stripping the insulation off one of the strands of a telephone cable. They have very thin copper wire inside. I twisted one end around a pencil and put the other end in the dremel for a few turns. Be careful when doing this! The wire snapped and hit me in the nipple (man that stings) when I was making mine. Luckily it was still long enough for me to still use.

Below is a close up to show how I got the cables to stay in place. I drilled tiny holes in the model side and tied down the cables with thin strands of wire. Just a few of them keep the cables in place without any glue. Also, I didn't use the PE hangers for the track cable that came with the kit, Those things never stay on. I bent new ones from brass rod (which was filed flat) and put through holes drilled into the model.



As you can seen in the picture below I used Aber's PE equipment clasps instead of the ones included in the kit. I found them to be nicer and have gotten the hang of making them. Those things are killers at first. I imagine the sinners of the world being punished in the after life by having to spend eternity making those things!



The paint so far been with with Vallejo's Model Air thinned a bit with windex. First it got a coat of primer, before dunkelgelb lightened a bit with white.



You can see in the background of the last pic a Tamiya KT I did some years ago. With fruilmodel tracks being $50 now, I'm going to do some recycling. Here is a link to another KT I did for your viewing pleasure

https://armorama.kitmaker.net//features/1556

Questions and comments are welcome!

Cool build David. Although hand made zimm does look better (most of the time) it is rather convenient to have this option now. And yeah, your King Tiger looks great under a fresh coat of paint.

Matt

Great build David.

I will follow this build with interest - keep em' coming!

if you don't know:
http://www.ss501panzer.com/
a very good site

Thanks, I've seen that site before it is good. But I'm building a vehicle from the Heer 501 sPzAbt not the SS 501.

So here are some more photos after applying some techniques from Adam Wilder's color modulation article. I kept it more to just variations of the base color by lightening with white and light brown and darkening with a dark brown and olive drab. My main goal was to differentiate between the steel surfaces and those with zimmerit. Also, I wanted to create some depth by doing things like painting the back road wheels a darker shade than the forward wheels. I gave it sort of a fade look too, with a lighter shade on the upper turret and hull sides and darker towards the bottom. Mainly to break up the large surfaces.

I've been using Vallejo Model Air and to be honest I'm not liking them too much. They don't seem to adhere as well as thinned tamiya paint does. It seems to pool on the model very quickly, so it has to be applied in super light coats and gone over many times. If anyone has any experience with this paint and can pass on some knowledge it would be appreciated.

Next step, the camo!

David, it really looks fantastic so far, I'm very impressed. Those close ups in your first post look like they could be 1:1, of a museum piece! The telephone wire looks very good. I really like the effect you achieved with the fade on the zimmerit too. There has been a lot of discussion on the best way to paint and weather zimm and I think that yours looks very realistic (compared to photos) so far.
Keep up the good work!

Thanks, I took the close up pictures with an extension tube on my camera lens so the focal length is really short. It is crazy when you look at those pictures full size because you can see the tiny specs of dust or lint on the model.

Ok, so the camo is on now. Again I used Vallejo Model Air, basically just straight Tank Brown and Tank Dark Green. I mixed a bit of white or olive drab to the brow and air brushed over the base color to break it up a bit.



The camo pattern I applied is much more involved the actual vehicle had. I have a picture of it, and despite being in black and white, the camo looks like just a bunch of blotches and wide lines. I guess that is where artist license comes into play.

I'm going to apply the turret markings next using cutting a mask using some decals I have as the template. Then paint the outline of the cross and numbers with a brush.

So I've gotten the outlines for the turret number and cross on. I made stencils for the numbers by using photoshop to lay them out and get a print on a normal sheet of paper. I put the paper on a piece of double sided tape, and covered the paper with clear tape. I use the clear tape to keep the paint from soaking into the paper. I cut the numbers out following the print on the paper. You need to use a new and perfectly sharp for this and do it very slowly. I cut myself on this step, which is the second time I've done that on this build. Also, I drove a small drill bit into my finger drilling out the fruilmodel tracks. I made the cross stencil by just sticking the decal onto the double sided tape and cutting it.



Once the numbers are cut out it is just a matter of peeling off the back of the double sided tape and lining it up on the turret for the paint. I was very careful airbrushing the paint on, if it gets to thick and runs it will get behind the stencil. Having the zimmerit on the model makes it more likely to happen. It did just a tiny bit to me but I just covered the run with a small bit of the camo brown.



Next is to paint the outside white lines on the cross and the inside red on the numbers. I'm going to wait until tomorrow to make sure the paint is totally dry. I have a habit of getting excited by progress and wanting to do the next step to soon and messing things up.

You did a great job on the camo, very impressive. Can't wait to see more.

Thanks, I was more careful applying it this time then in the past. I only did one surface at a time so the airbrush was always perpendicular to the model, which gives better control of the spray. Also, after the brown and green where on I went back to the base color and cleaned up some of the spots that had heavy amounts of overspray, which I think gave it a cleaner look.

That tiger is looking really nice. Great work on the camo!

So I have the cross and numbers painted. In the picture I've been going from the numbers are really pronounced. I've read some things and seen other pictures where airplane or vehicle markings have been enhanced in the photograph, so I'm working if that was doing to my reference photo. Anywho, I didn't make the numbers as bold as they are in the picture.

The red inside of the numbers and white lines on the cross where painted in by hand. I'll tell you that is much easier to do without the zimmerit. But numbers on the real vehicle probably would have been painted by hand and would not be perfect either.



Also, I added a filter using a buff humbrol enamel color I had in my paint collection. This was done to put some differentiation between the steel and zimmerit surfaces. Also, the Vallejo paint is a bit shiny and I wanted to flatten that out a bit as well as make it look like more dirt had stuck to the rough zimmerit surface as opposed to the smooth steel surface.

So, I added a coat of Vallejo Model Air Gloss to the steel surfaces and Satin to the zimmerit. I'm trying to keep some differentiation between the two surfaces. They are very different in nature in how they would reflect light and attract dirt.

To blend the base coat together and create the first layer of wear and tear. I blended artists oils (colors show in the picture above) all over the model. I added more dark colors in the corners to start to show where the dirt would collect.

David, the KT is coming on nicely. Like the tecnique you 've used on the tow cable holders. will keep this tecnique and give it a go, cheers. The paint job looks good, I think the cross has come out great, with the raised surface on the zim sometimes decals shrink into the Zim and look stunted. Looking forward to seeing the wheels on the raised suspention arms, this is were Fruils come into they're own. Following with pleasure Geraint

David, very nice work! Been thinking about picking one of these up. Believe I will. Looking forward to seeing more of your progress. Thanks for posting!

Looking good David. Just one thing how in the world is that KT in that vise in your last photo?

David www. pacmodels. com do Fruils for $29.99 hope this helps. i dont know how much they cost to ship, but its cheaper than $50 Geraint

Thank you all for the kind comments. The hull is screwed to a block of wood so it will sit on its own when not being worked on. So, the block of wood is in the vice.

I kind of lost momentum on this project and finished some other things. Mainly because the weathering did not go well, so I ruined the camo job. Now that I'm back working on it I decided to repaint and start over.

The main thing I didn't care for was the shade of dunkel gelb. I started with a base coat that was to dark.Then the weathering made it really dark and kind of muddy. The base shade is much lighter the second time around.

Also, I used AM Works stencils for the vehicle markings (I know the numbers should probably be bigger). I have the set with the individual numbers which can be tedious to use. However, the result is worth the effort. I just looked on their website and see they have sets for specific vehicles. I wish I'd seen that before I bought the one I did.

The pics show just the base paint with no weathering. I used a semigloss varnish on the zimmerit parts and gloss on the bare metal.

Definite improvement there. Just go easy on the weathering this time - 'less' is often 'more'.

- Steve

David - This looks fantastic. I liked your build the first time through and now it's looking even better. I've made the same mistake of spraying my base coat too dark too many times. Are you still using Vallejo paints? I've tried them in the past but didn't like their coverage and adherence compared to Tamiya. If you're using Tamiya, what colors did you use?

Thanks, I had similar issues with Vallejo Model Air paints, so I went with Tamiya paints this time. I love the Vallejo Model Color, but think Tamiya paints (thinned with windex) spray a whole lot better than Model Air. I used Dark Yellow lightened with Deck Tan and White. The disruptive bands are Deep Green.

I've been away for work so haven't had time to work on this project. However, I'm in London and got a moment to visit the Imperial War Museum . I've been working on a Jagdpanther as well as the Tiger and had a look inside the one there.

I know I (and would suspect most of us that build models) don't think much about what it would be like to be in combat in a WWII tank. After seeing the interior I can imagine it would have been absolutely terrible! It was so cramped and crew compartment was penetrated by a Cromwell three times. Those rounds must have bounced around the interior like a ping pong ball.