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In 2010 after getting back into the hobby I pulled the Tiger from under a three inch thick layer of dust and considered the options. After a lengthy discussion with Dannyd my wallet was emptied on some Friul tracks and an Armour-Scale Befehlswagen conversion set.
The next issue was the turret, and what to do about the lack of asymmetry! After much procrastination and avoiding the issue I grabbed razor saw and got stuck in, using a Tamiya Mid that I had in the stash as a guide. The picture shows the result of much hacking around.
As the renovation proceeded it became clear that I should strip the Zimmerit and start again, so off that came, then the wheels. I now had a stripped, corrected turret Tiger 1. So back on the shelf it went for another 3 years
.Fast forward to the last couple of months and my modelling interest had dropped right off. I was picking up aircraft models, doing bits and pieces and putting them down. I needed to get back to something different, so back off the shelf came the Tiger
.Lots of research later and I decided to do 007, probably the most ignored Tiger in history..... not.
First thing was to modify the turret roof as the kit seems to represent a 40mm one, whereas research would now suggest a 25mm roof was present. I ran a thin strip of plasticard around the turret edge leaving a small hollow that I will be able to fill with weld. The roof also needed the weld line adding on the front section which can be seen in the following picture.
As can be seen I've also added a fine Zimmerit pattern to the gun mantlet, which has also had the machine gun hole filled. The course pattern Zimmerit on the turret was an experiment that didn't work so has been removed (again). Another issue arose due to the conversion from 40 to 25mm representation of the roof, the loaders hatch! Tamiya has I think correctly portrayed the later Tiger II type, which is wrong for my intended subject. Using a technique I had read about, I used my MId Tiger to copy the hatch. I glued the hatch into the roof with gator glue and allowed this to cure. I made sure the roof had been released first using liquid vaseline, otherwise I'd have ended up with a large blob of silicone very firmly bonded to my turret. Using bathroom silicone sealant I pushed and smeared this onto the area I was interested in, making sure it was forced into all recesses. 24 hours later the moment of truth.....it had worked, I now had a reasonable mould of the hatch I needed. Some PU resin and 25 minutes later I had a pretty good copy of the right loaders hatch in the closed position. A quick trim of the hinges on the 40mm roof and some cyano, and I now had a reasonable representation of a latish 25mm Tiger 1 turret.
That brings this up to date as of this morning. The picture shows the bits I'm going to use. The Eduard etch is actually for a mid, so I think I'll get the ET models Late set of fenders and details and go from there.
The final fly in the ointment are the rear idler wheels. Tamiya provide 700mm ones, but a late should have 600's, so what to do? As can be seen I have started turning the kit ones down as the Model Kasten ones are long gone. My intention is possibly to modify one, then cast new ones in either resin or metal. The other option is to use the ones provided with my Dragon 6253 kit as a master, but with the value of these things I'm not sure I want to remove stuff from sprues just in case I never get round to it.
Does anybody do 600mm idler wheels to save me making moulds, or is this a small business opportunity?
Any advice will be very gratefully received, and I blame Dannyd for this very long post
.Rich
