Within a day's work of finishing the tank. Need to touch up the tools a bit and weather it, then finish the tracks and crew, which might take a few more days, given the speed I work!

Nice clean build. Is it the DML Late Tiger I?

Good job

Nice looking cat Sean,lovely zim job.
look forward to seeing it finished

Great looking Tiger, how'd you do the Zim?

nice looking tiger, though in my opinion, which I might add is humble, I'd say that the tow cables look awkward in their placement. Any reason as to why they're on the front tow hooks while they are packed away? I love the cammo, the finish is great too!

Very nice, the zimmerit looks great

Hi Sean

You have a very very fine model here. Congrats. In the first pic the road wheels look striking, -- can you share the wash/weathering techniques you used on them. I'd like to give it a try. Thanks.

Steve

Awesome Tiger Sean. Beautiful paintjob.
I agree with Steve, the wheels look incredible. You have managed to give the wheels a lot of depth.

Nice clean build Sean. With the finished track, it will certainly have alot more attitude.

Top effort Sean. I agree with the others, the wheels certainly draw the attention. Can you share how you achieved the finish

The wheels are amazing! You really should consider doing a write up on them. I also thought that the decals over the zim were great. How did you do it?

Thanks for the feedback everyone.

It's the Tamiya Late Tiger I with Aber PE and cycle brake cable for the tow cables.

The cables are placed according to reference photos. James, you're not the first person to comment on them! There were stored like this to make them quicker to deploy in a tight spot.



The zimm is Eduard PE. There are pics of it before painting in this thread and my gallery (Look for the Tiger I In Build album)

The wheels were very easy, but slow. They were the first thing I started work on and I worked on them alongside building the rest of the tank and only added them immediately before these pics.

I cut them off the sprue, got rid of flash (which was minimal, this kit goes together like a dream!) and blu-tacked them onto sheets of card. Them i primed them with Halfords grey car plastic primer, painted with tamiya acrylics (including a filter of Buff) and sealed with Johnson's Klear (aka Future). This is a "double" process as you need to do both sides of each wheel. Then i used my "armour wash" - a wash of turpenoid and oil paints (Black and burnt umber, very roughly 2:1). I make this in batches and keep it in a small glass jar. The advantage of this is that over time it settles a bit, so you get some thicker stuff at the bottom. For a very heavy wash like this I shake the bottle for a couple of seconds and make sure that the brush gets soaked in the thicker stuff at the bottom of the jar, and then apply really liberally to the wheels. the key thing is to keep the wheels tacked to the card, so that they remain horizontal and the wash settles evenly around them. Then they coated with matt varnish and after drying a very, very light dry brush with Humbrol enamel 81 (Pale yellow). It's actually a satin finish paint, but as you can see from the close up on the turrent, it looks matt on the dry brush. basically, this is Verlinden's "system" simplified and adapted to my own abilities.
The parts that wear in contact with the track were done by hand using Humbrol enamels - matt black and silver 50:50.

The decals settle well thanks to microsol. Be patient. Apply the decals to a model coated in well cured (>48hrs!!) Klear. Press the decal down with a Q-Tip. When in place, support the model so the decal is horizontal and apply Microsol. Apply some more. Apply enough so the decal is sat soaking in it. leave for hours to dry. Keep an eye on it and if not settling, very carefully (I keep separate, very soft brushes for this - I think they are sable, but I'm not sure because I inherited them from my father-in-law) apply more micro sol.

When all dry (allow more then 24hrs) and you are happy with them, seal with Klear. Wash, apply matt acrylic varnish (I use Vallejo from an aerosol can) and weather.

I don't get much time to build in the evenings, so I can do this quite happily, as the actual modelling time is minimal, its the waiting timeg that counts. then when I get to the weekend I can do more stuff that doesn't need the waiting.

Cheers all

Thanks for sharing , Sean.

That was well written. I will give it a try on my Tamiya Tiger I early.

Lovely Tiger, and I appreciate your sharing your technique for the road wheels... I've got a Dragon Tiger I Late in the stash that will get this treatment (or as close as I can come to it)