Is it possible to mix together Tamiya and Dragon parts, or are they too differently sized; I've heard a lot about Tamiya figs being smaller than Dragons. I wanted to use some arms from Tamiya's 1:35 U.S Army Assault Infantry with some Dragon Airborne - would it look OK?
Any help would be very helpful...
Harry

Depends on what "parts" you are talking about. I think you could swap some equipment but you may run into trouble swapping arms, heads etc.
Also, DML figures have grown and shrunk over the years. I have had serious scale issues trying to use older DML figures on the same diorama with new releases. You can always try and see what they look like. Nothing ventured, so to speak.

Shaun

Theres no rule that says you can't. Just test fit the parts to see if they look ok. My only concern would be that Tamiya's figures tend to be a bit smaller than Dragon's.

Harry, I possess a small abbatoir of arms, legs and heads etc which I mix and match all the time to create non-standard figures. The only question you should ask yourself is "does this look right?". If it does..great. If not then don't use those arms.There is some disparity between certain kit sizes as Dragons early releases were all huge whereas Tamiya were dwarves so that doesn't work well. Ive just used an arm from a Tamiya kit on a Dragon figure for a bloke firing a PIAT and it looks fine. Had to chop bits off, filing and fillering but got what I wanted in the end. Never worry about experimenting with figures. Arms are arms at the end of the day and if they're in proportion then that's what counts.

The issue of figure heights came up recently in another post. In 1/35th scale, a 5'10" man is exactly two inches tall, if that helps. A scale ruler can tell you how "off" a given figure may be, and even then within an infantry squad you might have somebody 5'4" and somebody else 6'2" (okay, such tall guys were rare in WW2, since the Depression generation didn't grow up with vitamin fortified everything, but it's pretty common today). What is most important is that the heads all be roughly the same size--they vary much less in size than limbs and torsos do.
As for mixing different manufacturers' body parts, just use your judgement. If you're not sure about your objectivity, here's a really easy trick--temporarily tack the components together with a little glue, and set the figure next to a photograph of a real person the same apparent height. The figure will suddenly appear okay or really, really wrong, once you've given yourself some real-world context.

Thanks guys, I'll get the Tamiya set, and if they are very differnt to Dragons I'll just build them normally!
Thanks, esp for the tips at the end!
Harry