Matt182

Nice work. How bad were the moulding defects? looks like you have dealt with them perfectly. Looking forward to seeing it finished.

Beautiful work Dan. I rarely dabble in post WW2 armour but it's always nice to see excellent builds like this. Keep up the good work

Nice looking tiger, great job on the free hand camo. A very nice face lift after 20+ years!

looking really good so far

Cheers Mick, Well, I got some more work done on the gun. First I added the the mounting points for the main gun sight and coax MG 34. I also added a couple of extra wires. Next I built the connections for the elevation gear and gun stabiliser. Here is the AFV modeller resin gun sight. It is a superb piece, vey finely detailed and far superior to the kit item. The kit MG 34 is quite decent but I wasn't happy with the barrel so I replaced it with an Aber barrel. I also cut off the stock and added the attachment point as the stock was removed when fitted inside a tank. The mounting brackets where then added to the MG. Finally I test fit all the parts. It is all getting very fiddley to line all the parts up so I'm glad the gun is pretty much finished! So, thats all of the major components of the turret finished. There isn't much left to do here so I will soon be able to call the turret complete Cheers Matt

Great work Peter, very nice finish. Looks like a really good kit too, may have to get one!

Good job with the dunklegleb, looking much better. keep up the good work!

It is a little bit of a mixed bag combining both early and mid production features. I think it is best to stick to making a mid production as that would require less work and will save you from having to source new tracks and the Feifel air filter system. Aber have released a comprehensive PE set while Voyager have released front / rear fenders and sideskirts. Schumo make a variety of metal items designed for the Tamiya kit which could also be used. Atak do a full zimmerit set if you do not want to tackle that job yourself. You should be able to source all the parts you need and it is worth checking out some of the upgrades for henglong RC tanks as many of them can be used on the hobbyboss kit. Take a look at the following link, it will give you an idea of what is available. http://www.welshdragonmodels.co.uk/tiger-1-9-c.asp

Looking really good Peter

Thanks guys A little more progress. The main gun proved to be a little troublesome but it is almost complete. The fit of the parts is pretty poor and there is quite a lot of sink marks on the breach. I also had to pack out breach with some plastic card as the opening was too large for the replacement resin breach block. On the upside the kit does provide a pretty complete complete assembly with mainly just the wiring that needs to be added. I also replaced the recoil guides with section of ariel from an old rc contoller. fitted in the turret, you can see where the gun meets the elevation gear.

Great work, really like the dusty look of the panzer and the extra stowage is a nice touch. Top job!

Thanks Phil, Aluminium barrels make life easier. As you mention, there are no seems or defects to deal with and they are usually ready to fit straight out the box. Where metal barrels really come into their own though is the muzzle brakes. The level of detail and finesse of machined parts just cannot be matched by styrene. For this kit I think replacing the barrel is a must, especially the muzzle brake. I wouldn't be happy with the parts in 1/35, let alone 1/16 scale!

Hi guys, I've made some more progress. As most of the turret basket is now complete I thought it would be a good time to get the basic main gun built and sort out the alignment or potential issues. So here is the basic gun assembly. The small plate on the lower left side attaches to the elevation gear so this needs to be aligned to obtain the correct elevation. Fitting the gun also revealed an issue with the weight of the custom barrel I will be using. The lenght & weight of the barrel, along with the location of the pivot point resulted in the barrel being far too heavy. This caused the gun to depress and the breach to hit the turret roof! At first I tried to counter the weight by filling the breach with lead sheet but it wasn't enough to counter the barrel. It was also making the front of the turret too heavy. The solution was rather simple. I just wedged a block of styrene into the opening above the the gun. This holds the gun firmly in place at the elevation I want. The styrene will be hidden by a canvas cover over the opening. Once the turret is all together I will also fill the opeing behind the mantlet with milliput to really make it solid. Cheers Matt

Hi Phil, Think you are right, it is only blocking the view from a certain angle. What I might do is leave the rack there but remove the 2 outer-most shells. I think that will solve the problem. Cheers Matt

Just stumbled upon this build, bloody fantastic. That engine looks almost real. Great work!

Looking really good John, top work.

Thanks guys I've made some more progress. The turret basket is now 90% complete. Fitted to the turret I also thought now would be a good time to check everything fits so I dry fitted pretty much everything I've built so far. Everything seems to line up pretty well. The only slight issue seems to be that the turret basket is sitting a little off centre. I'm not entierly sure yet what is causing it but it is not a big issue. I'm also considering dropping those two partial ammo racks entirely. The centre rack seems to block the view into the turret basket and I'm not really sure they add much to the model. What to you guys think? Cheers Matt

Great start to the painting. Got to agree with you about the dunklegleb though, It looks a little too dark / olive in colour. The weathering process will likely darken the colours further so you want to allow room for that too. Maybe try adding some sand / buff colours to the mix to lighten it. Once you have painted the base colours and camo you could also give it a light over spray of buff. It will lighten the colours and is also good for producing a dusty effect which would be great for the Normandy setting. Cheers Matt

Are you sure it's your first AFV build?! It's looking very good indeed, very clean build. Looking forward to seeing some paint on this one, keep up the good work. Cheers Matt

Hi guys, Time for another update. I've been working way on turret floor, adding a fair bit of detail. Here is how it is looking at the moment. It's probably easier just to list what I've done. 1. The parts provided for the sheet metal around the turret ring are far too thick. I really didn't want to scratch build them so I sanded them all to thin them out 2. The two large resin boxes are the storage boxes for the commander and gunner's headphones. These were provided by AFV Modeller as they are missing from the kit. 3. The smaller box inbetween the two large boxes is the transfer box for the gunner's mircophone/headphones, also provided by AFV Modeller and missing from the kit. 4. Wires were added to the three dials by the transfer box. 5. The gunners knee guard was scratch built as the kit item is far too thick. 7. The box next to the knee guard is the emergency trigger for the main gun. The kit part is pretty much just a blob of plastic so I built a new one. 8. The resin box in the top right corner is for spare parts for the MG 34. This is missing from the kit and again is provided by AFV Modeller. The bracket for the box was also scratch built. 9. Various welds and retaining brackets were added This is the spare periscope rack which had to be scratch built. The kit parts are too small and would no longer fit due to having to adjust some of the surrounding parts. The periscopes are AFV Modeller items. The main wiring conduit had to be scratch build as it is also missing from the kit. The cut off part on the left would run up to the turret roof, if it was still there! Starting to get cramped in there! So that is the turret floor pretty much complete, just a couple more parts to add. Cheers Matt

Ah, was thinking nice build of an M3 here, then saw the wing.... love the alternative thinking! Your not going to throw it right?!

Great Job! The camo and weathering is excellent, great figures too.

Hi guys, Got another update. I've done a little more work on the turret roof, adding some missing details and welds. I then started on the turret ammo racks. Thankfully trumpeter did a much better job with these than the hull ammo racks. They are built more or less oob I was thinking about just how many extra details to add but when I test fitted the turret shell it was pretty obvious not much would be seen. Cheers Matt

Looks much better than the HL King Tiger I bought a couple of years ago. Great work on your panther Oz, shows how good these can look with some work. Getting a little tempted now...

Hi Phil, The build features of the Bovington KT are very similar to those that were serving with pz abt 503. Just don't copy the paint scheme that is on it now, it's not quite right. Here is a photo of the Bovington KT after it was abandoned. It was serving with SS pz abt 501 at the time. The king tigers serving with pz abt 503 in Normandy had a very similar camo scheme to 104. Cheers Matt