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Takom King Tiger 1/35 with Henschel Turret & Full Interior


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Hey Everyone,

 

A new tank has found it's way onto my workbench, The mighty King Tiger :D 

 

Background

 

 

The German Tiger Ausf. B, or King Tiger was arguably the very best tank that was put onto the battlefield during WW2, as well as the most costly.  With each unit requiring some 300,000 skilled man hours to complete, the King Tiger went into serial production in December 1943 at the Henschel factory in Kassel. At the peak of production it took only 14 days to complete, and by the end of the war 492 examples were ultimately produced of the 1500 units ordered due to the intense Allied bombing campaign.

 

With frontal armor reaching up to 150mm thick and side armor 80mm thick, this nearly 70 ton tank was built around the famous dual-purpose semi-automatic 88mm canon firing armor-piercing or high explosive rounds, the KwK 43 (L71) production by Krupp, with the T.Z.F.9b/1 binocular gun sight (later followed by the monocular T.Z.F.9d) built into the cradle. This set-up allowed the tank to engage virtually any enemy tank before it could come within firing range. The Henschel production version carried 86 rounds of internally stored ammunition for the main gun. Additional armament came in the form of 3 Rheinmetall Machinengewehr 34's with 5800 rounds; one mounted in a kugelblende on the right bow position; one mounted coaxially to the main gun; one mounted externally to the commander's cupola.

 

This massive tank was mobilized by a OLVAR EG40 12 16B mechanical transmission with 8 forward and 4 reverse gears powered. The only other variant of the King Tiger was the Hunting Tiger, or Jagdtiger. With the exception of the initial prototype, all King Tigers were coated with zimmerit until September 11, 1944.

 

The King Tiger dominated the battlefield in terms of capabilities, but often suffered from shortages of lubricants & fuels. These tanks proved themselves in battles ranging from Normandy, the Ardennes, Lake Balaton, and Berlin. Although they lived up to the expectations of the 'Wunderwaffe', the King Tigers were ineffective in stopping the overwhelming numbers they faced on the battlefield. Today there are a total of 11 King Tigers preserved around the world, with the rest having been long lost to the scrap yards.

 

The Kit

 

So I have decided to go with the Takom King Tiger Sd.Kfz.182 1/35 Henschel Turret with Full Interior.

 

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The Build

 

So on with the build, Looking at the parts there is very little flash and the parts are detailed and well formed.  Here is some shots of the Hull:

 

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This is where I decided to start the build, It made sence to start at the bottom and work my way up and after a few painting mistakes I made with my other Tiger build the lesson had been learned. So some progress:

 

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I have since given the base a coat of Mig-014 Rotbraun and im waiting on it drying before adding some details and Mig-017 Cremeweiss to the side sills:

 

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That's as far as I have got today, more to come over the weekend :D

 

Chris

 

 

 

 

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Hey Everyone,

 

Thanks for the comments :) I've been working away tonight on just getting some of the details into the interior.  I have never been the best with hand painting but I decided to give the finer details a go with the airbrush, after some masking and a few mistakes I have come out with this:

 

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I have a few more details to add in, like highlighting some of the cables and a few other parts, also have some decals to apply and a bit of dry brushing over the radios. I also have a few touch ups where I have caught parts ... frustrating to say the least.

 

I'll have more updates shortly.

 

Cheers

Chris 

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Morning Everyone,

 

I managed to get some more work done on the King Tiger this weekend, Progress has been slow though as this kit does have some very complex sub-assembly's never mind trying to spray all the parts required.  The engine was a build in itself! and that's putting it lightly.

 

The first job of the weekend was to apply some of the decals to the interior parts along with touching up some of the paint I had caught:

 

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I have also  just noticed a few seem lines that I have missed that I will address shortly :D

 

With these in place, I was able to start construction of the engine and also some of the engine bay components including the fans and radiator units along with the engine bay compartment walls.  I have given the exhausts a treatment of rust pigments also even though I have not started to age the engine just yet.

 

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All the parts of the engine fit really well, and any alignment holes seems to line up perfectly, although I have seen other modelers complain about this throughout the kit I have yet to experience this issue.

 

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A bit more detailing to the engine parts:

 

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While all this was drying overnight to allow the paint to harden, I started working on the turret :D.  Here I did run into a few issues with parts fitting correctly. Often the locating pins were too long and pushed the part out of place, however a quick bit of sanding and test fitting sorted this issue.  Again this build is complex in itself, lots of small parts in a very small space.

 

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The turret is also loaded with shells and these required assembly. They end up been glued together in a block which would make painting them rather hard.  I decided to leave them separate and to paint them all before assembly.  What I did like about the shells is the PE caps that go on to provide the shell with more detail, although these are fiddly to attach:

 

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These parts then all received a coat of primer and have been left drying overnight.  Back to the Hull of the tank and I started to fit the parts into the engine bay.  This was very tricky! Hardly any room to work and if anything is out of alignment you have to fight with it.  I have fit the engine as best as I could but im still not 100% happy with it,  I will continue to tweak the fit as time goes on.

 

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This is as far as I got before the missus reminded me she still existed :lol: .  I now have some more pipework to fit the engine bay so I have again primed and sprayed these ready for fitting, although I have a bit of detail to add first :D

 

That's all for now folks, thanks for looking.

 

Chris

 

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On 18/02/2017 at 6:35 PM, DAG058 said:

What an amazing kit, Takom really have exploded onto the armour scene. You've make an excellent start too.

 

It is an amazing kit to build, some parts I have to admit are either vague in the instructions or do not line up as expected and a little bit of sanding is required but out of the hundreds of parts I have already put together, very few fail.

 

I do hope that Takom come out with some more Armor with the full interior sets, I really like the full interior builds but I will never be able to bring myself to seal them up.  I'm going to leave these in section on a stand type setup, I just can't hide all this wonder detail.

 

Anyways guys, thank you for the wonderful feedback so far, I am hoping to get some more picture online and a bit more progress tonight and over the weekend, It's been a busy few weeks :( 

 

Cheers

Chris

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Hey Everyone,

 

Sorry I have not posted too much the last few weeks, as I mentioned I have been pretty busy.  However I have got cold feet over painting the outside of the King Tiger with it been such a lovely kit, I did not want to mess it up.

 

I had to pop to my local hobby shop the other day for some more Tamiya Thin Glue and spotted the Tamiya Tiger 1 tank for £15.  I figured with it not having any interior to it and been a cheap kit, I would pick it up and build it and practice my painting techniques.

 

Anyways here is the kit in question:

 

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As I was building this kit I have to admit, the parts all go together wonderfully and it's a very highly detailed kit for the price.  I'm not going to turn this into a build log as like I said, for me this is a practice kit.

 

I wanted to check the paints I had chosen for the kit along with playing with weathering and various painting techniques I have never used.

 

Anway I built up the kit, laid down some of the One Shot Gray Primer, then applied some one of the base colours to the main tank, I then decided to try and do some Pre-Shading using Tamiya Flat Black, Here is the result of this:

 

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Please ignore the various tools and implements wedged into the tracks haha, I had just fixed the tracks in place and wanted them to correctly mold to the wheels.:D

 

I thought I may have gone a little heavy on the pre-shading, however after getting a nice mist of a slightly darker shade of the base colour I have come up with this result:

 

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I'm really happy with the way this has turned out and can't believe the difference a bit of pre-shading makes.

 

Tomorrow I plan on playing a bit more with some chipping, weathering and some other techniques that I hope to apply to the King Tiger and the Tiger 1 that has the full interior.

 

Let me know your thoughts so far guys :) 

 

Cheers

Chris

 

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Hi Chris

 

The pre-shading is worth while as it really adds to the shadows and makes the model a lot more life like.

 I have tended to pre-paint an entire model with something like Tamiya Nato Black and sometimes white in random places over the black and then gone on to the 

finish color and the camo.  I'm going to try just pre-shading the black to highlight certain areas as I really like the look of the rear deck and turret roof on your Tiger I.

The black really improves  the overall look of the dark yellow and I'm sure it will look great if you go ahead with the camo greens and browns.

 

Good job on the Tiger II so far and that interior is pretty impressive.

 

Take care,

 

Lloyd

 

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Nice work Chris - The King Tiger looks very detailed an d I like what you'v done with the interior and the engine so far.

I agree with the "Trial work" on the cheap Tiger - makes every sense, and coming along very nicely IMHO.

Rob

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3 hours ago, robgizlu said:

Nice work Chris - The King Tiger looks very detailed an d I like what you'v done with the interior and the engine so far.

I agree with the "Trial work" on the cheap Tiger - makes every sense, and coming along very nicely IMHO.

Rob

 

 

Thank you for the kind words Rob, I feel bad for the way I stated "cheap" kit.  I did not mean it to sound that way, all I was meaning was its a practice kit.

 

Anyway, been having a bit of a headache today trying to get my airbrushes to spray camo correctly :worry: I've played with pressure, different nozzle and needles and still can't get it right :(.  Anyway here is some more progress on the practice tank:

 

First up I got the Tamiya Flat Rubber on the wheels after I have it a base coat of the yellow sand colour

 

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And here is the camo pattern, I freehanded it as I don't have any of the Camo masking gear.

 

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I can't say that I am 100% happy with it, this has been my worst fear over any of the build process.  The next state will be picking out some of the details on the tools and tow cables and guns, and then adding some chipping and wear to the edges of things before it gets a Matt Varnish top coat.

 

Let me know your thoughts please guys, any tips or advice would be awesome :D

 

Cheers

Chris 

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Well first off Chris - you've got as good a finish free-hand as I can get using masking putty.  Your overspray looks pretty minimal.  Camo patterns like this are never easy -I struggle still - check out my BMP efforts.  I think you've done a great job.  If you mask, after trying white "Blue tac" , MX Pression "Panzer putty" and Bouncy Putty (Amazon or Ebay - cheap as chips), my money is on Bouncy putty.

You'll soften and lose some of the overspray if you use a Mig Filter - definitely worthwhile, you might consider the tan Filter designed for Tri-colour German Cam.  Just shake it and every so often whilst using put the shop on and give it a shake again.

Some modellers give a very diluted overspray with the base colour and get good results - I've never tried this - seems a bit too scary and I suspect does roughly the same job as Filters.

I think onc again this is the value in doing a trial "proof of concept" model.

Keep it coming

Rob

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Thanks for the tips Rob and the kind words.  I used this as a practice at different camo but now I'm looking at it thinking .... it was a nice kit and I may as well build it with the correct marking for the early type that it is.

 

When I get home tonight I will be covering it in the base colour again, more pre-shading then apply the top coat and subtle markings.  I have ordered some Klear today and some oils also .... only to realize I forgot to add the Filter to my cart :wtf: and my order is already at the packing stage so I think it will be too late to change that.  I will have a look at making up some thinned base coat and having a play with that option.

 

I ordered the Klear in order to use my enamel washes and detailing kits that I have along with the oil paints to add some more modulation and grime along with some rust and other bits like that.  Also wanted to play with pin washes for rain and dirt ... I'll see what I can come up with.

 

I came across a YouTube channel last night and the lad has some wonderful models and has an excellent tutorial on the weathering techniques he uses:

 

 

It really has given me some great ideas and it's nice to see how the different effects come together.

 

I'll update later when I get cracking on with finishing up the Tiger 1 and I might be able to get some more work done on the actual King Tiger this discussion is about :lol:.

 

Cheers 

Chris

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Hey Everyone,

 

Managed to get a little time on the bench last night to strip my first attempt at camo from the Tiger and reapply it.

 

I managed to pick the wrong colours for the darker camo but hoped that a filter wash would correct this, I'm fairly happy with the result even though the colour is not correct.  I did not want to spray over it yet again to adjust the camo as by this point I'm going to start loosing detail with the layers of paint.

 

So I started with a fresh base coat and more pre-shading:

 

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At this point I applied some Iron Oxide powder to the tracks and gave it a good rub to make the tracks look worn:

 

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Then on with the new camo,  The lighting is not the best here and the photos are taken on my phone which makes the camo look really light ... it's not as light in person ..... either way I definitely picked the wrong colour and only realised after a few minutes of spraying :wtf::

 

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And the last thing I did was gave the tank a coat of Klear before switching over the enamel based washes,  I have read a few debates regarding this.  A lot of people paint Enamel paints / washed and oil straight over Acrylic paints with no problem, However in testing I have done on plastic card this has not been the case and the Enamel has reacted.  With a good coat of Klear over the top I should be able to work without issue.  

 

Here is how it looked after a coat of Klear and a Tan Filter:

 

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The Klear is Semi-Gloss but I will be putting a Matt varnish over to seal everything after I am done.  The Tan Filter definitely made a huge difference to the paints finish.  Tonight I hope to get some dark washes and some more details painted on like the Tow wires and a few other bits.

 

Let me know your thoughts.

 

Cheers

Chris

 

 

Edited by BulldogModels
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