King Tiger

This is part of a braille scale (1:72 or smaller) build on another site and is in fact 1:76

Construction is complete apart from the tracks and it's ready to start painting. Not sure yet which camo scheme to go for.

It may be small but boy are there a lot of wheel parts!!! Every one of which has two sprue attachment points to clean up.     

Looking good Al   

Good Luck with that little critter. Looks good so far.

I'm going to have a go at this camo scheme from the eastern front, during the winter of 1944/1945.
(I know it's a Tiger h/e and not a Tiger II)

Question: Being winter I would have assumed the lighter areas would be white but in this illustration, they look to be very pale whitish cream!! Can anyone shed light please?

Lotta detail in that little sucker !!!

  

That's a lot of wheels for a tiny tank !!!!!

Decided to go for it and try air brushing the camo freehand.

I made up a custom colour mix of white with a few drops of yellow and a couple of drops of brown and sprayed the whole tank with it.

Looks rather fetching in this colour don't you think?? Perhaps I should leave it this colour and assign it to Leutnant Hubert Gruber!!!   

Hi Al,

You must have bionic eyes to be able to work on this, looking great...

Andy...

 

Looks pretty good. To detail the molded-on parts with a brush will take patience and good light! In the end it will look great. If you need snow for the display we gots lots and lots!

It's not so bad Andy. The main body is almost 100mm long. A giant in 1:76.   



So am I Bruce. Fingers crossed. (and eyes... LOL)

Well, the freehand airbrushing turned out to be a total disaster. I just don't have the experience at the mo. Watched a few videos and they make it look easy. Believe me in this scale, easy it is not!!

So I'm falling back on good old Blu Tak. An hour's work in applying and it looks like this:





The right side has bigger spacing, that's 'cos Shultz got kinda sick of it!!!! LOL.

What a great idea! Freehand airbrushing, especially with a very narrow pattern, is hard, you bet! I remember seeing somebody on the Web doing a German plane freehand with a complex pattern. I thought I could do it...no way! I'm glad you have a backup plan.

Man I screwed this one up big time.

I have always sucked at mixing paint and I had several attempts to replicate the lighter areas in the above illustration, each failed attempt resulting in a fresh coat of primer. Result.... too many coats of paint.

The Blu Tak was therefore difficult to remove and it pulled paint away with it.    Should've known!!   

However, unsure as to weathering or not, I did apply a coat of hair laquer just before the final coat, so it may yet be rescuable. Fingers crossed again!!! LOL.





However, with the Blu Tak being difficult to remove, I managed to break away all but one of the wheels on one side.!!



If I can rescue the paint, then my plan B is to put it in a simple dio base with it well and truly bogged down in the mud/snow on the left side!!

Well the hair spray trick didn't work this time. Ten minutes of work with water and a stiff brush in a single spot failed miserably.



So I sanded back some to knock back the worst and it's on to plan C.......

Give it a light covering of snow!!! LOL

What is Plan C? Is that where you paint it Candy Apple red and put a blower on it? Sorry for all the trouble you are having with this one Al.

LOL. Buck, plan c was to give it a light coat of snow. However that didn't improve things one little bit and it was on to plan D. Dunk it in brake fluid over night.

Well suffice to say things only got worse and I broke of another three wheels to boot.

So now this one is metaphorically hitting the back wall.

I have another which I'll do at some other time.

AARGH! Some builds seem jinxed! I have to say it's not pretty. Maybe, jeez, if you don't want to strip it, maybe a good coat of snow (maybe in a drift).

Make a diorama of a muddy road and sink it into a mud hole. Only have the turret and gun sticking out.

Ouch Al this one's fighting you all the way

Not sure what to use for paint stripping as I've never tried it

When I freehand camo I keep my pressure down to >15 psi, thin the paint at least 50%, and keep the airbrush close to the model. That being said, I've never tried to do this to a braille armor model, the difficulties of which must be ghastly.

Kind of a long winded way to say I don't know how to help out


Regards,
Mark

When I freehand camo I keep my pressure down to >15 psi, thin the paint at least 50%, and keep the airbrush close to the model. That being said, I've never tried to do this to a braille armor model, the difficulties of which must be ghastly. wrote:

Did all of that Mark. My biggest problem with the AB was avoiding a 'splodge' on start up when connecting the main 'lines'.