Friul Metal Tracks // Torture!

This is truly torture. For truly accurate tank tracks, Friul Model Tracks were purchased for the King Tiger II. They are pricey but remain workable so that I can put on and off at different times during the painting process. Plastic tracks are usually assembled and glued into place making painting tricky. In addition plastic tracks in many cases cannot be accurately molded so they are lacking certain details that make would make them accurate.

SO I bought these things and they are a bear to assemble. In 3 hours I have managed to drill out all of the holes (4 per piece) using .5mm pin vise. Brutal. They are tricky to assemble as well. It has taken me 30 minutes to do this much!

Hope this is worth it. I guess I won't know till it is painted and finished.

Porsche Konigstiger Ausf. B

Started work on the Tamiya King Tiger II. This is one of the 50 or so Tiger IIs that saw action in Normandy, summer '44. None of them made it out of northern France. This was the largest, most powerful production tank of WWII. Porsche turets were seen on the first 50. The Henschel turret appeared on all of the remaining Tiger IIs.

I have completed most of the build and over the course of 4 nights, applied the Zimmerit coating. This time round I used Tamiya putty instead of the clay-like 2 part epoxy I used below on the Tiger I. I prefer the gray putty as it goes on thinner and more accurately to scale. It is also easier and quicker to work with.

January is shaping up to be a fun month of painting!

Tiger I Initial // Construction Complete!

Still waiting the new airbrush so I will keep building.

Okay. Another Tiger I, isn't this so redundant? Well not really when you consider the different variants of the Tiger I, different theaters of operations and different paint schemes. This Tiger is one of the first 20 ever made and saw action outside Leningrad. Differences between this one and the Late model I built below are: rubber dish style roadwheels, lack of side skirts, thinner turret armor, smoke launchers, different headlights, different exhaust system, different hatches and commander's cuppola and the lack of zimmerit coating.

This tank had very few photos of it taken. There are two I know to exist and they show the tank with a white striped winter camo over a panzer gray basecoat. The other early versions were solid gray.