Great... seriously contemplating putting this one on hold until I have more experience with scratch building stuff and pulling the S3/6 train kit out of the stash instead.

Thanks. Went to the modeling store during lunch break and discussed things with them. Got some "perfect putty" to see if this handles better than the revell stuff.

I'll also be on the lookout for a dremel. Can't put it off any longer it looks like.

Issue 3 - Turret walls and gun breech

The Tiger 1 partwork is rather infamous for its production problems and this is the first issue that was a major stumbling block for a lot of people due to the poor fit of parts. Even though I knew a bit about what to expect, still I was surprised to see how bad things really got.

But back to the beginning.



With issue 3 we get two metal outer turret walls, 2 plastic inner turret walls and 3 plastic parts for the gun breech.

The first fit problems cropped up with fitting the inner to the outer walls. Theres several guidance pins on the outer walls, all of them too long, all of them at a weird angle and one of them entirely in the wrong place. As to the why the walls made out of two parts, I have no idea. Forum discussions insist that the orginal Tiger turret walls were one piece. Maybe it's a weight issue.

Anyway this was quickly resolved by snipping all the pins down to half their level and getting rid of the misplaced one entirely. The inner walls now fit so snug I haven't even glued them in. Yet. May do. Note to self: need a new wirecutter, this ones busted now.


Then it was time for the big bad. The gun breech was entirely mismatched. There were open gaps throughout the whole thing up to two millimeters wide, the upper and lower ends of the halfs did not align and even in the barrel section in front the two halfs were running at angles. A complete and utter desaster. I got so wound up I forgot to take photographs, but you can google images search for "Hachette gun breech" to find examples. These are actually pretty nice compared to mine.

So what to do? Studying Nems building diary (thanks, mate) and buildatigertank.co.uk (an absolutely brilliant resource, read this if you build one yourself) brought the right ideas.

First things first, get rid of the guidance pins. Again. Really, we've been cutting these things off since issue 1, it's getting kinda ridiculous.

Without the pins though, the whole assembly fit about double as good, which enabled me to epoxy the whole thing together.



Enough epoxy was used to fill the worst of the offending gaps. Before I started with what I feared to be a multi-day effort of puttying and sanding, I took a trip to the model store and found a new putty they got in stock called "Perfect Putty".

And it IS perfect putty. Unlike the Revell abomination of a putty I had been using so far, this one was easily appliable, extra material was easily removed with the broad side of a toothpick and the most important part, it was dry and ready to be sanded in minutes. I'm talking single digits here, it was incredible. What would have taken several days with my former putty was done in an hour and all the gaps were gone. My forum name is Greyhawk and I approve of this product.

All that was left to do was the painting. I'm mostly painting according to the instructions but did choose to ignore the suggestion of using gun metal, at least not Tamiyas gun metal, as it was way way too dark and looked utterly hideous. I plonked on Revells Iron instead, which looks much better. At least for brush painting.



And there we are. The dragon slayn.

Next issue: Gun cradle, recoil sleeve, mantlet and a huge load of "What? Why would they even do this?"

It's kinda funny, because the prototype model they used for the instructions has the same problems with the fit of the breech and they hide it by using clever angles in the pictures.

Then in the next issue they forget all about that and show the breech with this huge split going through it all along the part.

A great update on the build Greyhawk

Rgd Martyn

Issue 4 Part A - Recoil dampers and gun cradle



This time around we have absolutely no trouble with the parts for the recoil dampers and gun cradle. Everything fits nicely and easily and we soon have our gun ready to fire



However I've encountered some trouble with these little guys



Namely me loosing part of them. So I now have another issue 4 on order and will have to delay part B "What were they even thinking?" until this one arrives.

Love your stage by stage build, it's going to show me what I need to be looking out for

The dreaded carpet gremlins I suspect perhaps this little tool will help and starve all the carpet gremlins,

http://www.scalemodelsho...ard-the-small-shop.html


Regards

Andy

Issue 4 Part B - "What were they even thinking?"

Remember these?



Yeah, so I got my replacement parts and turned those into these.



Now in my opinion they went a liiiiittle overboard with these parts. I mean...



... that thing on the left? It's built up out of 7 individual parts.

Anyway, that's not really the problem with this. The problem is this:



WHAT WERE THEY EVEN THINKING???!?!?!

Why do they instruct you to put to prime and paint a part only to come back two issues later to tell you "Oh, heres some parts you wanna stick to the one you finished two issues ago. Also have fun priming and painting that thing all over again. That thing that you already installed onto another thing. Psyche!"

WHO WOULD DO SUCH A THING?

Anyway, the hatch is now primed again and will get another coat of dark yellow when I pick up the airbrush again which should be next issue. I have decided to not read ahead out of spite, I want to see how bad this one gets. (Apart from two things I already know I need to not do at the time they instruct you)

I was glad I waited till I had every issue before I started, reading the assembly instructions through a couple of times really helped. It gets better!! Looking good so far.