Vince's Tiger 1 late variant 2017

[Vince Cutajar]

This is the spacing I have now on both sides between the swing arms and the hull.

The shoulder of the shaft just touching the brass bush.

Vince

[Vince Cutajar]

Take Two

As it did not take long to fix the counterbores I had some time to spare and did the assembly of the lower hull. Assembled the suspension bars to the side plates. Tested again all the holes for the swing arms and then masked the brass bushes. Also loosely fitted the two brackets which will hold the rear plate.

Bolted up the front sloping plate. Used the glacis plate for alignment purposes only.

Fitted the rear plate and turned it around to fix the hull floor with countersunk screws.

I do not know if this is the correct sequence to follow but it seems to have worked for me. Finally officially started the build.

Vince

[Vince Cutajar]

Fitted the upper part of the hull so that I can fine tune the alignment of both the rear plate and the front sloping plate.

Bolted the 6 battery tray pillars to the floor.

Also bolted the floor access panels.

As can be seen, I used washers with the round access panel and no washers with the other one. I am still not sure which looks best. Were washers used on the real thing?

Vince

[Adrian Harris]

Your Tiger seems to be coming along nicely Vince.

Re the washers, the only way to know would be to study books such as the PanzerWrecks series, to see if you can find a picture of an overturned Tiger.

This is one I found on Pinterest, which doesn't seem to show any washers but the quality isn't that good.

Adrian

[Vince Cutajar]

Thanks Adrian for the encouraging comments.

I have been looking at the books I have at other parts of the tank where bolts are involved. It seems during that time washers were not common except for washers with lock tabs.

In the meantime, started work on fixing the pannier gusset to the pannier floor. Used some rivets with a threaded shank to attach them together.

Rivet head bolts

The rest of the holes I will fill with glued in rivet heads. That is going to be fun.

Vince

[Christoffer Ahlfors]

Tiger building involves a certain amount of repetitive work. Don't forget that you paid dearly for it!

[Vince Cutajar]

Thanks Christoffer for reminding me. I actually finished them this morning and it did not take as long as I anticipated.

A couple of quick questions.

I need to equip myself for the weld seams, which means I have never done this before. I checked a couple of places here for Milliput with no success. So I guess Amazon will be getting my money. As I might be getting them from the UK I thought that I might try something different. Something like this: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Aves-Apoxie-Sc ... xie+sculpt
I can't remember who mentioned this product on the forum and I think it was commented that it was easier to work with. Anybody actually used it?

Also, do I need to do weld seams if the area is being covered by Zimerritt?

Thanks in anticipation.

Vince

[Vince Cutajar]

I chickened out and ordered Milliput instead of Apoxie Sculpt. While I wait for it to arrive I will do some minor details.

Pannier gusset fixed to pannier.

Made some filler fillets for the interlocking plates.

Vince

[Vince Cutajar]

Today I felt a bit adventurous and took some artistic licence (or should I say mechanical licence). I made what could have been a field modification to the tow bracket. I added a chain to the tow pin so that it won't get lost.

Vince

[Vince Cutajar]

As I said in an earlier post, I ordered Milliput from the UK but I suspect due to the weather over there it might take a bit longer to get here. I do not have any experience with Milliput so I was wondering if there is a way of removing it once it sets hard.

Vince

[Phil Woollard]

Hi Vince, it's wonderful stuff, you can drill it and tap it too, I use a Very expensive steel rule to help get it flat, gently but firmly scraping away the unwanted with the sharpe square end.
You can file it, you can rub it down with emery cloth, you can turn it, if you use that square edge when it's still tacky and a bit of water and a finger you can get it pretty much how you want it. It does take a bit of practise but you will soon get there!

Hope this helps. Phil.

[Stephen White]

Milliput is the medium of choice for most Armortek builders, for sure. You do have to master the tricky balance between too much water and failure to stick and too little and the Milliput sticks to the tooling. Apply it dry and once in place, moisten whatever tooling you’re using to shape it. It does have one distinct shortcoming. It is brittle in small quantities and can be dislodged or cracked if the underlying structure flexes or moves. I’ve had Milliput welds crack and fall off after time. It can produce in-scale welds if carefully done but it can also look a bit crude if badly done. One useful alternative is fabric paint. I’ve done a post on it elsewhere on the Forum and I now use it for all but the biggest structural welds. It’s much quicker and easier to apply too.

Stephen

[Vince Cutajar]

Thanks guys for the info.

So if I understand you correctly, as it is brittle, all I need to do is chip it off if I need to remove it.

Vince

[Robert E Morey]

Vince you can chip it off easily with a wood type chisel or flat tipped chisel Xacto blade. I used it for welds and zimmerit, and it makes a good looking finish - but it is very labor intensive. You can only do a small patch (of zimmerit) at a time, and because it must be mixed together by working the parts a and b together -your fingers get a major workout. But that said I still like it for welds and zimmerit.

I think for my late T1 I will use a tile cement for the zimmerit - I have several bags of it laying around from remodel projects. There is a lot of area to be covered in the T1, and I don't relish the job again with milliput.
Bob

[Steve Norris]

Hi Vince
I used to use Milliput for Zimmerit but as Bob said it does give your hands a good work out mixing the stuff, it also take a long time to apply a full coating to a tank. The last few tanks I have built I used tile adhesive mixed with brown acrylic paint. The idea with the paint is to produce a more realistic colour for the Zim, then if it gets damaged it won't show up as a gleaming white blemish.
Another reason for using tile cement is scale. I measured the thickness of the Zim on the Bovington King tiger and it was 6mm or 1mm scale thickness, you would struggle to get Milliput Zim this thin. I apply my Zim using a set of Mike Stannards Zim application tools, it's very easy and also very quick.
Hope this is of help
Regards
Steve