Armortek

Photo-etch would be prohibitively expensive - much easier I would have thought just to cut them from brass sheet.

Adrian.

Adrian, most probably you are right. So before modifying any more hubcap covers I wanted to see if I could make these tabs myself. It's not the cutting that was worrying me but drilling 2mm holes in thin brass.

Luckily I had a small 0.3mm sheet to experiment with. I marked up all the tabs and the location of the holes. Drilling went smoother than I expected. I used a 2mm centre drill to drill the holes.
Cut the tabs with an old scissors.
The brass strips became a bit curly with the cutting but straightened them out in the milling vice. A trial fit with one of the tabs. Not bad. So now I can modify the rest of the covers.

Vince Vince

Vince, if you place the brass between a two piece jig and cramp tight together you can drill the holes through without them being able to twist, you will have to make a jig though ....regards Phil.

Phil, that jig you described would have been the safest way of doing it.

Vince

Looks like you nailed it anyway, nice job ....regards Phil.

Still playing around doing the modifications on the hubcap covers. Doing them slowly as I don't want to break a 2mm tap in one of them.

Also got some paint in spray cans made up for the interior and exterior base coat. I think I am happy with the exterior one for which I used RAL 1020.
The interior one is a bit more greenish but I think I will live with it. I used RAL 1000.
Vince

Finally finished the added details to the hubcap covers not without the inevitable happening. In a space of 30 minutes I broke two 2mm plug taps!! The first one I could extract the broken tap and continue with another one, but the second one was unrecoverable. So I plugged the hole with JB Weld and made a new hole. Luckily, I remembered I had a set of sub-miniature taps that included a 2mm tap also.

In between tapping operations I also managed to red prime over the etch primer the hull bottom and today I gave it the second base coat.
In a couple of days (when I come back from the UK) I will turn the hull over and continue on the upper hull.

Vince

Reference the broken tap, you can see why m3 is used so much ! If the part is cosmetic then drill a slightly larger tapping size as this will be far easer to tap and there's less chance of the Ali binding and so breaking the tool, for structural pieces you could still go another .1 and it will hold just fine especially in the steel, you would need to source speciality drill bits to get the right size though.
What you have done is looking very good by the way,
Regards Phil.

Thanks Phil for the tips. In retrospect, as these threaded holes were just for cosmetic reasons, I could have gone to 50% thread engagement. Lesson learnt.

Vince

There is one more thing regarding tapping: Taps come in sets of three: Pretap, through tap and bottom tap. For aluminum, you want to use all three in that order. And lubricate with alcohol. Learned that the hard way also...

I was using the three of them but usually for aluminium I use WD40.

Vince

Disappointing day today.

I had planned to assemble the sprocket assemblies today. Everything is primed. I got the new stainless hex head bolts. All I needed was to get some stainless 2.5mm nuts which I was sure I could get locally. Well it seems I was wrong. Couldn't find the nuts from my usual stockists. Had to order them from abroad.

So today I ended up red priming some parts which were already etch primed and continued cleaning up a couple of road wheels.

I have a question for the Tiger builders. I was wondering if it's worth doing weld seams in the areas that will be covered by zimmerit. What do you think?

Vince

Hi Vince,

I’d say if you are going to show areas of the Zimmerit chipped, then it’d be good to see the welds. But if the Zimm covers the weld, only you’ll know it’s there. But then, what if your Zimm gets accidentally chipped? I don’t think there are that many welds under the Zimm?
Have you decided on what Tiger you are modelling?

Simon

Thanks Simon for the response. I was thinking about the front of the model (the glacis and sloping front). There are many welds there. I think I will fill in the joints with milliput but not do any weld seams as that area is going to be covered with zimm. I am not going to simulate any battle damage so there should not be any parts of the zimm chipped off (unless I accidentally hit it). I have not decided on which Tiger I am modelling. Most probably if I see one with a camouflage that I like, I will copy that.

Vince

Assembled the upper hull. Had to grind a little the front part of one of the pannier floors so that the glacis plate would fit in front of it. This was something I had discovered earlier on so not worried about it. Also fitted the hull roof to get better alignment.

There is only one thing that I am not sure about. The following photo shows the alignment between the upper front panel, the glacis plate and the pannier side panel.
At least this how I think they should look. The next photo shows the same area from below where there is a gap between the bottom of the glacis plate and top of the hull side.
Same photo with a 2mm drill in the gap.
Is this normal or am I doing something wrong?

Vince