My Jagdtiger by Per Sonnervik

[leesellars]

Russ

It is longer than the royal tiger. There is another wheel on either side aswell.

Lee

[Fredrik Jorgensen]

This is so superb my eyes bleed Per..........

Fredrik

[simon_manning]

very nice per, a mountain of work, but a lot of satisfaction, well beyond me. regards simon.

[Derek Attree]

Hi Per
Simply outstanding sir no more to be said....

Happy new year

regards

Derek

[Per Sonnervik]

Gentlemen, many thanks for your kind words.

Russ, yes the hull is longer and the torsion bars are also further apart compared to the T2.

Lee, have you been sniffing too much paint thinner again ?? “There’s another wheel on either side as well.” No, same number of wheels on both vehicles.

Whenever possible I try to use Armortek parts and after some measuring and thinking I decided to use the drive wheel body. As I had purchased new tracks for both models new sprocket rings had to be made.

Drive wheel body
I started by removing material on both the outside and inside face of the drive wheel. I had made sure there were enough material left to make the drive wheel strong enough. Machined wheel on the left, se below;






Then extra material (left in the photos) was machined to fit the machined surface on the drive wheel fastened by screws and glue, see below;






Next step was to machine the area for the sprocket rings.




I’ve also added extra material on the inside (behind both sprocket rings) to get the correct look of the wheel and they had to be split in two to be able to glue them in place;






Machining in the rotary table removed the extra material on the wheel;




I had made a drawing of the drive wheel and used this to make a template to correct the profile of the drive wheel. I used earlier sawn off threads from screws and bolts hence the hedgehog look and then used Plastic Padding;










Careful machining was done to get as close to the correct profile as possible;






Finishing off with some extra work in the rotary table to again get the correct profile;




The sprocket ring
These were drawn in CAD and laser cut. I had made a jig to hold them when machining;





Photo below shows what the sprocket ring looked like when I got them (left) and when machined (right);




Almost all the machining can be done in this jig except the bevelling on the teeth which was done mounting the ring on the drive wheel, see below;




I made 8 sprockets rings and this took some time as I couldn´t cut as much as I wanted each time as the material was not very machine friendly.

Finishing touches
I designed new locking tabs for the sprocket ring bolts and I used 2.5 mm bolts and nuts to get closer to scale size.

The hub centre was a completely new piece with new bolts, locking tabs and a centre bolt that screws into the axle centre (photo shows backside);




A recess was machined in which the hub centre fits tightly in so the gap is hidden as much as possible;






A groove was machined on the drive wheel body were the track links’ inner guide teeth are and I added some cast texture, cast no’s and text;









The late Tiger II drive wheel was done almost the same way and differed only regarding the spokes and the sprocket rings and looks like this;




Happy New Year to all.

Per

[Paul Morris]

Hello Per.

Seasons greetings this is all very very impressive and a little daunting as I think it will take me a few hours to clear away the cobwebs from my model as its been so long since I touched it .
Great job on the sprockets as expected and of course the whole thing, you will have her running around soon at this rate.
Well done again and all the very best for the New year to come hopefully see you for a chat.
Cheers Paul.

P.S. go on Lee tell us about this extra wheel

[Kent Wiik]

Hi Per,

Wow, outstanding work!
You take the hobby to a completely new level and I love it.
Keep the saga coming and a Happy New Year to you.

Kind regards
Kent

[Stephen White]

Per (and Paul and Kent), very Happy New Year to you. I love seeing these reports, your work inspires the foolhardy like me to try such madness. Your results are stunning.

Seeing your lathe setup is interesting - in this case seeing you use a stop on the leadscrew. That's a lot of metal to be machining, so many congratulations. The Cent idler was tiny by comparison.

It's great to see quality builds recorded like this. I was reminded of the inscription on the Special Air Service's monument to the fallen which starts:

"We are the Pilgrims, master, we shall go always a little further...." - Per, you're truly a pilgrim of the one sixth world.

Happy New Year.

Stephen

[simon_manning]

well done per, its not just the skill to make the model, its the stamina and perserverance to stick with it, especially building two, always interesting to follow, regards simon.

[Peter Dierckx]

Per, were did you got those cast numbers?

[Per Sonnervik]

Thank you all for those encouraging words. Stephen – you do have a way with words as well as modelling. Peter, plastic alphabet´s can be found at Hannants.

Idlers
The last work on the wheel arrangement was the idler wheels, idler axles and the housings.

I tried hard to work out if it would be possible to modify Armortek’s idler to a more accurate wheel, but failed to find a way to achieve that “bottleneck” look behind the outer disc of the wheel.

An opportunity opened itself when an US-modelling friend needed help with making CAD produced idlers for his 1/10 Tiger II model. I helped him with dimensions and realized I could have more accurate ones made in 1/6 scale using his program.

Idler wheels
Said and done, after some tweaking of details and dimensions to fit my needs this is what I got; idler consisting of three major parts plus the hubcap;




The "bottleneck" of part A;



The backside of parts B and C;








Some additional work was done on the spokes filing them into a v-shape, a total 48 of them, tedious work to say the least;




I wanted to use the Armortek ball bearings and that meant the front one had to be glued and then an alu disc with the holes for the hubcap had to be glued in front of the bearing and then machined to the right depth;




At the back I machined the center and covered the four screws that hold the three parts together with a machined alu disc with 8 scale bolts. A steel disc acts on the bearing but doesn´t have contact with the alu around it;








On the hubcap extra material was added to the inside just to make it more true to scale and just for the fun of it;




Idler axles
The real challenge came with trying to do the axles both true to scale but also strong enough as there is quite a lot of force on these axles when turning in terrain. Through visits at the Swiss museum in Full I managed to get enough measurements to do this.

I started by drilling holes for the axles in five steel pieces (one as back up);




By removing some material by hacksaw followed by milling I got a rough shaped rear axle body. The individual axles were kept in place with grub screws and spring pins. This allowed me to remove and assemble each axle whenever I needed to work on them;








The rounding of the axle body was first done in the mill and followed by machining in the lathe;





Last some filing achieved the final steps. Photo below show the left side filed to a curve;






The housing
These were machined from stock material and have a brass bearing glued in. Four bolts hold them in the lower sides;






I wanted to use the Armortek track tensioning system, but with some alterations. I didn’t want the idler axles to be completely stiff, instead I wanted some suspension effect. I used the bump stops provided in the kit, mounted on a plate. The track adjusting bolts rests on the rubber providing just enough of that ‘give’ I was after, inside view;



outside;




Finishing touches
I put steel rods trough the spring pins before the axles was silver soldered in place and a metal strip was soft soldered on to the body on both front and back;










On the idler wheels I machined in a white metal plate with cast no’s and after some puttying and sanding I added a cast surface;









The hole in the metal strip is for a grease nipple.

In hindsight I´m not 100 % happy with the corner radius (way to large) of the pattern of each disc which means I´ll take the wheels apart and try to correct these in the future.

Per

[Fredrik Jorgensen]

GODAMNIT!!!! I think my eyes just popped out!!! and im speachless!!! Yes obiwan you are a true master!!

Im sad that i have to let my beauty go when i see this.

Fredrik

[Robert E Morey]

Per,
Any progress on this magnificent project? Hope progress is being made. Amazing work.
Best regards
Bob

[Per Sonnervik]

Hi Robert,

Yes, I´ll admit I´ve been absent from this Forum for a while but I haven´t given up working on the model(s) - I´m working on a Tiger II as well. I´m researching as well as building so this takes time.

Here are some photos showing the present state of my Jagdtiger, first some overall photos;











The gun has been prepared for recoil with a linear bearing;









Several smaller details have been made, this is some examples;

*the inside of the hatches (still need some adjusting);




*the air intakes in alu (six all in all);




*the towing device (in alu and steel) for the Jagdtiger (think Kubinka), this is the first time an accurate model of the real thing has been made. I made two in case I want to use it on my Tiger II;








Lately I´ve been working on the Tiger II turret so I´m keeping busy.

/Per

[Derek Attree]

Hi Per
That is stunning work .Can I ask what you used to do the
hatch cushon pad it looks great is it leather?

Regards

Derek