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Kenneth Childres  Where on earth do I begin describing this one...? No this diorama isn’t big in terms of size but a lot of thought and time went into it. It was a learning experience from beginning to end, with construction stretched out in spurts over the course of a year. I suppose I should start with the reason for building the whole thing. I wanted to reconstitute a project that I started back in college of a knocked out tiger I in an urban setting. At that time my skills were not up to par with the ideas that I had running around in my head and the project fizzled out... The original diorama base and Tamiya Tiger I were discarded along the way but the idea remained. Fast forward six years. Dragon Models Limited released their sublime late model Tiger I E and the wheels immediately began to turn to resurrect this project. About the same time I had been turned onto Balsa Foam by a fellow modeler for doing custom carvings and building work. It seemed a perfect project to practice with this new [to me] material. So I gathered up what I thought I’d need for the project and set about building it. The story I have in my mind is this: The Tiger was damaged during the shoot out with the British 22nd in Villers Bocage. A recovery crew has knocks off its tracks and it is being towed back through the town when fighting resumes and it has to be abandoned. It could have been used as a static defense for a brief time (hence the empty shell casings) Fanciful... Maybe. The Tank There have been numerous reviews of DML's Late Tiger I E by far better writers so I won't bore you with that, but I must say that it is without a doubt one of the finest kits I’ve ever constructed. DML’s multi media kits negate the need for most any aftermarket detail sets... I was intending to make this Tiger in rather sad shape so some changes were made to reflect this but otherwise it was built right from the box. I began construction of the Tiger from the inside out. The interior must be completely built, painted and weathered before you can close up the hull. DML provides you with a nice breech and basic seat configuration for the turret interior but since I wanted the hatches open and no figures present I decided to flesh out the turret a bit with equipment hanging on the walls and a rudimentary traversing gear. Also added was a simple turret basket with some non-descript mechanical stuff on it... which is hardly visible but it does give you the odd glimpse if viewed in the right light so I guess it was worth it. All this was painted in an off white and was weathered a little heavy and dark to suggest some slight smoke staining from the hits in the hull.  Moving the engine compartment, DML includes "pods" of detail visible under the engine deck screens which include the radiators, gas tanks and intake fans. All this is well detailed so no extra work was needed there just painting with various primer red, black, metallic shades and white all weathered with oils to a grimy cruddy look. FORTUNANTLY before I painted the "pods" I thought to test fit the Verlinden engine and compartment that was to rest between them... To say that it wouldn't fit would be an understatement... Not only would the PE engine bay not fit between them the engine block itself was nearly 1/8 inch too wide to fit between the "pods", Sooooooo, I rocked back in my chair and thought about it for a second. The only choice was to narrow the DML "pod" parts about 1/16 on each side. I pried them out of the hull and sawed them down. The tricky part is that there is a PE shroud that fits around the intake fans that already fits tight in the kit parts, this had to be carefully trimmed down (there isn't much available to trim) Now that I had room for the engine and its surrounding bulkheads I was back to square one. the VLS PE parts for the compartment walls weren't easy to work with and still didn't really fit (too wide across the back) so I used the VLS parts to make sheet styrene replacements that were easier to manipulate and slightly narrower.   copyright©2006 ausfwerks |