2nd Attempt at making a Mid Tiger

[pzGrenadier]

Hi,

It's been quite a while since my last attempt building the Tamiya Tiger mid-production. To encourage myself, I bought Voyager's PE upgrade set only to find that it is hard to remove all the pieces that I assembled. Also, I realized that the last time I made the zimmrit, the thickness is not even so you can observe some kind of wave pattern at a certain angle. One thing leads to another, I decided to scrap the old tiger as a painting test subject and build another one.

Here is the old one:




So far, I've only manage to prepare the hull somehow. I cut off the mud-guard and because I sanded off too much, so I have to add it back with plastic cards.


And most of the holes for parts that will be replaced by PE are filled.


Right now I'm preparing all the wheels but I have one question regarding how to proceed. The tamiya tiger uses individual track links that needs to be cemented together. However, considering later stages, such as painting and weathering, what is the optimized way of doing things? I was thinking to paint the underside of the hull and wheels first and do some prelimilary weathering (mud and stuff). Then cement the tracks in some segments before painting and weathering. Then assemble the wheels, track and mask them before proceeding with the rest of the tank.Am I over-complicating things?

Thanks for your time.

[AgentG]

It will work. I finally finished mine and did just that.

I tacked the wheels on with white glue, then assembled and glued the tracks leaving the ends free. This allowed me the opportunity to drape the tracks over the wheels achieving the proper amount of sag. I let it dry for a day or so then removed the lot. Reassembly was a bit tricky but not that bad. I put on the innermost road wheels, inserted the drive sprocket and idler into the track and the put the track on. I then began adding road wheels working from the inside out.

A couple of tips.

When Tamiya suggests 100 links per side, it will take 100 links per side.
Let the tracks set up while on the model. Indy links will always shrink a bit as the glue cures.

G

[pzGrenadier]

Thanks @HollywoodModelling and @AgentG! The tip for assembling with only the drive sprocket and idler then fill in the road wheels is brilliant! I've tested with my scraped model and it is far easier than my previous attempt to assemble multiple segments of tracks.

[pzGrenadier]

Hi, guys, I have another question about zimmrit. I my previous attempt, I used epoxy putty (two parts) and Tamiya's zimmrit tool (the saw like thingy). But I didn't achieve an even thickness therefore the finished thing had a wavy effect to it. I did some experiment this time around. I tried both epoxy putty and polyester putty. With the blade thing, I found that I can achieve better result id press the blade thing really close to the plastic so that the thickness is more even and the zimmrit not so thick. When I tried polyester putty which has more pasty texture, I found that the working time window is shorter. It is either wet or dry rather fast. The result is more or less similar to polyester but it doesn't seems to stick well to the surface while workable. So the whole colomn can be scraped up by the tool (you can see from the yellow ones).



I'm wondering if you guys can offer this noob some tips regarding zimmrit? Should I stick with polyester and rough the surface up to improve the stickness? Or should I use epoxy and concentrate on achieveing more uniform thickness? Thanks in advance!