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vehicles .::. civilian aircrafts .::. military aircrafts .::.
miscellaneous .::.---------------------------------------------------------- |
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I had an Esci Elefant laying around and after building the Panther with a Pz IV turret I found out that the same unit used a Tiger(p) as a "Befehlswagen". After having no luck in locating the Milicraft kit I found an old article on building this in 1/76 scale. (But this model is in 1/72 scale).
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| The turret is from the old Hasegawa Tiger I kit, and plastic card was used to rebuild the hull. I made a try with a Zimmerit coating of Milliput and a tool made from the side of a CD single box. It has a finer pattern then the boxes from the CD albums. |
It isn't 100 percent correct but I like it and once again I managed to avoid resin 
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I bought a box of built but unpainted kits and therefore I had this Elefant. Since I was in a Recovery vehicle mood it ended up as an Elefant ARV.
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But I'm getting a bit bored of making the small German crane that seems to be present on their ARV's. Well this time I made it in work position and made a tiny lifting block to. |
This is a S.Pz.Jg.Abt.653 Ferdinand. I modified the Esci Elefant kit.
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| I made new grills on the engine deck, new hatch on the roof and removed the machinegun. I also removed the toolbox at the back of the hull. |
An Elefant from S.Pz.Jg.Abt.653. It is the Esci kit built with very few alternations. I did leave out the toolbox on the right front hull.
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| Most of the models above has now been released by Dragon. |
Sturmtiger from AMC models
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| Well I wasn't impressed with the kit, so I used most parts from a Revell Tiger I and combined it with parts of the Sturmtiger. |
| I bought this kit second hand back in the year 2000. |
| (Model finished 2024) |
| The Tiger has never been a favoutite of mine so it dug in deep in the stash. I have had plans to sell it as I got new ones from Dragon and Zvezda but decided to build it now. |
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I was going to do a straight out of the box build just for relaxing but then I noticed some notes I had done in the instructions so I did some small modifications. I raised the cupola as it was said to be to low and decided to leave out the spare tracks on the turret. |
| I first planned to do a "pea green" vehicle just for fun but then decided to try the desert colours I am going to use on another build. |
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The Tamiya XF92 might not be correct but I like the colour and I will see what it look like if i manage to get the second colour on it. But I cleaned the airbrush and was ready for the second colour when my airbrush decided to malfunction. I tried to clean it several times but it still don't want to work. |
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The problem with the airbrush gave me time to look into the Tiger. I was trying to see if the turret numbers really should be red as the Revell decals are when I stumbled on information on the turret box at the rear. I altered the shape of it so now I have to restart on the paint. But the Tiger 1 has grown on me while building it so I'm looking forward to build another. |
| Well, I hate to paint and hate it even more when the airbrush malfunctions. |
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Finally I had to use a spare airbrush to get some paint on it. I had opte on a Tamiya and a Gunze sand colour that were suppose to be OK for this scheme. When I had painted it I could hardly se two different colours. The only visible difference was that the Gunze colour were semi gloss while the Tamiya paint was flat. I repainted it and had seen a note that the Tamiya colour could use some white so I added that. I added some green to the Gunze but perhaps it came out to green? But a mist of sand will probably tone everything down a bit (if I manage to fix my airbrush) |
| As I hoped the green did tone down and the two colours are less different to each other than the picture show. |
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I added the small toolbox at the rear. With a airbrush that functions again I cleaned up the camouflage and are now painting wheels and tracks.
I am looking at decals, they might become a problem. I am in doubt with the red numbers on the Revell decal sheet. |
| I decided to use the Revell decals even though I have my doubts about the red colour. |
| I never been to fond of the Tiger but building this changed my mind. |
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This is a Jagdtiger from Esci. Well it started as one. The Jagdtiger had a longer chassis than the Tiger II but Esci used the same chassis for both kits. When I was about to build the Esci Jagdtiger I inspected the Tiger II and Jagdtiger from Fujimi and noticed that the chassis were different between the two, so I started to look at the possibility of using the Fujimi chassis on the Esci kit even though the Fujimi kit was in 1/76 scale and Esci in 1/72. (A little note. I am talking of the ex Nitto moulds that have an interior and not the original Fujimi moulds that are simpler kits.)
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| The Fujimi chassis were in the same length as the Esci but narrower. I added 1 mm strips on both sides of the Fujimi floor to get the correct width and mated it with the Esci hull getting the longer wheelbase (sprocket to idler) of the Jagdtiger. The Fujimi kit had an interior so I used that as well. |
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So, what I used was: From Esci: Hull, rear plate of the chassis and tracks. From Fujimi: Sides and floor of the chassis and the interior. I used the armoured cap from the Fujimi engine deck and used it on the Esci kit I liked the Fujimi wheels so I used them. The rest was mix and match of both kits. This isn't probably a 100% correct solution but at least it gives me a Tiger II and a Jagdtiger with a clearly visible different chassis. |
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Sweden got a Tiger II for evaluation after the war and I bought this second hand cheap to finally build it. More about this tank here: 
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| (Model finished 2024) |
| At home I started looking for suitable parts for the conversion. In a Jagdtiger box I found this. I had totally forgotten that I once started on a conversion. |
| I had already done some work in the rear and at the front. |
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The “Two-eyed” sight in the turret had also been fixed. But it was a good thing that I never finished the build earlier. I didn't like the Esci tracks that I had planned to use but now the correct tracks were availale from OKB Grigirov and so was the sprocket wheels. |
| I managed to get the resin sprocket wheels and tracks in place. |
| They do look much better than the alternatives I had when I started this project. |
| I tried to add some small details to the hull. |
| Finally it was ready for paint. |
| The paint scheme was simple. Dunklegelb all over. I used Tamiya paint for this. |
| Now I only have to figure out what to do with the kit I bought. |
| Stockholm November 10, 2019 |  |
Updated August 25, 2024 |
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vehicles .::. civilian aircrafts .::. military aircrafts .::.
miscellaneous .::. home .::.------------------------------------------------------ |