I recently completed this Tiger 2 for the "Steel Cats" GB and I thought I might share it with you guys as well...
It is the Dragon 1/35 "Battle of the Bulge" kit. I got it at 1/3rd off at my LHS because the figures were missing.
The inspiration for this build was a small drawing on the Back of my main reference book regarding the Tiger and it's variants:
The model was painted with Gunze acrylics (dark yellow, olive green and chocolate brown) and then sealed with Alclad clear gloss. Then I sprayed Vallejo Air white in a blotchy pattern on top. When the white paint was dry, I used Vallejo's airbrush thinner and a large brush to remove the white again. The kitten recieved some streaking with black and brown oil paints, as well as a black washing to give it a grimy and used look and to bring out some details. I sealed everything with Alclad flat clear and applied the pigments (black pigments on the engine grills and muzzle brake, mud on the lower hull and suspesion/tracks, rust on the exhausts).
I can post the the technique I used to make the worn whitewash if you want me to...
Here are some pics for ya:
I'm quite happy with how she turned out, but I think I could've done better on the mud.
This is my 3rd Armor model (the other ones being 2 Tamiya Shermans) and my 1st Dragon armor kit.
I had a lot of fun building this steel cat for the most part, but there were some things I didn't like:
- Assembling/mounting the tracks - They are magic tracks, but I still had to remove 3 ejector pin marks on every track link. Mounting those things was a royal pain as well. Next time I'll use friuls!
- Sanding all those roadwheels - I guess I have to live withat issue when building german armor...
- Mounting the towing cables - This was the last and worst part of the build. They didn't fit under the mounting brackets properly and i almost ruined the model when attachiong them. Everything turned out quite good and I only had to rebuild one of the brackets from scratch. I'll use an AM solution here as well when building another King Tiger (or any other German vehicle with those thick cables)
- Assembling the bent engine grills - They were wrinkled when I got the kit, so I had to straighten them out before even trying to bend them and glue them in place. Their fit was also horrible to make things worse: They were too big and the shape was completely off...
Everything else was pure joy and I think I have to get me another one of those kits (or the Tamiya King Tiger)!
I hope you like her...
Cheers, Clemens