This is just incredible work. I've always built straight out of the box too, but mostly because I've just never known where to start. Actually, that's the main reason I joined the forums here. Can't wait to see further progress on this model. 

Tojo72

Your attention to detail is outstanding,takes a lot of patience to achieve that level of weathering.

 As a hobby, I do this when I have nothing else to do.

  Actually it's not as much about patience as it is about taking my time. Good detail comes with learning patience and patience is a big part of this hobby - it's just a hobby to me (including the smileys and the formatting), I'm not inclined to crank out models to fill the house with, but models to attract interest and inspire creativity in others also.
 Why knock out so so models when you can put all that effort in to one serious composition. At todays prices, it seems wasteful to hurry a model just to get it done.

               Thanks again Tojo!

                           AND.......

I'll eventually be taking it up to the next level with - -

 

                  "The Phantom Tiger"

                                  

...........  but it's not what you think it's gon'na be either.

                   
 And I'll be adding a lot 'ta more details and creativity for y'all guys to review. 

          break's over...........  back on muh head

                           (punch line from an old joke)

                                       

I gotta say the work you put into your post graphics is as amazing as your building skills. Just excellent.

modelcrazy

Wow DM, I can just feel the cold hard steel.

Modelcrazy,

Just wait 'til the next update.   

Lovely work DM. Thats a great looking texture and really nice attention to detail.

Love that beautiful worn rusted look. I've got to try for something like that someday... 

Kudos sir! 

Wow DM, I can just feel the cold hard steel.

                       

         OK folks, here's where the hull presently sits    
                                    
             (heh, heh .....it "wuz" sittin' on my desk)
                  
                                            Couldn't help it.

 After some thought on the subject, (considering the shortage of paint stocks near the end of the war) I decided to go with a worn and faded panzer grey, but it's going to be an interesting grey.

    
There's still some more refinement and details needed in the painting and features department. 



Gott'a work on that flippin' intake screen and re-attach a handle that popped off.




Overhead view without the fenders........

Still have to correct the drivers vision port (should'a done that earlier) and  tone down those shell dings.......

                                                      





Hang on. This is gonn'a be a ruff lookin' ride.

 A bit more weathering ahead.





         ⬇This fits over the exhaust above ⬆ (that taped up area) in front of the rear track hangers.

Remember that sanded pie pan frame?

                               Lookee           

                         ⬇
After a bit more modification and a bit of creative painting....
I got me a roughly used exhaust/grenade screen......  
                             ta DAAAAAAA..

                                              




                                                                                                                                                                                                      
                                  Well, that's it for today.

                                                                                                                                                                              

feldgrau23

Holy Cow!!!!!!  What detail!!! Amazing work Disaster!!!

  Well feldgrau.........  Thank you!


                                     
 More like Holy Snail at my present rate of progress.
                                             

               Something new coming up soon.
                                           

                                                                        

Gamera

Yeah, the tools look great and clever idea on the notek light.

 

Thanks  Gamera,

 Everything I do here is "old school" using  creative thinking, instead of buying into all that "done it for you" stuff that only gets you the same results.
                                                                             

disastermaster

 

Bish

 

 

  Thanks for putting that one up Bish......   I'd seen it long ago and didn't add it to my picture inventory.

                  I'll surely hang on tothat one this time!

 I can certainly see how the term "rubber-rimmed" could confuse people and lead them to believe that rubber-rimmed would refer to the actual contact area of the track/wheel surfaces....  where else would one logically think it would be?
 That dissected road wheel is just the thing to clear up the mistaken placement of the "rubber ring bushings" or "inner rubber ring" on the steel road wheels used on German heavy tanks.

 
 Also, thanks for your appreciation of my efforts Bish.
                                                                                                                                     
                                                                                                                        

 

No problem DM. I think i did take a pic of that wheel myself the first time i went. But i have lost all my pics since then, real downer. I need to try and get back there at some point.

I can't say i have ever heard those wheels reffere to as rubber rimmed, but i can see how it can cause confusion.

Holy Cow!!!!!!  What detail!!! Amazing work Disaster!!!!

Bish

  Thanks for putting that one up Bish......   I'd seen it long ago and didn't add it to my picture inventory.

                  I'll surely hang on tothat one this time!

 I can certainly see how the term "rubber-rimmed" could confuse people and lead them to believe that rubber-rimmed would refer to the actual contact area of the track/wheel surfaces....  where else would one logically think it would be?
 That dissected road wheel is just the thing to clear up the mistaken placement of the "rubber ring bushings" or "inner rubber ring" on the steel road wheels used on German heavy tanks.

 
 Also, thanks for your appreciation of my efforts Bish.
                                                                                                                                     
                                                                                                                        

Yeah, the tools look great and clever idea on the notek light.

DM, great couple of posts there. The info about the road wheels is great, really nice stuff. I was reading it and remembere going to Bovington tank museum some years ago and seeing the Tiger II which had a disected road wheel next to it. I managed to find an image online and you can see the rubber inside.

And i live the finish on the tools, some stunning work. I have used clear sprue before for the light, but not though of useing one of those. Might try that on the E-100

Great posts, thank you.

armourguy

She's coming out real nice. Just wanted to ask out that the road wheels. On the Porsche series I know that they were rubber rimmed, I have seen and touched the ones on the APG elephant and they are very thin rubber that is secured by being sandwiched in place by the preforated faceplate that is bolted to the wheel hub. I see lots of people on the net painting them as steel, was there a steel variant of this wheel developed?

                                               
                            Armorguy !           

                                                   

  Well, I couldn't sleep so I thought I'd stay up a while & put some information

together for this morning's perusal.                                

                         

 
  Glad to know that such a highly skilled and talented forum member appreciates what I'm working on.

Thank you for your observations.
                      

Your projects make me think my bulgingeyes need bra support.
                                      
 
 I've got a visionfor this project and a story line to make it kind'a interesting before I eventually bring it to a
conclusion.    

                    
        
But that's a long ways off yet.
There'll be some stuff here to go along with this tank build that you wouldn't expect  to show up .............
                    
            Hope'ya enjoy it.

So,in regards to your question  "was there a steel variant of this wheel?"

      
              Take a big breath   
                      We're gonn'a go deep                                                             
                                                                    
                                                                       

  Well, here's some old dirt I'd dug up.... 

      

.........glad to be able to share here and help out.
 

 First, the obvious history

 The Elefant was a Germantank hunter originally built as the “Ferdinand” in honor of its designer, Ferdinand Porsche. The design evolved from cruder, improvised designs of 1941-42, as well as the later (but problem-ridden) Marder designs. Porsche created the chassis from the 90 Porsche
Tiger I models already built complete with new tracks and an all-steel wheel arrangement.

The following starts on page four at ( I never know if the direct linking will work properly on this forum like it used to, so you'll probably have to copy and paste it):

www.scribd.com/doc/226704523/Ferdinand-Elefant-1-pdf

   The Porsche entry for the VK4501 was called Type  101 or SonderfahrzeugII at the factory, but the electrifying effect of the Leopard name given to their previous tank inspired the christening of the new one with another predatory feline name, the "Tiger".

 The Leopard was similar to the porsche Tiger in some technical details, but its road wheels were rubber rimmed, of increased diameter and the return rollers were deleted. To economize on copper (but mostly to counter balance the heavy turret) the drive sprockets andtheir electric motors on the Porsche Tiger were relocated to the rear of the hull. Without this change, the center of balance would have been too far forward. The Porsche suspension was still insufficiently developed and simply unsuitable for such a heavy vehicle. Six road wheels on widely spaced bogies made the ground pressure (already much higher than the Henschel interlocking wheels layout) vary along the length of the track, resulting in the tank bogging in the soft ground. However, the VK4501 (P) was still suspended with the revolutionary Porsche longitudinal torsion bar system, resulting in constant breaking of the bars under field conditions.

 

 The Tigers' weight made their repair extremely difficult. Despite the relocation of the drive sprocket to the rear, the front sprocket still carried teeth and was nearly identical to the rear one. The purpose of such an arrangement was to facilitate the adjustment of the slack track (the long length of which was hanging unsupported over the road wheels).


And so,  

 The friction of the hanging tracks guide teeth on the road wheels quickly wore out their rubber tires, so the road wheel design had to be changed. 

The new wheels had steel tires mounted on springs with rubber ring bushings-to some extent inspired by the similar construction of the Soviet all-steel wheels used on T-34 and KV tanks. These had much more service life in them, at the same time reducing the need for rubber which was already in very short supply.Rubber conserving road wheels were frequently used on various later models of German tanks. This was about the only feature of the Porsche tank that saw any wide distribution during the war.

And having said all that..........DON"T SHOOT!
...........And after some more digging



  Here's this old post from over 11  years ago pertaining to this subject.

  All of the Elefant/Ferdinand, etc. road wheels are steel rimmed. Same as the King Tiger, and late Tiger I, etc.
All these wheels DO have an inner rubber ring (they're called resilient steel wheels) and are based on the wheels
used on the Russian KV-1.

  Any book on the Elefant will describe the steel wheels and will have clear photos. You can tell a thick rubber
tire (like the Panzer IV - as shown) from a thin metal rim fairly easily.



  I've been doing research on the VK45.02(P) project long before the kit I'm working on came out.

 So respectfully, I can't dispute what you actually experienced with a hands-on encounter with, but I have to wonder if possibly what you saw/touched might possibly be some kind of protective coating applied to the wheels to help preserve them. Sometimes those restoration projects aren't quite accurate.

  It seems that such a thin rubber layer applied to the load bearing surface of a wheel constantly in contact with
that all steel track surface would wear out rather quickly.


  In the picture below you can see a metallic sheen on the thin edges of the road wheels.....  and the shine
matches the shine on the high parts of the tracks and track guides, although the shine on the forward drive sprocket hub looks more to me like shiny new paint.
                       ↓


And in another example; the track horns, front drive sprocket teeth and that metallic shine on the front inner road wheel.
Notice that shiny road wheel is an inner wheel close to the hull and is in the darkest location facing away from the sun, yet it's shiny - metallic looking.
                  ↓
                                            
 Here again, the last two inner road wheels on the right and matching wear on the front sprocket.
               ↓


 This picture pretty much clears it up.

These wheels are definitely steel rimmed.
              ↓


 With the chassis from the 90 Porsche Tiger I models already built with new tracks and an all-steel wheel arrangement it would seem that the example at Aberdeen was in some way or another unique in itself.

 Although a different wheel, these steel rimmed tiger wheels would look to be rubber, but we all know they weren't.
               ↓

Well, whadda'ya think?
Hope I covered all the points here. I'm wore out.

 I know it's a lot of reading but I maybe it helps clear up any confusion.
                                
      
Alright, now I gott'a get back to bed.        
                                                                                                                                       

Tojo72

Your attention to detail is outstanding 

☑Mr. TOJO...........

Your appreciation for the finer details of armor are welcome here.
 

I know you'll just love where all this is eventually headed........     

                            Yeeee Hawwww
                                                                
                                                

Bish

Well, not sure how i missed this one, clearly not been paying attention. Some lovely work tehre and great informative posts.

Mr. Bish.
 Sorry I got back to you so late but I've been about town today..... 
went to the gym and out for a bite. A bit of conversation with friends ....... and later tonight, off to our local model meeting.
                                             

I still need to do a bit of work on this project before bedtime.
Stay focused here 'cause there's lots more to come.

                                                   

She's coming out real nice. Just wanted to ask out that the road wheels. On the Porsche series I know that they were rubber rimmed, I have seen and touched the ones on the APG elephant and they are very thin rubber that is secured by being sandwiched in place by the preforated faceplate that is bolted to the wheel hub. I see lots of people on the net painting them as steel, was there a steel variant of this wheel developed?

Your attention to detail is outstanding 

SprueOne

Looking totally Metallic, Brah 

Thank 'ya sprue, looks like I made all the right moves there.

Gonn'a look killer on those track hangers.
   Sorry for the late reply, been busy.
                                     

Well, not sure how i missed this one, clearly not been paying attention. Some lovely work tehre and great informative posts.

That must have been some time ago, but I'm glad you put them to use. 

Ahhh, thanks DM! When you remarked about drilling them out I just assumed they were Fruils-my mistake! 

Still, the comment still stands- they look fantastic! 

Gamera

A little out of my price range but geeeze those metal track links are lovely! 

            Whoa there, Pod'na
 Believe me....... youCAN  afford 'em.

 I put out a post/request a while back here titled "Cleats".Those are just a few extra plastic kit tracks from an Elephant or a Ferdinand that Eric (Tigerman)

volunteered to send to me for this project.

 The connecting pins are made from stretched sprue.

 I thank you for your most flattering comment about them.
                           
 
 Everyone is different, but if you can make tracks convincing, then why would you spend enough to buy another kit - just to buy fruils?
                                                                  
It's what I DID to them that makes 'em look like that.

    I been doing this a long, long time now.

                                                   

Looking totally Metallic, Brah  

A little out of my price range but geeeze those metal track links are lovely!