I’m building a Dragon King Tiger. I’m trying to deceide if hand painting of spraying the camo will look more accurate. The tank I’m building is this 
What do you guys think will look more accurate? Any tips? Thanks.
Geist
Spraying will give you a more realistic and clean look. A much thinner application and you can even fade the camo. Spray whenever possible. My [2c]
Thanks. I was leaning towards spraying. I’m pretty new to spraying though(my dad used to spray for me) and I want to teach myself more about it. What’s the best method to masking off the tank with this camo scheme? Cotten balls, tape etc.? Also how do I get a thin coat like in the picture? Thanks a lot.
Geist
low tac tape is good, i use it for my rattle cans, if you ar not going with lines try silly putty, you said you were going with lines right? i forgot last time you showed me
for camo like that i think silly puddy or playdough works best… just make thin retangular pieces and lay it on, then use a knife to cut shapes… or you can do it on a table without putting it on the tank first.
if this is your frist time spray i’d get some practice in on maybe a scrap model or the like… it’s a King Tiger afterall. [tup]
Goodluck!
I’ve got an old Grant I was going to practice on. I’s rather not screw it up. For some reason my dad told me not to use silly putty and use cotten balls instead. Silly putty seems like it would be more accurate to me.
Geist
Brush painting is best done with paint thinned down to about 50-60%, and then in multiple layers to build up the color. On zimmerit, that’s gonna be awful hard to control the thinned paint. It will wind up running down the grooves by capillary action.
Silly putty or playdough masks are the way to go—but I think that these KT’s were sprayed-on to begin with?
The paint running on the zimmerit would be a problem but my kit doesn’t have it. It’s my only complaint about this Dragon kit.
I’ve decided on using silly putty to mask it. I just finished masking the turret. I’ll post some pics of it finished.
Geist
All the Porsche King Tigers had zimmerit…how are you planing on applying it?
Just wondering.
This Dragon kit doesn’t have any unfourtunatly. I don’t have any extra money to get any either. I’m just building the kit straight out of the box with the exception of a metal gun barrel that my friend Spectre gave me.
Best is to spray freehand. If you are not comfortable with airbrush and freehand yet. I suggest you draw a line on the model to mark for which camo you are going to spray.
Spray the camo until you got the color right. To thin it down, you can do this by spray thin base color over the camo.
Ben
I posted a cheap way to apply Zimmerit a few weeks ago that I applied to a Tiger I using Squadron Green Putty and the cap as a roller applicator…I just bought a new tube of the Squadron putty and they changed the cap a little so I still use the older ones for Tigers and such but I’m sure you can find a suitable roller from a simmilar source. Its not easy and its time consuming and you have to have alot of patience but it works and is not expensive.
The thread is listed a few pages back in the Armor Forum under the title “Zimmerit”.
Yeah, I would wait til the next paycheck comes in and at least spring for a 3.00 tube of putty and a razor saw! A Porsche KT without zimmerit is like the “butterface” of the Panzer world![sigh]
…unless you want to go for this:
WOW!..thats one PURDY PORSCHE![:P]
Yeah, but I hear the gas mileage sucks. [(-D]
Yeah…no doubt…what was it? …about 2.5 gallons per mile or worse? LOL![?]
Yes, if you want to do a Porsche turret kingtiger without zimmerit you can go for either chassis # V1 or V2, V2 is the one shown here, however you would have to make some changes to the kit.
There are ways of applying your own zimmerit, try and have a look at this site, it will tell you alot about zimmerit. http://www.track-link.net/articles/1
My vote is spray for the early (Sometimes misnamed “Porsche” Tiger 2).
Good luck with your project.
Steve
Hey guys,
I get the impression that our friend Giest here is looking to do an OOB build except for the barrel, and may not want to do the whole Zimmerit thing.
Geist, all the King Tigers (all the ones that went into action, anyway) had Zimmerit. However, some very good modelers have done King Tigers without it. If I’m not mistaken, Cookie Sewell once built a KT without Zimmerit, and of course Francois Verlinden was famous for building the old Italeri offerings, never including Zimmerit - and they looked good. So in my opinion, it’s perfectly cool to build one without it.
If you do decide to Zimm up your KT, there are folks on this forum who can show you how to do it on the cheap. It takes some practice, though - I’m not very good at it.