King Tiger

[mark lawson]

I belive that is the La Gleaze Tiger in the Ardennes. I also know of the flats you are talking about, in 2 weeks I will be at Bovington and will be more than happy to take detailed close ups of Tiger 104.

[Jerry Carducci]

Mark thanks for that! I could use a good photo or two of that hub cap please- the resilient steel production wheel's version not the Porsche suspension...
Also if you have a chance details of the rear mudguard's lock mechanism if it's there and if memory serves didn't the KT also have a latch of some sort for the front mudguard as well or was that the Panther that had it...?

Much obliged sir! I'll owe you lunch when I make it over there- hoping next year is the year!

Jerry

[mark lawson]

Gerry, as always I will deliver what you ask, if there are more pictures you need, ask.

[mark lawson]

Jerry, as always I will deliver what you ask, if there are more pictures you need, ask.

[Jerry Carducci]

Alrighty then... time to rant!

I want to be clear though- absolutely nothing to do with the King Tiger model Number 11!!

My hydraulic table, a Harbor Freight 'special'... has decided it has an aversion to hydraulic oil! It's had an ongoing issue of 'platform sink'
for about as long as I've had it and occasionally I'd see a drop or two on my garage floor. No great concern...

That is until this afternoon when returning from a lunch date I discovered my table along with my King Tiger had done it's best Titanic
impersonation and sank to the bottom of its travel gushing what I can only imagine is just about all the remaining hydraulic oil all over my garage floor....

Yes, before anyone reminds me I never rely on the integrity of the thing and put hands or feet under it but I have occasionally left the table
elevated, with or without anything on it- didn't matter it would sink always. But it's never gushed all its oil. Not having seen where it came from
I don't know if it was the fill plug that gave way or if it leaked from the piston/ram.... even more annoying as I don't know exactly what to fix...

Seeing thing I was really annoyed on so many levels... clean up, impact to my build schedule, just really is not what I wanted to have to deal with.

Many Harbor Freight tools are notorious for questionable quality; I'm sure every country has their very own discount tool supplier but on
the whole Ive actually had pretty good performance from their stuff. Leave it to this thing to break that track record in spectacular
fashion.

I imagine that in addition to building my King Tiger I'll also be learning how to fix a lift table hydraulic system. Of course I did not deign to purchase the 'extended warranty'....

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. And yes I used colorful language I've not used in many a year this afternoon...

Jerry

[Mark Heaps]

Taken today at the German tank museum

[Mark Heaps]

and

[Jerry Carducci]

Thanks Mark, these will help.

Jerry

[Jerry Carducci]

I continue to make progress on my King Tiger.

Spent about an hour yesterday adjusting the right side plate to suit. Challenged the capacity of my small mill and as always it's
all in 'fixturing' of in this case using the brute force approach using an old, crude (but effective!) angle vise to help maintain the angles
of the part worked on. For the crude 'hogging' operation this vice served however I'd never use it for anything requiring a higher degree of accuracy.

It was one of the few times I missed the full sized Bridgeport mill with that gorgeous 42 inch bed and power feed.. of course I don't miss the giant size and 1800 pound weight. My RS7 thanks me for not forcing it out into the cruel elements in deference to a lump of a machine tool......

As I'm waiting for some bits I need for other parts of the construction I've decided to skip around all over the manual. There's one more modification
I want to make to the lower hull before I finish, fix, pin and seal that assembly prior to priming. There's more fitting required to the basic turret shell and I'll get to that next. As it sits it is still relative loosely assembled. The turret's size and weight already impresses..

Onward!

[Jerry Carducci]

I have made some progress on the turret fitting and the lower hull. The lower hull and upper deck are now just about full fitted and all fasteners
are fixed with thread lock. As much as possible I have checked for squareness and plate position. I trimmed the upper deck plates just a little to make
for easier fitting; before I had to manhandle the hull side to get these to fit actually caused the sides to bow out slightly. Now with the modified
plates the sides are flat-parallel to a straight edge.

The turret shell is nearly complete; only fitting of the roof plates remain.

I was planning to add a few hard steel parallel pins to strengthen the hull assembly but I'm still weighing the benefits of this. I will decide at the time
I seal all the screws, screw holes and plate joints.

For trimming the roof plate I was able to use an extremely aggressive radial curved-tooth "shear" file. This big boy works best when used at a slight angle to the surface to be planed and run down the length of the plate. I didn't have enough room when preparing the lower hull and glacis plates to use this thing. It really removes a lot of material when it gets going and when used properly it leaves a surface on the aluminum to rival that of an end mill. VERY smooth and neat.

I'm also deciding how many of the modifications I had in mind for the road wheels I'll actually do. Ongoing discussion with myself... I never start out a project wanting to turn it into a 5 year project; yet out_of_the_box doesn't really always work for me...

Anyway there it is.

Jerry

[Jerry Carducci]

Made some progress on the King Tiger project. Basically preparing the lower hull with some simulated welds and sealing. I used a steel filled epoxy for welds and joint filler. I also placed 3 and 4mm hardened steel dowel pins at various points to strengthen the hull and concealed them pretty well. I used silcone rubber to seal various points of the hull but doing so one must rigorously guard against contaminating the larger surface as silicon is nearly undetectable as a thin layer and will wreak havoc with painting.

I primed the hull and put more or less one top coat to begin with. The inevitable touchup is required but I'll begin to assemble the basic running gear so the model can move under it's own power if needed. I elected to leave the area at the final drive units unpainted.

For some reason I have yet to determine I can't seem to upload photos. On my end my PC is recently rebuilt as my old machine failed however the image tools and my camera have not changed. The error I see on upload is "It was not possible to determine the dimensions of the image. Please verify that the URL you entered is correct." as these are from my PC I'm assuming that when I've resized it I somehow lost part of the image coded properties but not quite certain how... will investigate. Solved...

Jerry

[Jerry Carducci]

Attempting to 'pimp' the road wheels a bit.

I always try to keep in mind if I can't replicate the function exactly the final parts will always be an approximation of what is/was
really there. With that in mind I recognize these are a fairly decent approximation.

The nuts and bolts around the wheel hub for the retention of these steel wheels with the 3 semi circular clamps has always fascinated me.
I had originally planned to make these however other matters are limiting my focus on these, I have the metal rings from which I was to make
fake clamps but the laziness factor has taken a firm grip. Also, I've made a die to press out steel ( or aluminum) hubcaps but it's not 'there' yet so That is also a possibility.

So for the present I contented myself making long hex head screws with a more appropriate 3,5mm head, I could use on these wheels.

Progress, even slow progress is a good thing.

Jerry

[Jerry Carducci]

More progress and other tidbits on the model construction.

When I was mounting the side skirt mount points whnen I came to the rearmost it seemed not to have a threaded hole as did the other with which to mount it. Not wanting a screw to protrude through the back of the side plate I installed a 3mm helicoil in the hole so I could use one the the countersunk key head screws. It wasn't a perfect fit surely as the hole was a bit large but with some persistent adhesive I believe it should be ok.

After mounting the torsion bars, and associated components I mounted the road wheels, idler mechanism and idler wheels.

Next were the final drive units. I realize Armortek recommends against using grease on the gear train but I just can't get myself to do that. Due
to a potentially irregular surface caused by the interlocked plates in the area I opted to make and use a very thin gasket using a fibrous gasket material (automotive) intended for such environments. The material is .031" (.78mm) uncompressed and appears so far to seal well but time will determine how well. I was willing to accept that there is a gap now under the driven gear the thickness of the compressed gasket. My concession to strength led me away from wanting to use proportional hex head screws to attach the drive units in favor of the supplied stainless steel socket head caps. I don't like the look but I like the strength which is more important to me.

For the sprockets I opted to use steel sprocket rings made by Liam which arrived on Friday last. I cleaned them with some acetone, primed, spreayed the top coat and installed them the very day. They fit the sprockets perfectly and so far seem to engage the tracks perfectly as well. I used proportional 2,5mm nuts coupled with some of the (industrial??) head head screws purchased from Armortek some while back; not an ideal look but largely concealed by the busy nature of the area around the sprocket//track area.

Mounting the sprockets was stright forward and the tapered bushes after cleaning worked perfectly. I maintained the spacing at the prescribed 19mm from the lower hull wall.

Next was mounting the tracks as an initial trial. Used the motors to pull on the tracks; letting them do all the work. I raised up one side of the model at a time using my baby floor jack(!). My only issue was trying to avoid getting my hands skewered by the needle-like cotter pins. I had to fiddle with the idler position initially but eventully was able to get the final track pins in and secure.

I also have Liam's steel tracks for this model and at some point I'll give them a go.

When I get the model down from it's perch I'll try moving it around under it's own power. So far the FrSky x20HD system seems to have a good light touch allowing reasonablt precise control over the model but still I can see care in moving this big guy is the order of the day. I don't want it, my shop//house or me injured in the process!

On to other aspects of the model.

Jerry

[Jerry Carducci]

Sometimes one just can't put things down or one's toys back in the box...

Working on the turret, rear engine deck where I'm using hex head screws from MVD. Not sure why I enjoy building these decks so much but I recall
when I bought my first 1/10 scale Panther now 45+ years ago one of my first mods was to use functional bolts to fasten its deck together instead of gluing it together which was the makers intent.

One thing I did was to silver braze nuts onto the side brackets so I might be able to fasten the deck directly without having to fiddle with tiny nuts blindly.

The top deck seems to fit like a glove which is pleasant, although I don't believe I'll be able to use the frontal mount points.

After having to fuss with the one turret side plate the rest has gone together well. Not sure I wanted to fix the roof plates permanently for access
but I likely will once I setup the mechanical guts. The turret ring is huge and if I can't get to everything I need once assembled I need to reevaluate what I'm doing...

Lastly I couldn't resist a size comparison shot for friends who don't get the size of this 'toy tank'....

Jerry

[Chang]

Love the steel sprocket rings made by Liam Mahoney.
PM sent to Liam already.