1/72 King Tiger Restorations

In late October 2004 I started work on correcting my ESCI 1/72 Tiger II's, and Jagdtiger model. ESCI's Tiger II (recently rereleased by Italeri) and Jagdtiger are still fairly decent kits, but there are some detail mistakes that can be corrected. Some of the main corrections I have chosen to undertake are:

Tiger II Hull

- remove antenna mount from middle rear position to correct location (between right side grilles, near edge of hull)

-fill in resultant hole and place a small disc of styrene (5/16") over it. This is the plug that was bolted over the hole in/around 09.44 for the deep wading equipment discontinued after June 44. Prior to 09.44 this hole was covered with a wire mesh screen.

-build up rear mudguards out of styrene to be attached to the rear plate

Suspension:

The drive sprockets have too many teeth for the production version of Tiger II. There are 18, there should only be 9. I cut off every other sprocket tooth to correct this. Also, the ESCI kit suspension uses double thick road wheels, where there should be 2 thin roadwheels per axle. I left mine alone, as I would like to finish this project in this lifetime. But I suppose the illusion of double roadwheels could be created by cutting a split into the each roadwheel.

Tiger II Turret

-carefully remove the Nahverteidungswaffe (mine projector/defense weapon) from incorrect position between the commander's and loader's hatches and move to forward right postion.

-carefully remove the small hatch directly behind the commander's hatch and move to center position. Some very fine styrene rod will need to be used to create the rain guard for this small hatch.

-add track mount brackets made from brass strip to turret sides (see Jagtiger). I cut peices about 3mm long from a strip 1.5mm wide, then bent them into hooks using two needle nose tweezers.