GOING TO TOWN WITH A TIGER Academy/Minicraft's early Tiger I is am absolutely splendid kit which builds into an extremely detailed model. The whole hull and turret tops are detachable to show off that luscious interior, but the Korean designers did take a few short cuts so this article shows how to add the missing interior parts and correct some mistakes. I won't describe the basic building process - the instruction sheet is perfectly adequate for that. Starting with the hull floor , there should be longitudinal stiffeners along it. The real torsion bars go through slots in them, but the thickness of the plastic floor means that the bars touch it, This means that the lower parts of the stiffeners aren't needed, simplifying things considerably! They run along the whole hull bottom, but since the engine conceals everything under it you need not go beyond the firewall. You need two strips of plastic card 4mm high, the port one 100mm long and the starboard 110mm. Slot the firewall in place and draw a pencil line on the hull floor in line with the back of the recess in it; this is your rear end point for both stiffeners. Lay a strip on one side of the floor with its end against the line and mark where the centre of each torsion bar mounting point comes against it, then move it to the other side and mark it for those mounts. As you can see in my photographs, all that's needed is to cut the strips at the marked points to fit over the torsion bars. Make sure you keep track of where you need simple holes to fit over the bars and where the "slots" are, but the job is easy. Shape the front of the strips so that the port one stops short of the first bar and the starboard one goes over it to the lower hull front - also shown in my photos. My next step was to modify the torsion bars, by filing down the tapered end, and add bearings from 2mm wide sections of 5mm Plastruct tube. The lower parts of these needed to be cut away to match the shape of the bearings moulded onto the other ends of the bars, and then they were simply slipped onto the bars which were cemented into place and the stiffeners added. However, everyone makes mistakes and this was mine. After finishing this work I looked at it beside my reference photographs and was struck by a horrible thought: I believe Academy shows the bars the wrong way round in its instructions. The bearings moulded on the bars to go right against the hull side seem on second thoughts to be much too large for that position, and I think the tapered ends should go there. If you fit the bars the other way round, the large bearings are in the correct place and all you'll need to do is make larger holes in the stiffeners to fit over them, without the work of making new bearings. Learn from my mistake! There should really be transverse stiffeners as well, and additional short ones from the hull front to the driver's and radio operator's seats as well as transverse round bars for the controls at the front of the hull, but none of these are very visible so I left them out. See the photographs in the references quoted below if you want to add them to your model. I did some work to the engine next. As you may have seen in reviews of the kit, the air filters are too shallow. This seems to be because the kit designers misinterpreted the depth of the actual engine block and had to raise its mounts to clear the torsion bars, leaving insufficient room on top for accurate air cleaners. Since all you can see of the engine is its top, it's worth correcting this fault. Start by cutting 2mm from the bottom of each engine side and removing the mounts for the generator from it. Build the engine block without the filters, moving the separate generator and ancillaries up so they squash together as on the real engine. I emphasise that this is a "quick fix", not an accurised engine - if you want to build a diorama with the Tiger's engine removed you'll need to do more than I describe here and add a lot of extra detail inside the engine bay. Now add 2mm slices of 10mm Plastruct rod between the filter base and the top plates. I used a small pipe cutter to make shallow grooves round my tube, as a sawing guide - much easier than trying to cut squarely through a round tube! However, don't use a pipe cutter to cut right through the tube because its cutting wheel will leave a bevel on tube walls this thick. Add these sections between the filter base and the top plates. The engine's too tall now, so the engine deck won't fit unless you trim the bases of the engine mounts. Dry fit it in the hull to see how much to remove. The radiator bays need a little attention as well. Cut away the locating ribs where the firewall and enginebay sides join so that the fuel tanks can fit flat against the firewall - there should be a small gap between them and the radiators. Make up both radiators and try the fan units against them - you'll see that the fans don't fit flush as they should because the radiator rears are fully detailed. This is super if you're building a model with fans stripped out for servicing, but if you aren't just file the rear faces of the radiators flat so the fans fit properly against them. Add a strip of plastic card under the inboard side of each radiator front, to level the sponson floor here where the bay sides have been moulded a little too deep. When you fit the radiators remember that they're vertical, not perpendicular to the sloping sponson floor. The radiator pipework is supplied as far as the side af the bay, but the parts which lead down beside the engine are missing. They're simple to add with bent rod or tube, and do improve the appearance of the engine bay. All these pipes were metal with rubber flexible connecting hoses. Moving back to the fighting compartment, the lower side ammunition lockers need correction. The aft ones should actually be the same length as the forward ones - you'd never get an 88mm round in those short lockers! It's a simple scratch-building job to make duplicates of the forward lockers with 0.5mm plastic card; take careful measurements, use internal formers to set the shape and put a skin over it The moulded location lines will need to be removed to allow for their greater length, of course, but the real lockers were mounted lower than in the kit so that the doors of the sponson bins could open over them. Cut the lower backs of all four lockers so they can fit over the kit locating points but lower down - they fit parallel to the hull floor with the aft top corner of the rear locker at the edge of the sponson itself. While you're at it, cut the end lip off the floor locations on the forward lockers so you can slide the floor section into place later. You can now finish off the hull floor by adding the kit parts. A few minor points need to be altered, though. First, note that the battery boxes are a bit under-sized; move them forward a bit to compensate for this, the port one a little more than the starboard one so they'e staggered, and fix them with their outer sides against the longitudinal stiffeners. You'll need to trim their bases to allow this move. The alternative is to simply build new ones, about 17mm by 10mm, but it sems a pity to lose all the detail of the moulded batteries under their detachable lids so I accepted the size discrepancy. Next you'll need to alter the starboard shock absorber. Academy has moulded this to fit in the same way as the port one, raked to the rear. The real thing is connected to the first torsion bar and fits close to the internal brake housing, sloping slightly forward. Cut off its base connection and fix this to the torsion bar, then add the shock absorber as shown in my photograph. There will be a gap, but this is hidden by the guard which was fitted to protect the radio operator's feet. Make this from .5mm plastic card; its rear is cut away to clear the adjacent torsion bar and its front top corner is cut at a diagonal. Now come the bins under the turret floor. The starboard one held 88mm rounds and the port one was for general stowage. To make each one start with a rectangle of .5mm plastic card 37mm by 13.5mm. The bins must fit between the side bins you built and the batteries on the hull floor, so adjust the width if necessary. Cut from one corner a section 8mm along the long side and 4.5mm along the short side. From the opposite corner cut a section 8mm along the long side and 8mm along the short side. Now cut a strip 7.5mm wide and use sections of it to build the sides of the bin; note that there is no central divider and the second bin is a mirror image of the first. As far as I can establish, neither bin had a lid, so the shells will be visible inside the starboard one and you'll need to stow some tools or crew kit in the other. I made the lower layer of three shells by shortening some from the useful Verlinden Super Value set 1101 (intended for Tiger IIs which used a longer shell). Fit retaining straps over both layers of shells. These new bins go against the side lockers, their rear edges over the third torsion bar from the firewall. Now for the last job on the hull floor. The Tiger had centralised lubrication, with the pipes leading to four plates which were painted bright red. They fitted on pillars each end of the bins under the turret floor and, being bright red, are noticeable when you remove the turret so it's worth adding them from 7mm by 3mm scraps of plastic card. The real detail enthusiast can add the lubrication nipples to them as well - I didn't bother. You can now slide the false floor sections into place, but first drill out the round dimples in them which represent the real Tiger's finger holes to allow the plates to be lifted for access. You may have seen comments in reviews of this kit that only three shells fit in each sponson bin though there should be four. The reason is simple - the rack walls should be much closer to the edges of the sponsons. The kit designers have also left out the central hull brace which should appear in the middle of each sponson, so some simple changes and additions will make quite a difference to the model. Start by cutting a strip of plastic card 14mm wide (mine are 15mm which turned out a little too wide) which will make the missing ends of the bins and also put the walls in the correct place. Cut pieces from this strip to match the height of the bin wall at each end, plus two pieces for the centre of each bin. Cut eight 2.5mm pieces from the strip as well to make the actual racks, which can be fitted at the kit locating points. Cement the four end pieces to the walls, and then the walls into the hull, centrally between the firewal and the locations for the roof support arch. Now trim the centre "ends" to fit over the locating points for the kit shell racks and cement them in place, with a strip of plastic card between each pair to represent the tops of the central hull braces. Add the 2.5mm pieces in place of the kit shell racks, then shape strips to fill the gaps at each end of the bins - the real Tiger had dust covers here. To complete the work, make the sections of the central braces which show in the fighting compartment by cutting plastic card to the shape seen in my photographs. They are T-sectioned, so add a strip of thin plastic card along each for the top of the T. Don't make them too deep, the turret floor must go past them when you fit the turret! OK, back to the driving compartment. The upper front plate needs modification, as the braces moulded onto it are in the wrong places. The real ones were extensions of the lower hull sides, so cut the moulded braces away from the plate and fix them right on the edges of the sponson. Assemble the two parts of the front plate and dry-fit it to the hull to check the fit of the braces - I had to trim their bottoms to get the fronts at the correct angle to meet the front plate. When they're dry, and you've smoothed their joints, add a grab handle to each one. To finish off, fix a plastic card plate over the starboard opening of the roof support arch - this was a backplate for the machine gun ammo bags. Next month I'll show you what needs to be done to the turret. Meanwhile, a note about painting. There's a lot of controversy about German tank interior colours, and my notes are based on examination of paint which had had 50 years' worth of potential chemical changes even though not exposed to light so aren't the last word on the subject. However, I find that Humbrol 108, 87 and 70 are reasonable out-of-the-tin matches for the likely original colours of the interior cream, lower hull grey and red primer which I've seen. The grey is a particularly hard colour to pin down, some surviving samples being bluish and others greenish, so other shades are usable. Contemporary photographs show that most Tiger engines were painted a satin black all over - the photos of multi-coloured ones seem to show engines specially painted for exhibition. The air filters were also black, not cream as on other tanks. Shell cases were brass, with black heads for armour-piercing shells and green for high explosive. PHOTO CAPTIONS 1. Modifying the torsion bars. From left to right the unaltered bar, a bar after modification, the two stages of cutting the bearings, and a completed bar. 2. The hull stiffeners. Note the different lengths - the port one ends short of the first torsion bar. 3. The stiffeners and bearings fit like this. 4. The starboard side of the hull floor with the new ammo bins in place and the altered shock absorber. 5. This overhead shot of the hull floor shows the staggered batteries and the shell bins under the turret floor. 6. Seats added and engine and radiator bays fitted out. Note the red tops of the lubrication points and the repositioned front plate braces. 7. Here are the needed modifications to the sponson ammo bins - central hull brace, bin ends, and new racks. 8. This is the profile of the central hull brace; be careful not to make it too wide so it projects over the turret floor. 9. The roof support arch needs a plate to starboard. It can be left detachable to make adding the stowage easier. 10. Looking into the driver's area with the rof support arch removed. 11. A closeup of the instrument panel. 12. And one of the radio. 13. Note the colours of the firewall details. 14. The hull interior is now basically complete, just needing the machine gun ammo bags and extra stowage given in the kit plus some small extras.