At a Henschel factory in **REDACTED**

The turret

My tiger's turret started finding its shape by its deck. A couple of simple bits were installed on it (the exhaust vent, the gunner's cupola and the gunner's hatch). The sides of the turret consisted of a single complicatedly shaped piece, that was fascinating to say the least and ended up looking pretty weird on the first attempt. As soon as I attached the rear box, the curvature settled in and the top of the turret locked it properly. That lower rim was what it was and I knew that it'd take its proper shape only when the turret was locked onto the deck so I didn't bother fooling with it at all.

88KwK36

The cannon and its attaching was its own funny project! Somewhat surprisingly the solid barrel was just left floating freely into the first box, that was in turn tightly attached to the next box. And this kept the visible part of the cannon nicely and snugly in place.

It's always ridiculously complicated to take any photos of these, as the bits reflect the lights so that the cell phone camera just cannot grab a hold of anything. And no, I'm not going to take WIP images with the big camera.

The hull

Wisened up by a number of MEM sets I didn't follow the instruction's guidance of folding the hull at angles at this point. Instead I attached all the cables, cones, hatches and the radio operator's MG first. This way I had plenty of space to play with the attachment pieces as the walls were politely out of my way.

The cat's exhaust pipes were amusing. First I thought that the bits were to be bent 90° each and then connect together. Luckily I managed to revert my changes and the Auspuffröhr ended up nice. With both then done (again, the second one without stupid ideas) were then attached pretty damn tightly into the back armour and then the familiar roundish covers were sworn into place. I guess I could've left those off, but the metallic x's would've looked a bit goofy on their own.

It was a pretty pretty thing already, before the almost insane-looking road wheel setup. Just by looking at the instructions, they didn't look that bad, just a bit bothersome.

Roadwheels and tracks

I

Oh my. This was in a league of its own. I started by rolling up the cylinder for the idler wheel and then I attached it into the side plate. Next I fought the idler wheel's faceplate on that one. That was a fight indeed, as making these bits roundish wasn't too easy, as I've always complained, and then working on top of those was a bit complicated. As you could see in the photo, that the idler wasn't straight and flat anymore, after the forceful installation.

With the first important piece done I proceeded to roll up the four road wheel cylinders and to attach them to the side plate. After those I finished that up with the final road wheel's and the drive sprocket's axle cylinders. It got pretty tight in the end.

Now I had a bit of a moment, as the instructions were a bit ambiguous. I practically followed the principles of Flipism and started with the discs of the outmost roadwheels, then attach those to the faces of the innermost roadwheels and then slam the results onto the axles. That was my expected outcome, at least.

Before the final step the whole roadwheel setup looked a bit like the olympic rings and I really had to be careful with the directions of all the pieces. Otherwise they wouldn't have aligned with the attachment bits of the axles.

After about ten minutes of bending, twisting, rotating, forcing, sweating, light and gentle swearing and almost as gentle violence and such things the subassembly was secured in place. It was also a very healthy moment to call it quits for that evening. That had been awful, but luckily I was already halfway done.

II & III

Before I did anything else I attached the final wheel face on the previous setup. As you'd see in the photo, I had not had the time to add it with all the fighting with the roadwheels.

Wisened up, I built the right side in a slightly different order: first I attached all the cylinders. Then I attached the rims of the outer road wheels on the still unattached faceplates of the inner roadwheels and then fought this line of circles onto the axles. My idea was that this'd make it a bit easier as there was less stuff on the way.

I had been correct, it was easier that way. When that part was done the rest was like eating candy. Snap, snap, snap, I pressed the missing pieces on and bent the attachment pieces tightly shut. No, I'm not going to say it wasn't bothersome and complicated, but noticeably easier nonetheless.

Tiger's tracks consisted of two strips per side, both with two or four sideways-facing attachment pieces for the hull part. This way they couldn't have been installed in a wrong way or to the wrong hull piece.

My first track-part connection didn't end up looking too pretty, despite my attempts of tweaking them afterwards. The first one went how it went, the second one I tried to roll to a rounder shape with the assistance of a ball-point pen, but neither really looked better or worse than the other one.

What remained

At this point I was left with two untouched pieces and the final joining of the sides with the rest of the tiger. I followed the (again somewhat ambigous, in my honest opinion) instructions and attached the front glacis plate over the front lip of the hull, after a good long staring at the imagery. In the end that was the correct choice, luckily.

Next there was little left, I just attached the side parts to the hull and while doing that I also bent the hull into its correct, final shape. The bottom armour of the tank was the final piece, it also settled in relatively nicely, the only issues came from the corkscrew-tightened attachment parts of the roadwheel axles because they protruded quite a bit as opposed to the bent ones. Should've thought of that earlier, but again I had just followed ord... the instructions. With a bit of working and swearing it all worked out in the end.

Project III/18

A birthday Tiger

To celebrate the beginning of my latest circle around the Sun I was gifted with, among other things, the Metal Earth Models model of a Tiger. It was the first one of this brand that didn't depict something from a Galaxy Far, Far away. Funny, hm?

As soon as I had the previous metallic models done, I felt like proceeding on the same track. The package contained a ridiculously tinily printed single-page instruction sheet. I had to say that the larger font and image size on the more modern kits have been much more pleasant to stare at.

Based on a quick glance the set looked maybe deceivingly simple, even. As a good surprise tome was that the 8.8cm KwK 36 was a separate, solid metal piece instead of a rollable piece of this thin metal sheet like before. If nothing else, it was going to be noticeably prettier this way.

Finished: Project II/18

Boba Fett's vehicle

Mumblings

In my assembly mumblage I did rant about how incredibly long building this vessel took. The main reason for that were the numerous curved - and at that point unsupported (unlocked) - surfaces. Compared to the Falcon's less than two hours this one consumed almost five hours.

A few of the pieces felt like they'd break any moment while bending and/or installing them. The long-cursed dish was something that got its attachment bits (or the targets) apparently bent so out of shape that they couldn't be used, since I guess I had them misaligned on my first attempt. Whatever was ruined wasn't salvageable with my skills, this time.

Slave I

The legendary bounty hunter Boba Fett inherited Slave I, a Firespray-31 class patrol and attack craft from his suddendly and surprisingly deceased father figure. According to the old stories these ships were used by some planetary police forces, in the times before the mass-invalidation of the Extended Universe, and I haven't bothered to keep myself up to date on the new timeline.

In this model none of the sneakily hidden features and extra weapons were displayeed (some of the hatches/doors were there, for whoever recognized them), only the lower hull's twin blaster cannons were there to be seen. In case my memory served, the normal variant had laser guns instead, but looks-wise I didn't think it made much difference.

Imagery

Below's the traditional set of eight spin-around images. I almost got my balding head reflected in the canopy of the first photo, but luckily for all of us I ducked before taking the photo. Seems like I should take a full encirclement with A4 approach for these shiny models instead of just below and behind. Now the reflections ended up containing the assistant 2's chair, my fingers and who knew what else that really had no business in being there.

To wrap things up here's a couple of extra photos. The point of the middle one was mostly to show the otherwise less visible details of the inside of the handle-shape. Sadly the wings could not be rotated for a "landed" pose and some appropriate quotes.

Another visit to some Kuat space docks

The first 45 minutes

I somehow assumed that you, the reader, might find it amusing that it took me that long to get finished what you'd see in the two photos below. Something like twenty minutes went to bending the main hull into shape, especially that "chin plate". That's the bit in front of and below the viewport when the ship's landed and above the pilot's head when it's flying. The instruction sheet's "just bend it by hand" didn't really help much and somehow I had positioned myself so that the lights were continuously reflecting into my eyes. Getting anything aligned was bothersome.

That same silliness went on while I was working on the twin blaster cannons. Their rotation/aiming piece was easy, getting the cannons on that was still ok but oh my, getting that subassembly into the airframe.. that took some swearing. Again, the first one required much more work than the second copy.

All in all, this small amount of stuff took a ludicrous amount of time. And here I had thought that out of the two 'wars vessels this was the easier one!

The second round

This was ridiculous. Six (6) pieces that were to be installed flatly against the hull took a sick amount of time. The reason was that the airframe was curved and getting straight plates on it was more complicated than it sounded like, as the connectors just didn't align with the traditional "turn them 90 degrees and that's it" technique.

Luckily I got to start the first wing-rotating bit after these armour plates. Of course I then had to stop working just before I could proceed to the half-circle-shaped armour plate's twisting, turning and installation phase.

And third...

Getting that arced shape into proper form and then installing it was complicated. Again I had learned from the first one and the sequel went easier and with less head-scratching. Still it took about half an hour and I was about to break some bits while re-rebending them.

Here was the easiest piece so far: the Z-like shape that forced the main hull into its actual shape. After this I got to attack the cup-shaped bottom piece and while working on it I totally forgot to take wip pics.

The "best" part was that the parts that were supposed to lock the cuplike piece into itself just didn't fit together (either the slits were bent out of shape or the tongues were, something just didn't work like it was supposed to) and I decided to give up on them before I actually broke or bent something into unfixability. Maybe sillily I trusted that the decorative pieces hiding the seams were going to be enough to hold it all together.

Fourth session

I started by sealing the cup's front part with that extra armour piece. The grimacing was quite ugly, but there was nothing I could do with the actual attachment bits being totally useless.

Luckily the hull was installed in a way that hid the stupid gaps complately! I was actually surprised that this part went with so few curses.

These double cones weren't nozzles for the main drive but repulsor generators. They were still there to move the ship around, so for a non-fanatic this was assumedly a non-issue, if even that much.

The fifth and final element

After a couple of weeks of not working on the model I continued with the bottom disc. There were many greebly bits and they were all fascinatingly shaped, but still easy to install so the progress was pleasantly rapid.

Getting the last subassemblies together was (again) hair-greying fun, but as soon as I had the bottom disc locked into the cup-shaped skirt, I could bend the wing's top supports into the main ones and that gave the hull noticeably more stability. Those square-shaped bits were just a bit tight for twisting the attachment bits, but still I got them turned enough.

Slave I's display base was confusingly small considering the size of the rest of this model, I even had to bend the leg a bit backwards to get the setup to stay upright. Then I proceeded to work on the final bits - the wings.

Dear me, how complicated those buggers were! Getting the wing installed into the support bar was also a struggle of a kind, but it all worked out in the end. And as usual, the first one taught me how to do it all so the second one almost flew into place.

I wasn't sure if it was because of the angles of the photos or my own weirdness, but somehow, looking at the model in these pics, I got a strange asymmetrical feeling. Unbalanced.

Project II/18

Some company for the Falcon

Fittingly as the Falcon had taken flight the next model in the queue was a ship that belonged to a bounty hunter, who had worked for the good guys as well. A ship that was legendary and just so incredibly cool. I remember, when I was a kid and beyond excited during those few moments when Boba Fett or Slave I were on screen, preferably making sounds as well. This applies to the Empire Strikes Back, that is.

The instructions were of a much larger font and image sizes than I was used to (that was nice, doubly larger pics felt clearer) and were spread out on eight pages. In english: two two-sided pieces of paper.

Somehow the pieces engraved onto the plates were even a bit disturbingly complicated and it felt there were awfully many of them this time. Even though it was in the same ballpark as on all the other MEM kits, but if you thought of the shape of the ship, there was going to be an amount of greeblies.