1:16 Tiger I Early

The early version of the Tiger and its markings

The first Tigers built differed from the later examples more than it seems at first glance: they carried a cylindrical commander's cupola with vision slits, air cleaners on the sides of the hull with hoses led across the rear, and road wheels with a rubber tire. They were committed at Leningrad and in Tunisia, that is in two utterly different landscapes, and most of them still wore dark gray paint, on which every white marking spoke with full force.

Box contents

The set contains three masks of national insignia. They are cut so that the adhesive layer separates cleanly and an element stays whole even with a thin line. That matters on a gray coat: the contrast between a dark base and white is hard and any frayed edge shows at once.

Advice for working on a gray machine

Never spray white straight onto a dark base. First lay down a thin bridging coat in light gray or sand, let it dry and only then go for the final white; you will save three unnecessary coats and the marking will stay flat. Take the mask off by pulling it toward you at a shallow angle. If you are building a machine from the African theater, dust the whole surface with a light pigment once the markings are finished and let the markings disappear in places, because sand erased them faster than rain did. For northern service, by contrast, leave the markings clean and age only the surrounding surfaces with wear from the crew's boots and from ropes. The difference between the two theaters lies exactly in how quickly a marking vanishes under a deposit, and in a large scale it can be shown very convincingly.