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Construction Part I: German Tiger I Heavy Tank in 1/16 scale

Early inner-hull construction includes installation of the track tension adjusters. Once the kit is complete, these are accessed via a pair of phillips-head screws on the bottom of the hull.

The idler arms, ready for priming and painting. The masked areas are bearing surfaces and must be kept clean.

On the left are the components that make up an idler, while on the right is an assembled unit.

Drive-motor installation. The gearboxes come fully assembled, and require just alignment and fastening into the hull to install.
Here's the hull with all road wheels, idlers, drive sprockets, and treads installed. This thing is starting to get big!

After the basic hull is complete, it's time to divert over to that awesome Aber kit. This is the left-rear mud flap, comprising over 30 parts. Those hinges are hand-formed.

I decided early-on to use solder on all metal-to-metal joints, since this kit will get used outside and will be subject to lots more handling than a normal static display. The latch mechanism and hinges are all fully-functional!

This is a shot of the kit-supplied tool box which sits on a rack attached to the rear armor plate. Pretty nice detail - but that's what you expect from Tamiya. The two shots below this show what the piece looks like after being "Aber-ized"...

The same part with the stock detail removed and nearly 50 photo-etched parts added. All it needs now is some clean-up and paint. Truly a model in itself (the padlock alone consists of 6 parts, and the latches are all operational!), and almost insignificant when installed on the tank! This component has approximately 6 hours invested.