Description
This kit purports to build a Tiger from the battle of Kursk, in the Summer of 1943.Border provides some extra parts (not as many as Rye Field) to accomodate this. You get eight sets of decals for the kit, but the decals may or may not be appropriate for the type of Tiger depicted by the plastic parts.
Border provides a large, nicely illustraged (and color) instruction book. Construction is broken down into thirty-seven assembly steps, spread out over fifteen pages. The big parts map up front is handy.
One of the selling points of the kit is the large amount of injection molded stowage. Much of this is very nice. The molded tarps and flags, however, are nice. Some of the bundled items are molded in segments, rather than the typical top/bottom engineering.
Overall, the accessories are very clean and sharp. I like the fact that these are regular styrene details and not some strange rubber.
The lower hull is a traditional tub. Aside from sockets on the floor for the torsion bars, there is no indication of any plans for a kit with interior detail.
A small tree of clear parts is included. These cover the cupola vision blocks, headlight lenses, driver's periscopes and front visor armored glass, and the rear convoy light.
A nice aluminum gun tube is provided. This isn't shown on the instruction sheet or in the parts map. Note that they say "a" barrel and not "the" barrel. So, it may be that the barrel here is a bonus in the first batch of kits, or that Border will sell it as an add on at a later date. The kit barrel is slide molded, with a nicely done, slide molded, muzzle brake. You also get a muzzle brake with canvas cover, and cover for the bow machine gun.
Border's painting guide looks go be pretty good. It was done in conjunction with Mig/Ammo by Mig, so it obviously references their paints and weathering supplies
From David Nickels