I’m currently building ammo migs king tiger II. It’s a re-boxing of a Takom kit. I’m currently painting road wheel and the box art doesn’t have a callout for a steel color on them. Does anyone know if the late war road wheels were painted one solid color to include the rims or is this just something left out by the manufacturer? My assumption is that they’d still have a polished steel look from use.
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What I’d ask myself is why they wouldn’t paint the rims, given that it’s quicker and easier than masking them, and that masking the rims serves no purpose anyway since the paint will wear off as soon as the vehicle has driven any distance at all.
So yes, the rims would be bare metal on everything except a brand-new tank.
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That’s what i thought but thought it was odd that ammo mig didn’t have it in the paint call outs.
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As soon as the tracks are installed at the factory, and the AFV is rolling on them, the metal to metal wear begins, as does the paint removal by surface to surface contact. By the time that brand new tank is driven onto a train for transport to a receiving unit, those rims are likely quite bare.
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@Stikpusher perfect, I’ll post some pictures soon. It’s going to have the red oxide base coat showing a lot in this build, tons of missing zimmerit and minimal color.
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A 1945 production King Tiger should have no Zimmerit. The application was discontinued at the factory on all AFVs in late summer/early fall of 1944.
Looking forward to seeing your KT here!
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Off the top of my head, and not being a German tank expert by any stretch of the imagination, the only Tiger IIs with Zimmerit were the prototypes.
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@Stikpusher im tracking the 45 ones didn’t. I’m kind of doing a refurbed or just aged well tiger for the hell of it.
@Jakko i believe the Porsche and Henschel did have Tiger IIs with zimmerit but it was stopped prior to winter of 44. I know the Porsche tigers at Arnhem had the zimmerit.
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The Porsche turreted ones that fought in Normandy and elsewhere had the Zimmerit. It was fairly early during the Henschel turret production that the use of Zimmerit should have been discontinued.
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And not all the prototypes – the Bovington Tank Museum has the V2 prototype of the KT, and it doesn’t have Zimmerit, assuming that some misguided restoration attempt before the Tank Museum got it didn’t scrape it all off – but the armor faces don’t look as if they have residue from a removed Zimmerit layer.
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@srmalloy that makes sense, i know model manufactures have done the Henschel with zimmerit but ive never paid any attention to the time of year it was for in 44 or 45.
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Ah, yes, I see now: I remembered it the wrong way round … The prototypes didn’t (all?) have Zimmerit, early production vehicles did. I thought I remembered it as the prototypes having it but the production tanks not.
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Color in the steel wheel rims with a #2 pencil - the graphite makes very convincing 1\35 scale bare polished steel.
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@SSGToms right now they have Vallejo air steel which is almost close to the #2 pencil. I may go over it with the pencil just to take the shine down.
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Looking at it from the perspective of practicality, the prototype vehicles would almost certainly never be expected to enter combat (barring the factory being overrun), so there would have been no reason to apply the Zimmerit coating.
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The prototypes were built of mild steel, so just about any AP shell wouldn’t have any problem penetrating. 
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