Okay I lied. Update, got half the front and one side done. The long pieces for the sides took quite a bit of a work as they didn’t want to move much after they hit the kit, had to slowly move them into position. Also had to cut 4 bolts off and reattach, haven’t attached two yet, the other two were the far back ones on the lower hull. Super happy with this stuff, need to fix around the one bolt a bit by filling it in with trimmings
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It looks okay superficially, but the reality is it doesn’t look to have anywhere near the depth of texture actual Zimmerit had.
Thats going on well. I was thinking of getting the Zvezda Elefant as its only 28 quid … not sure if its new or old kit though as the new ones are very nicely made and detailed.
If the kit number is 36XX it’s a new mold and 35XX is the old and appears to be a Italeri boxing from ‘73.
Mead your build is looking good.
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I had the same concern but reading an article from the tank museum, the outer layer of zimmerit that receive texture was 4mm thick. Or 0.1mm in 1/35, so I don’t think this stuff is too far off.
In my opinion DIY zimmerit is often over done and overly deep
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its a 36 so I may pull the trigger on it 
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Not my thing but it appears to be a decent kit.
http://www.missing-lynx.com/reviews/german/zvezda3659reviewbg_1.html
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Nice link, cheers Ryan, It looks ok actually and nice touch that it has Zimm decal sheets included.
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Finished up the zimmerit except for some small pieces that go in the rear tool bin, and fenders. Pretty happy with how it went down. Hope it shows under paint
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Looking very good Mead. I was thinking that if i get any more of the Zimm decals to use, I may omit the primer on those areas, and just go straight to paint on them to lesson the build up. And thanks to you, I have just ordered the Zvezda Elefant, which actually has its own decal sheet in the kit, so will be interesting to see what that looks like when it arrives.
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I am thinking of ordering the trumpeter zimmerit tools for my tiger, king tiger, and Jagdpanther builds.
I agree the less paint with this stuff the better. I think I’ll “prime” with a very light coat of a home brew red oxide to give the yellow base more depth but won’t do a traditional primer coat
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Fenders on. They are four pieces per fender. Tamiya suggests building them on the vehicle but I decided to build them off with a slower setting glue and then shape them as they dried kinda like link and length tracks. The fit of course is excellent being tamiya
Two small issues. One I gouged the port side fender a bit cleaning up a seam. More problematic, the holes for the fender supports in the zimmerit decals (being for the Zvezda kit) don’t align with the fender supports. This leaves a hole in the top glacias zimmerit
My plan? The zimmerit for the fenders has a portion that wraps around the fender side
I plan to trim this excess and use it to fill the holes
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Got all of the zimmerit and a good chunk of the construction done
I’ve decided not to apply the zimmerit to the fenders. I’ve found a few pictures of elefants with no zimmerit there. The zimmerit being designed for the Zvezda kit also didn’t fit perfect. This area was the most egregious
In order to get a good fit against the conduit, I had to trim the zimmerit. This left a glaring gap along the edge. I used the left over fender zimmerit to do some surgery 
which is also why I won’t be using zimmerit on the fenders. The remainder of the fender zimmerit will be used to patch really small gaps around a couple hinges and the brackets on the front glacias
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Reading your reviews on this style of zimmeritt I ended up taking advantage of Sprue Brothers last big sale and ordered up a bunch. Since you did some patching I approached it like you did, exact kits wgere I could close enough and modify as needed. Think in total I picked up 6 kits along w one Eduard PE zimmeritt kit to try. Appreciate your build log, especially in this respect!
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No problem! It’s good stuff and adheres well. It’s also really durable so it’s easy to position. I am curious how it looks after paint. Word of caution. Lots of dry fitting the zim. There spots it was way too long and would have overlapped previously applied zimmerit and been too thick. There are also spots it was a tad short and I had to plan how to make it fit
Would be interested to hear how the eduard zimmerit works! There is a thread kicking around where someone used it on a brummbar. It looks like fantastic but I am curious how hard it is to work with!
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I used an Eduard zim kit on a Tamiya Stug III; fit was very good but having to use super glue to fit made fixing it on pretty much a one shot job or otherwise resulting in a major clean up of parts before trying again. Also, not easy to get a chipped effect which didn’t bother me as I was modelling the Stug as fresh to the front.
I think the Key to Eduards will be to work it by laying one side down, taping and then glueing the loose ends so I’m not try to line up the whole piece free hand, Chepster said if your using any sort of thin quick set superglue it’s a shot deal. Though this might be the time to go w a tad bit heavier Dollop of glue to an extra few seconds to work w it. I can say this, I’m going the decal route first and work my way up to this one. It’s for Tamiya King Tiger Ardennes so not a lot of nooks and crannies to work around.
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The part of tank builds I have a serious love hate relationship with, the suspension and running gear parts! It is such a tedious task, cleaning up 8 of the same part, but I find it gives the tank life and reveals it’s true size once it sits on its wheels, and wow what a beast the Elefant is.
I hope to get the build done this week before the Christmas craziness sets in and build time drops off. All that is left really is hatches, some event covers, the main gun and tools! Tracks I will wait until Later
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Looking good Mead. The Elefant is bigger than it looks for sure. I thought that when I looked at the Zvezda one I got recently when I had a look at it. The Zimm is looking very nice though. You have done a great job with it.
Ref what Chris @MontanaHunter was taling about and the Eduard Zimm sets. I have used a couple on various wagons, and I have used it on the King Tiger production turret ( I still have a set to use as well). It is nice stuff and well detailed. The only thing I found is you do need to precise and fairly quick when you position it and the biggest thing I found was that it leaves a hard edge (might be hard to understand so will try to break it down) … On the Zimm sections, you have the zimm pattern, but then on all the edges, there is a very small smooth gap which gives the zimm a lip on all the edges (front - back - up - down). I thought this spoiled the look just a bit as once fitted, you have the Zimm detail, the small smooth area, (which makes the lip), then the surface of the vehicle… I did try to solve the issue by using putty to blend the edges in, which worked to a certain extent, but was hard going when you have to do all of them…and I gave up lol …
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