WORKSHOP WEDNESDAY - Tiger I Restoration Supercut

hi i'm kurt from oz armor and welcome to workshop wednesday [Music] this week we're messing up a little bit more stug 3 and jag panther footage so while we do that we thought we would revisit our tiger 1 series revamp the audio and music and cut it into one super featurette it's a little bit long for a lunch break or before you start work but we are sure you're going to love it nonetheless so let's kick off with some never-before-seen photos of our tiger one restoration [Music] by now you're probably already familiar with the father-son duo glenn and beau they've done a lot of work together over the past few years restoring a lot of different vehicles by far the most challenging and arduous project yet has been the tiger one and it all started with the turret it came in pieces that could have been mistaken for a pile of scrap but with enough heat pressure and patience these two blokes made some real magic happen with that done it went on display in the vermont hall until the rest of the tank was built [Music] they moved on to unbending all of the almond plate that we'd managed to acquire over the past five years imagine the force needed to warp this it was no easy task to undo all of that damage those are relief cuts they don't look pretty now but without them pressing these pieces flat again would be impossible [Music] [Music] [Music] now for the hull this is the biggest vehicle we have had in the workshops by far [Music] finding original tiger parts was hard finding parts that weren't almost totally destroyed was even harder [Music] glennon beau worked away tirelessly for nearly a whole year on this part of the tank but slowly they assembled this enormous jigsaw puzzle piece by piece most of our parts came from a single tank however where we could we managed to incorporate pieces from other tiger tanks as well we reasoned that this was better to have more original parts than fabricated [Music] it was about here in february 2021 that i joined the crew and then the video journey began the first thing we filmed was making the roof support beams these beams will be supporting the turret once it's fitted to the roof they have to be strong enough to hold between 7 and 10 ton we spent over five years sourcing parts for the tiger one before commencing the build in 2020 these parts varied greatly in condition so where we've been able to we've incorporated the original parts with new pieces that we've fabricated ourselves [Music] [Music] after this glenn and bo got to work turning this twisted pile of metal into tiger hatch hinges [Music] [Music] now it's time to free them up [Music] [Music] this is how you lock your your hatch so it can't be open from the outside and i had a big rubber seal in here so they would have used that too to stop it opening up when they went through rivers and that sort of stuff too [Music] [Music] bow must test fit the hatches now to make sure he has bent them to the correct angle [Laughter] we're just going to keep this little tab here flat so when we tighten it up it should lay down flat probably obviously stop them squashing their heads yeah onto the mud guards now we were very lucky to get a full set of these we're going to use this on the right hand rear and this one's left hand rear the middle another middle pretty hard to find photos of them with all their mud guards in perfect condition they're pretty they're pretty much all mangled unless they're brand new yeah this one's a lot straighter well this one's got a little all the cool battle damage so we could probably make this one work these mud guards stick out a long way from the main hull one of the first things to get damaged when the tank enters a narrow lane in a town or a forest bo starts by straightening the gussets using a blowtorch to soften the metal then he hammers it as straight as he can sometimes one hammer just isn't enough i'm going to use two hammers instead of just going backwards and forwards what one actually like a dolly so the other one's behind you can straighten things better these small blocks were welded onto the side of the tank for the mud guards to screw into rather than the factory workers trying to drill holes into the thick armored plate on some of the guards the whole block has been torn off before we can press them into shape these blocks have to be carefully removed yeah we're going to heat these up red hot and undo the bolts so we can reuse them [Music] with the bolts and blocks removed it's time to flatten the guards back out i can't just press straight on it because it's on an angle and it's going to press up here so we'll have to chop this piece up with something i'm going to use these these discs here i use them as packers so we're pressing the right spot for us [Music] if there's a high spot i'll try to put that directly underneath the ramp try and squash it down flat and go just a bit past and then it usually springs back straight only seven more to go that's not even touching the front and rear guards we have a lot of gear here in the workshops to get our restorations and repairs done but some jobs require us to outsource the lads at luxury yacht refinishers and cairns have just finished sandblasting the roof back to bare metal in europe bare metal can remain out in the open for a long time but here in far north queensland we have to apply a protective primer straight away to protect the piece from the humidity the color we're using is german red oxide after a hardening additive is mixed in and the paint is fitted to the airbrush we're ready to get started [Music] so [Music] back in the workshop and beau has all the mud guards straightened and jessie's giving him a hand to test fit them [Music] because it's so badly bent we can't actually force it down by hand it's too too strong so just going to put the forklift on here and try and just force it in [Music] they're much straighter than what they were and we've preserved all the cool battle damage bo was talking about earlier now they fit the tank properly they're ready for blasting and painting [Music] [Music] time to weld in the roof bow has to get the roof exactly in the right place by using these metal clamps and bolts on threaded rod that he's temporarily welded to the chassis this will pull the roof flat and keep it from moving while he works once everything is level he can gear up and get started welding is dangerous work and it gets really hot in the workshop bo certainly has his work cut out for him to give you an idea of how big this job is let's see how long one stick of weld takes like everything else with the tiger it's a big job and it's going to take a lot of time and labor since the sides of the hull are all original we're going to need to stick weld the entire perimeter of the roof to secure it in place in the panzer factories workers would have had access to very large electrodes and would have been able to fill this gap very quickly probably with just one pass unfortunately these small rods are all that's available to us beau has to simultaneously drag and push this stick slowly and carefully to ensure that the weld binds correctly [Music] over 40 seconds per stick you've got to fill this whole gap up and that was one rod how many uh how many rods are going to go through well that was one probably [Music] for the whole thing for a couple thousand [Music] [Music] [Music] if it wasn't already difficult enough this is all bo can see through the visor this shield activates as soon as it detects harmful rays and dims everything down to a safe level to work at unfortunately it also dims everything else [Music] once bo has finished stick welding the entire roof in he can start to fill in the rest of the gap with the mig mig welding is a little bit different to the stick it uses a continuous solid wire electrode fed through a welding gun and into the weld pool joining the two base materials together shielding gas is also sent through the welding gun and this protects the weld pool from contaminants [Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] to break up the monotony of welding glenn bowe worked on some of the finer details on the front and rear mudguards it was pretty bent so we've straightened it out and then kept this a lot of like the the damage and stuff it was missing a few of the hinges so we've had to make some copying the the original ones this is a picture of an early hull tiger but they've all got the same mud guard a holder so i've made this thing here spring-loaded and it's to hold the mud guard in place to stop it moving around too much when they're driving we've been collecting parts for over five years and even though we've found some incredible pieces some parts were just impossible to find we had three right hand mud guards front mud guards and we've just we've had no choice but to make a left one so we thought we'd just use an original one instead of making a new one since [Music] that's obviously better everything's original except for the hinge at the top the hinge was completely bent yeah it was unable to be used beyond repair yeah we couldn't use it we've made new locking mechanism everything else we freed up this is the locking mechanism which locks into this piece which holds the mud guard down stops it flapping around and this one here's the one that holds it up i guess for when they needed to work on the truck and i'm pretty proud of them or actually they're pretty cool you know to make something working it's better than having something just not you know before we can fit the wheels we have to apply a top coat to provide a base for the final camo scheme applying this top coat now before the wheels are fitted will be a lot easier [Music] one of the most critical pieces of the tiger one wheel assembly are these bananas six of them per wheel serve to hold it in place and while we were able to source mostly originals some of them we had to make ourselves fortunately for us glenn is a master turner [Music] but this is the correct thickness yeah yeah yeah that's the correct weakness of what and these ones don't have any any groove in the middle see that's got a groove because they're middle ones yeah that's right this one's got a groove in it so we've got three with the groove and three without and the one with the groove and it sits in here inside this groove on the hub and then the other one will slide up like that to it you got to make sure you've got them on right you can't have them like this you've got to be so there's a v on the inner so it locks the wheel in it all seemed like smooth sailing everything was ready to start fitting the wheels until we came across a small problem a lot of our wheels are like really badly damaged it's like distorted um the inner is just yeah not round at all pretty much like out of shape the outside's not as bad as long as the banana can pull on and you know pull it together then they'll work [Music] so it takes a little while but all the wheels are eventually forced back into shape now it's time to get them on the hubs yep just to make it hold around tell me when you want me to go up because then we can spin it then [Music] moving out yeah that's it just hold him and we'll have to try and put some bolts through [Music] hold on okay [Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Music] the tiger one has a lot of field equipment and tools don't worry we eventually found the correct shovel they're all held in place with little clips like these ones the originals are so badly damaged though that we've had no choice but to make new ones pretty tricky pretty fiddly to get everything right you know and have the latch just go over center so it's it holds it in and everything you've got it everything has to be pretty much perfect yeah with this [Music] i came across jesse trying his hand at pressing some clips it's definitely not as easy as it looks [Music] once they're pressed assembled and painted they have to be mounted in the perfect position on the top deck but sometimes that's easier said than done bit tricky you know i go off one drawing and then i look at hillary doyle's drawing and it's slightly different like the position of the of the torque lamp on from a bird's-eye view they're slightly slightly different where i can i've been going off original welds because it's got to be right the germans are usually known for their preciseness but we come across a strange contradiction to that notion like i've noticed that none of the tool mounts are actually square to anything i guess that they they just put them on wherever and they didn't really square anything up if these clips weren't tricky enough you ain't seen nothing yet this here is this is the reason why we're making these wingnuts is because this is one of the wingnuts that was on a latch on the on one of the back hatches of the tank so as you can tell what how did it get that was a wing nut it's a wing nut with thread and a um and a shaft here yeah what happened to it just like completely corroded just been sitting there rusting away for what almost 80 years 80 years or so so yeah that that would have been that gonna be on either side of it we just have to round these up [Music] it just um rounds the edges off it takes that sharp sharp edge off from when you've when you've been grinding or cutting [Music] [Music] corroded modern osama made and original only 20 more to go one really interesting thing it's just amazing he builds and it fabricates [Music] not bad at all beau was also hard at work on accessorising the tiger one so these are our um cleaning rods we've had to make the handles because they're extremely hard to come by undo your wing nuts that was just just to hold them in place this one still works too still got the spring everything in it still works this is a fire extinguisher mount the fire extinguishers over there too which is pretty cool something like that we have to make all this work pretty hard to find detailed pictures of the power extinguisher on the back of the tiger i found photos of a king tiger and it would have been a very similar way it would have just been a block welded underneath tapped with a thread and that would have um just bolted straight through these holes into those tap blocks so that hole and this slot was so you've got movement for your machine gun see how the shim would work just place it off space it away from the hull slightly stop putting the pressure on the on the ball inside it's been quite a few weeks getting the mounts locks latches nuts and bolts all finished but now we're ready for the top coat [Music] do do [Music] the next step is to fit the track yeah this will be alright yep [Music] so that's it time to take the turret out of the museum off display and into glenn bowe's workshop as you can see there's a curved plate missing from the bottom front of the turret bo is going to have to fabricate this from scratch a few other preparations will need to be made so that the turret will fit without the turret basket bo has also hand made this storage box for the rear of the turret so they started off with panzer 3 storage bins actually when they got rid of the vision port on the rear of the turret they started making bigger bins they actually had a different type of this which had cutouts in it on the sides whereas this one's just straight for a later model sort of tiger without the vision port you just can't find these as you can see it'd be such thin material it would have been the first thing to get damaged on the outside of the tank so it's pretty hard to come by this type of thing every now and then though we come across things we never thought would be possible to obtain like this light cover pretty cool i think we've got some original paint on it it's finally time to fit the turret to the tank good lift you might be wondering why there's no turret basket well that's going to come later when we fit out the interior and make this tiger one a runner for now the turret will be welded directly onto the roof it's really tricky to get in the right spot thing after an hour of crane work and my newt adjustments to finally get it fitted and what a sight it is to behold before we painted the top coat in the last episode all the fittings had to be removed now that the turret is on putting everything back in its place is the final step before we paint the camo scheme that white stuff on the front plate is silicon to make this tanker runner this plate will need to be removed silicon will make this job a lot easier than real world this plate will be welded in properly once we fit the engine transmission and fit out everything else inside push it back in oh [Music] um [Music] [Music] i'm gotta go back [Music] [Music] um we hit the jackpot and managed to obtain a full set of original periscopes in perfect condition we've got eight of this top still got the markings and everything everything is just it's perfect as if it was just made then you know even the rubber like the rubber is it's still soft so your longer piece goes up and the shorter bit down this is the part they look through at the bottom here projects it up through to this this one the rubber seal is on top and seals it up up against the component inside so that slips up inside there like that so this is how this this work would have worked is um slides through a pin up in the back here to get out of the way so you can remove it and to tighten it up with the wing nut tightened up like that that fork tightens up on the baker light housing and holds it in place another job done set another job done yep with everything fitted glenn and bo removed the supports from underneath the tiger it's a tense few minutes like [Music] just leave that one under a bit careful use two hands easy on left [Music] no thicker plate no who came out there yep so that's it that's it that's now tiger one held up by its own weight it's pretty crazy at this critical stage we came across a piece that changed everything about this restoration it's crazy to think that that's the most important piece yeah yeah something like it's just looks like a bit of scrap pretty much you know it's just a bad piece of metal with a handle on it but what's so important about it is the markings that are we came across this piece by accident well we knew what it was we knew where the piece went but we didn't know if it's important we didn't know that it had the chassis number and everything on it to find that just before the build was finished it was a massive before that it was just you know a tiger tank this pretty much gave us everything after the chassis number was identified beau threw himself into researching tiger tanks after weeks of sleepless nights he found i know something is like the first thing that i found that said the shazi number and it told you these two things that's the first thing that i found about this tank after finding that um after we found that number this book contains two entries from the maintenance company of tiger tank battalion 502 and they reveal a small piece of our tiger's true history sassy number 250771 schoenberg area of operations 7.62 centimeter anti-tank gun hit on the gun mantlet grazing shot by anti-tank gun on turret in the direction of the tank commanders coppola the damage was the gun jacket and gun mantlet nearly penetrated pivot arm for hatch of tank commanders coppola was shot away chassis number 25071 the area of operations north of schoenberg artillery hit on radio operators hatch the damage was that the hull was torn open along the radio operator's hatch transmission damage by fragments the radio equipment and both machine guns destroyed by fragments periscope and fittings damaged traversing mechanism jammed and the radio operator was killed right there yeah pretty unbelievable yeah it's easy to get lost in the excitement and become detached from the reality of what the soldiers that operated these vehicles went through we hope that when you come and visit tiger250771 you might take a small moment to reflect on the tragedies of the past and maybe spare a thought for a peaceful future armed with this information we were able to pick a field applied camo scheme used by the 502nd heavy tank battalion in mid-august 1944. the town of schoenberg is located on the estonian latvian border and is now known as skaistkalner [Music] finally we're ready to get started [Music] let's answer the question of zimmer at paste once and for all yes zimmerit will eventually be applied when we have the components ready to make it a runner the tank will need to be disassembled back at the workshop if we applied it now it would only get damaged and ruined while this work occurs for now not applying zimrit gives patrons of the museum the opportunity to see the original armor plate before we cover it all over it also means we only need to apply it once at the very end of the rebuild [Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Applause] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] i'm just about ready to do the white and then i'm going to do the other side of this one [Music] [Music] do [Music] i really wanted to protect it [Music] so [Music] you need to come stand on the ranger [Music] all the way down [Music] so [Music] oh [Music] one [Music] i know that's it it's finally finished to safely move the tiger we will need a trolley a leopard tank and an fv434 recovery vehicle this device we're attaching here is called an a-frame the rigidity of the a-frame makes steering the immobile tiger one possible firstly we have to move the tank forward using the forklift so we can maneuver the fv434 in behind [Music] once the tiger is brought to the edge of the slope the recovery vehicle can be strapped to the rear of the tank which will add an extra measure of safety and control [Music] uh the tiger has no suspension yet so the weight of the tank puts enormous strain on the welds on the swing arms as it goes from the flat to the downhill slope it's a really tense moment so now we can jack up the tiger and roll the trolley underneath it this trolley will make it easier to maneuver around the other displays and tight corners inside the museum it will also relieve the strain on the swing arm welds bring that red [Music] so so [Music] it's much easier to see the imperfections in the stunt tiger from fury next to our real one fired it's a tight squeeze but nothing we can't handle the whole crew is here lending a hand [Music] [Music] it's kind of sad what is like having like to see it here now you know not just in the workshop you spend so much time on it building it and you know you sort of not become attached to it but like you become familiar with it and then you just take it out and you just start your next project then you're like you sort of have no attachment to that new vehicle yet until you start getting a bit of a roll with it so it's nice to come back and have a look at it [Music] after over half a decade of gathering parts and 18 months of construction tiger 250-771 is on display in the wehrmacht hall at the australian armor and artillery museum part of the tiger one exhibition includes some pieces we had left over from the build this side we already had complete up until about here and it wasn't in too bad a condition but we didn't have to join it here so this joining these two together would have been more work than using the other piece that we had which was slightly bent so we already had the whole whole side as one piece so we didn't want to go cutting this into it that would have been that would have been a shame but it's just a shame we couldn't use it it's got a big hit mark on it here and it's got a good piece of the um mud guard underneath and a bit of the back transom from what it was you know but people can pick on a few things that might be slightly wrong but in the grand scheme of things it's pretty impressive so you just have to look at it once to know you know what it is it's pretty special sitting here in its own spot as soon as you walk around that corner over there you see it it definitely stands out we're very very proud of it and the way it turned out and so they should be since this series finished we've started looking for parts to make the tiger a runner it's going to be a long journey and it's probably a few years away from being started but that is something we'll definitely include in a video series in the future thank you very much for joining us we'll be back on our regular restoration videos next week so be sure to subscribe so you don't miss any updates until then i'm kurt from ozama and i'll see on the next one

Channel: The Australian Armour & Artillery Museum

Views: 2,691,691

Keywords: australian armour and artillery museum, australian tank museum, building a tank, restoration, tank museum, tank overhaul, the australian armour and artillery museum, tiger tank, wednesday, workshop, workshop wednesday, wwii, tiger I, tiger i restoration, tiger 131, oz armor, aus armour, panzerkampfwagen vi, wwii tiger

Id: MnZ2VBO7vao

Length: 62min 3sec (3723 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 29 2022