Hauler PE and Resin Review
A Review Of A Few Hauler 1/48 Etched-Brass And Resin Sets
This is part of the tale of a quest to convert Tamiya’s Tiger I (notso) Early Production to a DAK Tiger in Tunisia in late ’42. The basic hull, running gear, and turret are a decent starting point, but the DAK mods are quite extensive.
A bit of looking around led me to the Hauler line of aftermarket stuff. They provide a pair of parts sets that are particular to the Tunisian Tiger I, one brass and one of resin. They also have a couple of other sets that came in handy. The Afrika Tiger sets covered the markedly different fenders, exhaust covers, and headlight setup, and the resin set provides the exact big parts needed that the brass can’t do.
Just to put things in a clear perspective, this is the first model I have worked on in 25 years, and the first aftermarket brass and resin I have ever attempted. To those other virgins wondering if they should go this route, here are my findings.
The resin parts were absolutely perfect, their fit was better than I ever expected (hope for the best, plan for the worst), and they went together perfectly with the donor kit parts. The only trauma I encountered was freeing them of the casting blocks. That is some seriously hard resin!
Then I busted open the Afrika Tiger brass set, and also the Tamiya Tiger basic set. Being as I didn’t open any hatches there was only a few parts that I used from the basic set, but it was handy all the same. The Afrika Tiger brass set was totally consumed, and very nice and accurate, according to my reference-hunting. There are three parts that are not covered in the instructions, but it was fairly easy to figure out where they belonged. Thanks, Hauler!
This being a new thing to me, I found it a challenge to shift from 1:1 scale in my shop to nano-scale in the evenings. Once I got used to Hauler’s brass, which took a couple of evenings of trial and mostly error, I was hitting a stride and things started to go together well. Hauler’s brass is thin and soft, no annealing required, but not too thin, not too soft, and fairly durable. If you goof a bend, it can handle a retry without just falling apart. If you try to adjust it six or eight times, it will fatigue, but that’s metal for you. Some of the shaping and bending looked pretty far-fetched during the instruction reading, but it all went very well, producing convincing large parts very quickly, and the tiny bits followed with a dose of patience and persistence. The dimensional fit I found to be very, very good, there were only a couple of parts that mis-fitted, they were simply trimmed. The other 99% fit from the word go. I did choose to put some back-up styrene strip under/behind some of the fender parts to avoid gluing them just on their edges and expecting them to stay attached, and that was no problem. Hauler also graciously provides a few extras of parts that are likely to fly out of the tweezers into hyperspace. The last brass on before paint was the engine grills, and they are most impressive, they fit perfectly and look super after a bit of simulated trampling and some paint. All in all I found the brass to be great to work with, but its evil partner, the required super glue, was much more of a pain. It was as fickle as my ex, and that’s saying something.
I also utilized a lot of parts from Hauler’s German Tank Tools and German Jacks sets, all with good results. The wire-cutters especially are little gems. These sets were perfect because of the different configuration of the tool stowage on the Tunis Tigers, and the Tamiya kit coming with mostly molded-on tools, which were forcibly removed.
My reference digging also gave me the opportunity to try parts out of another Hauler set, their “Buckets” offering. They were a bit intimidating at first look, but inside of an hour I had two of them sitting on my bench ready for paint. I rolled the sides, when the bottom was presented it fell into place with an audible “click”, and on went the glue. I did manage to lose one of the handles, but .010” copper wire provided a handle that looked different from its partner, so much the better.
I enjoyed my experience with Hauler’s brass, and I can recommend it to other armour builders with two big thumbs up. It’s user-friendly, once the rookie learning curve has been tackled. An experienced builder should find it to be a snap. It’s been perfect for this particular project, and above all else, the price can’t be beat when you scout the market for what’s out there of comparable quality.
Hauler has one last ace up their sleeve for this version of the Tiger I, a set of decals to do the turret numbers of any of the batch of Tigers that arrived in Tunisia in late ’42. These are the plain white outline ones, evidently the second batch of Tigers that arrived in early ’43 had red with white outline numbers. The Hauler decals (their only set) are crisp and opaque, and have very thin carrier film on the sheet. Can’t wait to get to ‘em!
