The idea behind this comes from people studying many Tigers after the war some insist that these pitting marks are from the factory these claims are usually made by people who understand very little about engineering and what they are looking at firstly things like the mantle and various engine vents would be cast and of cause have a cast finish so would be rough, German armour plates where of rolled steel what this means is the steel would be heated to almost white or over 1000 degree would then be pulled through a pair of large rollers and would reduce the thickness of the steel this would be done several times till the steel reached the desired thickness so any marks would have come from the rollers and would be consistent all along the plate however modellers have been studying tanks that have sat outside for 60 years with little protection or paint and it would be fair to say that they have rusted considerably over the years this will have caused most of the pitting that is being recreated the other thing is multiple layers of paint some has come away with rust leaving a sharp edge then repainted several times again this has been recreated so what is being modelled is a restored tank, probably the only tank to have been looked after to any extent is the Bovington Tiger if you look closely this Tiger has far less surface imperfections than any other tank but is overlooked or ignored so if you insist on this type of treatment then do it sparingly, as for the “Modellers Guide to the Tiger Tank” talented as the author is there are a few mistakes in the book the biggest is his version of Wittmann’s Tiger he depicts this as a mid Tiger when it was actually a late Tiger one only has to study the picture to verify this fact.