Final quick things TM
Camo painted, all subassemblies done, the crew reassigned past the Eastern Front. All that was left now was the most fun tweaking, fine-tuning and nitpicking. And making a mess, of course. How long could that take, a couple of silly hours?
First rusts and getting fancy with wood
Weathering got started with rust oils being slathered over the track armour and the exhaust pipes. I did these things before I painted the numerous dots on my Hinterhalt-Tarnung but collected the photos and yapping into a more thematically accurate post. These all used Light Rust (ABT060), the exhaust pipes because they were constantly hot and the track armour was a new chunk that had been very recently driven on. Or that's what I thought and implemented based on this mental nonsense.
For the various wooden pieces I made again some brown wash (aptly named ABT080 Brown Wash). After the application my favourite piece, for once, was the jack block that ended up looking great. The jack's wooden handle was an important detail, in my opinion.
Of course all the wooden things benefited from the wash, in this photo the crates and the plank setup were still damp and looked much better after drying. Somehow the shovel handles didn't get as much of an improvement in visuals, perhaps it was because of the missing or simply bad woodgrain texture/effect.
Before I started applying the oils I had glued in the machine gun and the rammer, so I wouldn't snap them off at a horrendous moment. That rammer was the weirdest of the wooden tools, I had not seen a real German version so I didn't have any actual knowledge. My memories from quarter a century ago of a Soviet rammer even had, maybe they were painted green? Without any better information I made it as a wooden stick, anyone with facts is welcome to comment.
While I still had leftover brown wash left, I thought I could start on ruining the compartment's floor. This was a general messiness layer, I was going to go through the tinier details with Sepia a bit later.
Howitzer installation
Now I installed the gun in its place. Visual progress was glorious.
When the glue was cured long enough I started diluting some darker brown wash (ABT002 Sepia), messing up first the boxes and crates with their lines and crevices, the flooring and general corners and the gun overall. The outside I ignored pretty much completely to avoid finger messes, the only outer surfaces I poked were the sides of the Panzerwanne and the bogies. Without the tracks they were accessible so this was a good moment for them to get treated to some nastiness.
Caterpillaring
Some days later I installed the road wheels in place, and the tracks one by one. Next I inserted the drive sprockets to the front, and aligned the teeth with the track links and after letting the glue set a bit, I looped the opposite end of the track around the idler wheel and pressed it in place. On both tracks at this point I heard a tiny snap and as the first photo showed, the overeagerly painted tracks had lost a tactical amount of flexibility and I had an accident in my hands.
The situation looked worse in the photo than what the reality was. As the tracks were of the correct legnth, I could get them glued together again. I decided to simplify this a bit by gluing the return rollers in their spots and then glued the tracks onto the road wheels to avoid too much free movements when closing the tracks again. That was my plan, at least. While the gluings were setting I installed the shovels into the rear ends so things could progress while others took a step back.
When my fixings were curing I washed the wheelsets with my Sepia wash, and after another curing break I wiped excesses away. The next evening I glued the track ends together on both sides, and on the left side I decided to add one spare link just to be safe. I still needed to paint it, of course.
Staring this close the patchwork stabbed my poor eyes, but I could not notice from a bit further away. Maybe I could mask it a bit with some mud paste when I got that far.
Drybrushing
Once again I considered for a fleeting moment if I should drybrush all the corners and edges with their own camo pattern -dictated colours. That moment of madness didn't last long and I used Ivory instead (VMA 71075). Yup, it was easier for my eyes to catch a hold of the edges and bolts this way. Then I glued the planks onto the rearmost boxes even if I wasn't using the little guys at all. Maybe I could glue a shell or three there, if the inspiration struck that way.
'Tis but a scratch
Regarding the chippig I leaned to gentle wear as opposed to sandblasting. Looking at the model I was thinking if the travel locks could leave a stronger mark onto the barrel, in addition to that I would probably just go for the edges and such that I could think people to be crossing a lot, or hanging from. Anything else would be in the combat compartment, after silly artillerymen dropped their shells on the floor fuzes first, and whatever they did when no one was watching.
I gave a quick shot at a lightened RAL-green for some chip base, but that was going to be too tedious and I just switched my approach. I painted the hopefully random scratches and lines with a slightly lighter sandy yellow. As always, I then filled the larger ones with black grey that had a drop of red mixed in. Doing that was too exciting and I forgot to take any detail photos.
More oil
To make my mistreated paintjob a bit more lively I made washes of Abteilung's Light and Dark rusts (ABT060 and ABT070 respectively).
The brigher and fresher rust I stippled into the chips. After a bit of setting time I blended them into their surroundings.
The darker rust I used on a few places, mostly to the hooks on top of the armour panels, on mirrored sides of the vehicle. I applied some rust, and then pulled them down toward the ground.
While I was happily doing all this I also made a thin mix of Dark Mud (ABT130) for the lower hull and wherever I thought muddy crap would fly when you drove a thing like this outside.
Ultra matt coat
I was under no impression of getting this out of my airbrush so I brushed AK's Ultra Matt Varnish on the model by a paintbrush.
The actual last things
My ultimate task was sponge-applying some Tamiya's Weathering Master pigments. I used mostly Mud and a small amount of Light Sand. The sandy one I used mostly to further highlight some upper surfaces, edges and bolts on the superstructure. At this point I remembered to fix the aiming stakes' reds and whites, and the completely ignored convoy trail light in the bottom left back corner. For its base I painted it off-white, and when it was cured I used some Citadel's Green Wash I had bought either in late 1996 or early 1997. That stuff was still valid.
When I couldn't imagine spinning the Hummel in my hands much anymore, I got to the graphite pen and used it mostly on the tracks, a bit on the shovels, jack block's metal thingies, jack's ends, and a bit on the tow cable. With this amount of time spent I felt the Hummel was just about finished.
