StuG III Ausf. G tracks

Panzer III/IV type 6B w/cleats

I ordered two identical sets of tracks, even though I considered getting the Winterketten for one of the targets. There'd be time for those later on, now I simply didn't feel it.

Track assembly

Based on my eyeballed measures I decided that about 28cm per side was a good first goal for the track lenght, and then continue from that a link or a couple at a time until reaching the proper lenght. Because of this I did not glue the wheelsets into the StuG, as that made playing with the tracks so much easier. The guesstimated 28cm was three roadwheelfuls too short, as the photo showed, so I assembled more until I did get the ends joined. The actual lenght was ~33cm which gave me some looseness for a bit of sag.

With the tracks built to a good length and repeatedly dry-fitted, A/B pins correctly aligned and the first-buit track marked on the right (the left side when facing forward) side, I could paint them. In addition to the driving tracks I built two short bits of track armour to be hanged on the back wall of the casemate.

Track painting

To keep the tracks somehow in control while painting them I simply laid a decent length of painter's tape with the glue side up, and taped that from the ends onto the instructions. It was going to hold the tracks nicely enough for some airbrushing.

I started, somewhat obviously, with thin layers of Vallejo's black primer. While working on them I took a number of WIP photos but maybe one here was going to be sufficient: 

Over the black I airbrushed some black grey (VMA 71056 Black Grey) to act as the bare steel, in somewhat nebulous pattern. In my mind that gave these tracks a bit of a surface texture.

This time I really had to remember that also the closing pins needed to be painted so they wouldn't stand out in their greyness from the finished model. I kept repeating this to myself constantly, because I knew my weaknesses or at least a couple of them.

Dirt foundation

Weathering the tracks got started with a really thinned down brown (VMC 70826 German Camo Medium Brown) to get some kind of a long-lived earth and dirtiness over the steel tracks. As a colour I believed Chocolate Brown would've worked even better but I also thought this sort of a brown was going to work nicely as well. Later on I could and would add darker brown for fresh, wet mud/earth.

I wasn't going to go far with the weathering while the tracks were laid open, because weathering needed to be done when the build was done and the aforementioned last pins were also painted and not shining like a kilo of radium in the night. These two track armour pieces didn't of course take the same kind of weathering that the running tracks did, but I started the same way anyway.

Gunmetal for the polished inner parts

I started by thinning down gunmetal (VMA 71072 Gunmetal) mostly because I knew my paint to be a few years old, and also the thinner paint wasn't going to be a bad idea. Those guiding teeth were a handy detail to start with, so I didn't test anything on the most visible details.

After the teeth were done I checked with a road wheel what part of the inner track was going to be ground clean while driving. Just about the full flat surface, just as one could've expected. 

With that checked I painted the metal band with the thinned-down paint, applying a cautious layer. Of course I hadn't really seen a running tank close by in almost 25 years and even then I didn't pay attention to those parts, so the realism or believability of this approach was based on assumptions. I thought this'd look better than the pure steel bands I painted some years ago on the German-captured IS-2.

Earthy tones

After that was done I closed up the tracks and painted the pins with black grey right away. Then I drybrushed the outer and side edges and that was simple enough with the loops. Before I was going to install the tracks on the assault gun, I painted a layer of heavily thinned down dirty brown (VMA 71133 Dirt).

Track attachment

Installing the tracks was pretty simple this time, thanks to me not gluing the return rollers or any others yet. My track had more lenght than I thought it did, these photos showed all the looseness hanging below the road wheels due to the installation order. I left the wheels and their glue to flash, I didn't want to accidentally plop anything out while readjusting the tracks.

 

The next evening I glued the road wheels onto the tracks to secure the sag in the correct part, so it hung from the return rollers. If something started bothering me, I could still readjust later.

This was enough of track play for the time being. Making them messier was going to happen when the rest of the vehicle was getting weathered.

Finished: Project IV/24

SdKfz 161/1 - Panzer IV 7,5 cm KwK 40 (L/48)

"The tracks rattle, the engine roars, the Panzers are rolling in Africa" sang the Sauerkraut-enthusiasts, according to my purposeful mangling of the lyrics, while the fortunes of war were somehow on their side. This DAK Panzer IV Ausf. F2 had eaten most of the summertime, and got done surprisingly quickly despite this last schoolyear being an example of the infamous and untranslateable ruuhkavuodet [fi]. I poked my model whenever I had the time for it, and enjoyed my time.

Border Model

I had talked about the bits and instructions while I was on the build, but I thought it was a decent idea to type up some conclusions as the maker was a new one to me. Like I said in the first post, I grabbed this from a local hobby store, Tieto-Nikkari, after a good chitchat with the dudes working there.

The instructions were basically fine, some of the pics just were a bit unclear on what in the Empire was to be done. Not that I hadn't complained about this same thing on some other manufacturer's instructions, either, so this was not that unusual. One of the examples of these "say what?" moments was the turret upper front corner -located hooks: the how to build image didn't really clarify a thing, but an image a few steps later showed the completed thing that showed clearly what I was expecting to see. 

Another source of grumbling was related to the optional pieces. There was a huge amount of different bits, and this was exactly what the instructions were the least clear on. Or maybe this kit was aimed for those who lived and breathed these details. I clearly wasn't one of those, so I ended up with the set of optionals that came up first in the instructions. The only extras that I actively decided to leave out were the track links, as I didn't want to mix up the kit's own and the Panzerwerk Design's track links, and some of the side track armour pieces had T-34 links and I didn't expect to find them in numbers in North Africa.

Just about all of the pieces needed an amount of cleanup (and the photos showed how I failed here and there, even if my own eyes and fingers told me I had gotten the irregularities out), some more than some others. Mostly the mold lines were handily positioned and the fitting of pieces was absoutely great. I did the amount of dry-fitting I did out of my own paranoia.

The pieces also looked fantastic, I had repeatedly admired how nice-looking and detailed they were. Then again, I wasn't widely known for my golden ears or impressive expertise, so you should take this praise with a grain or two of salt.

In case I encountered another interesting kit by Border Model, I could foresee myself grabbing it with me without much pondering. This one was very nice, thumbs up.

Panzerwerk design

These were the second third-party tracks I used, my previous experience was from just a moment ago, early 2000s (while working on the King Tiger two years ago I thought it was about 17 years ago, so...) when I played with Friulmodel's ATL-22 tracks.

3d printed tracks, at least in this one instance, were nice and quick to assemble as soon as I had found a workflow that worked for me. The tracks ate paint well, and painting didn't negatively affect their movements. In all honesty I was pretty damn excited about them all the time and I certainly would order more of their tracks to a yet unbought tracked vehicle.

Method testing n+1

Modifying the smooth plastic pieces to be more steel-like by using glue to soften the plastic up did just what Uncle Night Shift promised. The surface looked much better. In this model I also tried the next step further with the glue-thinned putty, but my implementation suffered from the putty I used. I would have to try this one out again with a different product.

I didn't keep that much track of how much of a difference the better and worse puttied surfaces, and the ones that had just the stippling done on them. With the orange skin effect on some parts was a clear issue and my putty-glue goo was too thick and dry when applying. Later I bought some Tamiya putty, but that would be tried with a new model.

Painting

Being boring was a risk with a monocolour desert yellow sceme, just like with a plain 4BO vehicle. Tools alone weren't going to bring enough variety, so the oils had an incredibly large effect on how the model ended up being. Another thing I had never done before was the highlighting of raised bits after a wash, but this time I foreached boltheads and upper edges. Maybe I had expected the result to become a bit too cartoonish or WH40k-ish, but my assumptions were incorrect.

Unlike my previous single-colour tank, I hadn't thought of making this one badly mistreated or weather-beaten, so the chipping wasn't as big an item in my variety-increasing toolbox this time. Of course I added a few, but a few indeed and in my opinion onto key places. Oil washes and, to a lesser extent, the sand pigments carried the heaviest burden.

Unwashed:

Thoroughly oiled:

Of course there were many stages between these two photos, in addition to the photos being taken under very different lighting conditions, different cameras (phone vs a DSLR) and whatnot. I hoped it was enough to show the difference.

Time usage

Thanks to the hecticness of everyday life I mentioned earlier I got lost with my timekeeping from the get go, both with my documentation and naming of photos. So I had no clue of what kind of time I had spent to be even remotely accurate. Most of my modeling sessions lasted 30-45 mins, so an average of 40 mins per crafting session shouldn't be too far detached from reality. The 270 WIP photos I had somehow divided into nicely round 16 groups, which would translate into something like 11 hours, but I was pretty certain this wasn't quite that rapid.

A handful of hours could be pretty safely dropped on top of the guesstimate and assume that bit more than two full workdays could be a decent timeframe for this tank. Of course the defragmentation of my time usage was suboptimal, as setup and teardown procedures ate an unreasonable chunk of time, and it was worse the less I got actually done. As we all very well knew, context switching was damn expensive.

Imagery

So here we were. Another new manufacturer has been tried out, a new paint scheme, and a detailing method. The strange thing was that I was suspiciously content with my doings yet again, and that was strange indeed. At least the photos left plenty of space for improvement, so I wasn't in the immediate danger of becoming totally delusional.

 

 

Next time we'd be again in the environments of the year 3050. But war. War never changes.

Panzer IV weathering strikes back

Oiliness, part 2

I wasn't quite done with the oil paints earlier, but I hadn't wanted to start making more of a mess on the tank before getting the tracks on. Now I got out of my self-setup holding area toward glory.

Exhaust pipe and track armour

This tank's exhaust pipe needed some life on it. Trying it the last time I wasn't too happy with the splotchy effect, so this time I decided to skip it. I made a mess of irregular splotches with my dark rust (ABT070) wash.

While I had some excess wash left, I used it here and there on the inside of the track armour. Unplanned, irregular patches of colour.

Already the next day I did the same but with fresher rust (ABT060 Light Rust) first as little obscure dots, which I then blended with a poking motion. In this photo the paint was still fresh, but it did show the variety already somehow, despite the reflections.

Now I had to let it sit still for a few days. Also, before cleaning up my wash, I used it very lightly on the track armour.

Earthy paint

I had already spread some earthlike thin oil paint on the lower parts of the Panzerwanne. Now I made some more of it and poked that into the holes and gaps in the tracks and on some select spots on the tank itself. Of the latter parts I blended the stuff pretty heavily, as I didn't intend to leave clearly noticeable brown stains on the deck of my tank but to add tonal variety to the practically one-colour paintjob.

This rear shot now showed that I finally remembered to paint the rear reflector red (VMA 72710 Bloody Red). In the end that single bit would be the only glossy part of the build.

My final shot also showed the freshly painted light rust on the track armour. My actual goal with this photo was to get a nicer look at the freshyl earthified tracks.

The jack, highlights and flakes

Soooo yeah, I had forgotten the jack repeatedly, so now I build and painted it in short order (black primer, then dark grey) but the wooden handle didn't make it to this photo. As I wasn't smart earlier - or I thought I was and was gravely mistaken - it wasn't really installable with its neat clamps without multiple repaintings all around. The jack was going to just lie there on its own, on a fender.

For the wooden handle I used just one paint, AK1108 Hull Red, that I had used for wood before. I didn't intend to try the woodgrain on a lonely piece anymore and I recognized making this same choice before.

Gentle chipping and bolthead highlighing

I thought I'd do a few chips  only, and one of the best places for it was the track armour's steel bit. To get the first layer of these chips I mixed something like 40% of sand (VMA 71075 Sand(Ivory)) into some sandy yellow.

In addition to the steel bit in the front I made some scratches into the rear plate's Balkenkreuz box but not too many places called my attention for scratches. Somehow I remembered one of Uncle Nightshift's details and I used the same paint to highlight a bunch (read: all) of the topside bolts and whatnot, like those handles above the turret's side hatches and so on.

 

While the lighter bits were drying I mixed my well-liked dark grey + red for the deeper gouges and went for it. There weren't that many of these, I really didn't want to make a worn tank this time around.

In the front end I changed my mind a bit and made a few more markings after all, thinking that they were driving into things with the limited visibility they had. Still, not many of those, mostly to the easily stone-bumped things like the drive sprocket's protectors and the lower front edges. Maybe I was a bit overcautious compared to what may have been the everyday life in Northern Africa.

This felt like the paintjob was pretty much done now.

Dullcoat and satin touch-ups

After a couple of days for the paint to dry I applied varnish (AK183 Ultra Matt Varnish) to seal it for the final touches. These photos were taken before all of it was dry yet. The end was, again, near.

Both the red reflector and the driver's periscope's visible glass part (where I didn't paint a lighter reflection along the bottom edge) got a gloss varnish (Vallejo 70510) treatment, and the unpainted metal pieces got some satin varnish (Vallejo 60522) with the thought that they'd reflect light a bit differently than the painted tank itself.

Olio macchinato

For some additional messiness I made some nasty-looking oil (ABT160 Engine Grease) and used it to make it look like someone spilled some oil over the jack, then on one of the roadwheel hubs, and as some crap flowing out of the small hatches in the side of the Panzerwanne. Just to add a bit of variety again.

Pigments to top it all

Now I used some light sand from my well-aged Tamiya Weathering Master A set with the applicator's brush in various places. I mostly used it in the lower hull and especially on the roadwheels. Did it stand out nicely or did I apply it wrong? We'd see later.

Very predictably I made use of my Carbon Black pigments with the thinner and used the very thin wash on the muzzle brake, on the MG tips and obviously also on the exhaust pipe.

Was it done now? What a disturbing thought, as I had just bought it a moment ago.