Churchill

Sideskirts on. Now I have to decide which bits of the sideskirt rails would have caught the whitewash, maybe add a bit of rust, pop in a radio antenna and we're done.

Track colour I've read elsewhere on BM that tank tracks, or at least Axis tank tracks, were made of a manganese steel that is a grey/brown colour all the way through. There is therefore no silvery steel colour anywhere on the tracks, even on worn or recently chipped surfaces. The steel is also rust resistant, so any rust colour on the tracks will have come from the running gear. As no-one seems to be driving panzers around Sussex I've been unable to confirm this for myself. Fortunately, however, I had a training session in London on Tuesday which left time for a flying visit to the Imperial War Museum. There's no German armour there that I could see, but they did have a T34: That looks to me pretty much like the surface patina that any old lump of steel acquires over time, and I settled for reproducing it. After priming, the tracks were painted with about a 60:40 mix of rhinox hide (chocolate brown) and adeptus battlegrey (medium dark grey). This was glazed with thin washes of sepia and ogryn flesh (reddish brown) to add some depth, and a fuller wash of devlan mud (dirty grey) for shading. A fairly subtle drybrushing with calthan brown brought up the highlights. I add these paint details mostly so that I've got a record to refer to if I want to reproduce the effect. The tracks went on with a dab or two of CA, the cocktail sticks are there to hopefully add just a liitle sag. Need some whitewash on the drive wheels and idlers. Top view: Hmm, looks like I also need to get some paint in that gap between the mantlet and the top plate. So, a little tidying to do, then I'll get some mud on the tracks, then it's just attaching the sideskirts. Could be finished tonight or tomorrow 🏁 (the track pieces on the glacis and the rear were just painted dark brown with shading, but they were then coated with washable white so they're not a mismatch with the main tracks)

Quick question - what do you find best for matting it down again after the gloss coat? I used some Mig ammo matt varnish here and there on my build but it didn't make a lot of difference.

Among the many photos kindly shared by Mr @Ozzy in post #93 is one of the grave of Lt. H D Brotheridge. From the sign partially visible behind the gravestone it looks like perhaps he is buried where he fell rather than in a war cemetery but I can't tell, perhaps Ozzy can say. But his name seemed familiar and I found him mentioned in Antony Beevor's history of D-Day. Den Brotheridge was in the very first group of glider borne troops to take off for France. They were tasked with capturing two bridges before the Germans could blow them. Beevor says; "Within moments, the first men out of [Maj] Howard's glider had hurled grenades through the slits of the pillbox on the west side of the Caen canal. The rest of the platoon did not wait. Led by Lieutenant Den Brotheridge, they were already charging across the bridge [...] But by the time Brotheridge's platoon reached the other side, the German guards had got themselves together and opened fire. Brotheridge was mortally wounded from a shot through the neck and died soon afterwards." These stories need to be remembered.

No, I wouldn't fancy taking on a tiger in one of these. But the Boys was used effectively against panzer I's and II's, the soviet T26 (by the Finns), and the Japanese light tanks. Walt Disney produced a training film for it, which is worth a look The review has some good ideas, might be helpful with the tracks. I do mean to see if I can replace some of the bodywork with brass, rather than just thinning it. But I'll make my mind up about that when I get my hands on the kit.

It's been turned into the cutest little tank destroyer ever, hasn't it? I might change my mind when I start putting the tracks together - apparently they're individual links, which at this scale are going to be 3mm wide.

How about a Red Army bren carrier with a Boys .55in anti tank rifle substituted for the bren?

The wheels are on now, the drive wheels and idlers won't be fixed until the tracks go on. The running wheels are glued though, in the pic below they're resting on a craft knife blade to keep them aligned. There's a splash of Mig washable white on them, and I'll give them another griming wash or two, followed by a bit of mud. Visible in the shot is a diecast Matchbox Lesney M3 Halftrack, made from 1958 to 1967, which I'm restoring in between sessions on the panzer. Just the tracks, and attaching the sideskirts still to do. Finish line in sight!

There were a number of washes that went on before the mud, but all quite thin washes, so high points like the nuts and bolts were left relatively bright - I didn't even drybrush them. You can get the idea from the second pic in post #39. The mud went on last. If you use the mud recipe, make the sawdust with a razor saw and just use a pinch to add texture. HTH & KBO, Churchill.

Hi @Deon, you can see it in the flesh before then, just drop by some time. I've never been to the Lancing show, but I don't see why not. I found their website, it looks fun. I think I'd want to base it if it were going on show, but I'm hoping to do that before the group build ends. KBO, R.

I'm not exactly 'in the know', but found this while I was researching my own build: I can't see the winter camo lasting on the tracks, I've read it was basically just chalk suspended in petrol. But if you mean the lengths of spare track attached to the hull and the turret, then I've seen plenty of photos of them liberally covered in whitewash.

I've just seen your munitions schlepper in the gallery, so I'll consider that high praise coming from you.

More bits and pieces done, exhaust painted and rusted with weathering powders dusted into Citadel Lahman Medium - which I think is mainly intended for making washes, but dries to a good matt finish and holds the powders well. First layer of mud applied. I made the mud to a recipe from the PLASMO channel on Youtube: sawdust, gypsum (I used cheap DIY all purpose filler), PVA, pigment powder, and water. I've also done a little chipping, oil paint streaking, and weathering powder washes here and there. All new techniques to me. TFL & KBO, Churchill.

I thought the weathering of the interior was particularly good - my favourite part of a very impressive build.

Lots of 'bitty' stuff happening, like painting the tools and making latches for the insides of the turret schurzen doors etc. But the turret is now complete, schurzen permanently fixed, and 1251 now has her numbers hand-painted on, just like the original. The muzzle canvas looks a bit glossy, there's some matt varnish on there now. Well, I say finished - but then I look at the macros and see a few bits that can be improved...

Not enough light for pics? I want to see how you tackled the doors in the turret schurzen!

Am I right in thinking it's the same gun as the 88mm flak? I wonder if they carried any flak shells. I just finished reading Beevor's history of the second world war, and his books on Stalingrad and the battle of Berlin. I'm sure there's some references in there to tanks shooting at aircraft, and even warships firing their main armament at planes.

Are you using retarder to slow drying on the model, or just to stop it drying on the pallette? If the latter, try using a wet pallette. I use one for minifigs, and it was a revelation. You can buy one from an art shop, or make one in a shallow plastic box with a layer of wet kitchen cloth in the base, covered with a layer of baking parchment. Acrylics mixed on top of the parchment will stay usable for hours, or days/weeks if you stick a lid on. This also enables you to make a graduated mix of two shades and load your brush from different bits of the spectrum you made. With a dry pallette you need to keep making a new mix.

I was a bit optimistic in the last post about the detail still being fairly crisp despite all the layers. Looking more closely, the detail has been softened quite significantly. Worse, one of the layers, either the hairspray or the varnish, has collected in the various recesses, internal angles, and small gaps and has formed webs and bridges across them. The worst of these can be scraped away with the point of a craft knife. The axe on the right hand fender, which is a separate piece on this kit, looks like it's moulded on. Panel lines don't hold a wash the way I'd like. But this is a learning experience, and I can see how I'd do things differently next time. I've never used an enamel wash, but made one up from Humbrol black, earth brown, and thinners and carefully applied it only to the panel lines and other places I specifically wanted it to go. At first I was horrified at the way it diffused across the varnished surface. But then I discovered how easily it can be taken back, feathered, or removed altogether with a brush just damped with thinner. I will definitely work with enamel washes on a sealed surface again. Apart from that, I've added a canvas wrap to the muzzle brake with tissue paper soaked in dilute PVA and the finest wire I could find, and added white streaks to the inside of the schurzen using Mig washable white. The turret schurzen isn't fixed, just dry fitted for the pic:

I know just what you mean about 'for fear of stuffing it', @badger, I was very tentative with the white paint. I'm also a little worried about the number of layers that'll be on there. So far we have: Primer Dunkelgelb Washes Sealer Hairspray White Sealer Most of the detail is still pretty crisp, but in a few spots it's been detrimental. The hinges and inscribed panel lines on the transmission access panels on the glacis have definitely suffered.

Another angle... Also available in dunkelgrau.

If I'm running out of time with the Zvezda, can I make one of these?

I'm at the stage where I'm having to resist the temptation to put off working on the model because I'm worried about doing something to ruin the work already done. This is mostly because I'm using some unfamiliar materials and techniques. The answer is to do some experimenting off the model, or on the bottom surface where damage won't show. I've discovered that the solvents in hairspray rapidly disolve acrylic paints, especially when applied by brush. I've also been investigating the solvent resilience of various protective layers, including: Citadel rattle can varnish (robust); cheap floor polish from The Range (surprisingly good); and Mig Ammo matt varnish (non-existent). I wanted to do some shading/staining of the dunkelgelb before adding the winter camo, partly as a kind of pre-shade under the camo, and partly to get some colour into the bits that I mean the winter camo to miss, but which will be difficult to get at and weather without potentially spoiling the white. I started with a thin wash of a dark chocolate brown, but diluted it turned out to have a reddish tinge which looked quite wrong. Vallejo sepia wash however seems a natural shade for dunkelgelb, and mixed with some black it makes a good general griming wash. That was covered with Citadel varnish, before a quick blast with my daughter's hairspray. It's only supermarket own brand stuff but it does have added pro-vitamin B5, which as I'm sure you know is essential for authentic chipping on Axis vehicles. Then came a rather nervous spray coat of Tamiya white, thinned about 50:50 with Tamiya thinners. Odd that some acrylics have organic solvents and others are water-based. I probably should have given it a little longer to cure before chipping it, but I was pretty happy with the results in most areas. For the schurzen the white was applied only from above at a narrow angle, giving an effect as though thick whitewash had been dragged down the panels with a coarse brush leaving the recesses unpainted in places. The opposite effect, using a wash of thin paint to fill the recesses more strongly than the high points might be more authentic, but I can't tell from contemporary photos. Here and there I was over cautious in applying the white, and elsewhere took a bit more off than I intended, but once I've resealed it I can remedy both with Mig Ammo 'washable white camo'. Having experimented a little with this (you can see some on the turret in the first pic), I think it must be the sort of white acrylic ink that Mr @Badder has described in his impressive Nashorn build: once dried, you have a limited window in which you can gradually rub it back with a wet brush. I'll also use the washable white for a streaky finish on the inside faces of the panels. Thanks for reading, Churchill.

I've used a mobile only for posting to my WIP. I use Flickr rather than Imgur but I suspect it's similar. I copy the link to the image in the photo app* then swap back to the browser and just paste the link into my post. Nine times out of ten the link is automatically converted into an embedded image. The one time in ten that it doesn't work seems to be when my Internet access is a little slow. Hope that helps. Churchill. * in Flickr, I select just one image and click the share button. This brings up a menu of sharing options, the first of which is 'copy image url'.

In a lot of photographs, the muzzle brake is covered with a canvas wrap or bag. I might put one on my build. It would certainly make scratchbuilding easier. Just a thought.