Colour of spare track links?

[Fifer54]

Hi, Guys!

As a mainly wingy-thing modeller, can I pick the brains of all you treadheads (oops) armour modellers?

I'm getting close to finishing a 1/72 Italeri M4A1 Sherman for the Sherman STGB. I've modified the hull to represent a wet-stowage Sherman (thanks for the gen, Sgt. Squarehead!) and as I study photos of Shermans for reference I see lots carrying

lengths of spare track links draped about the hull. Would these track links always/usually be new, unused links, or would crews salvage links from damaged or otherwise unserviceable tanks?

If the tracks were new, what colour would they be? (Other than picking up dirt, dust & mud along with the rest of the tank!).

Sherman tracks appear to me to be bare metal with a rubber pad on the running surface, so would rusty steel with a black facing be appropriate? And if salvaged tracks were used, then a bit rustier and the black worn and discoloured?

Thanks in advance, fellas, I'd like to get this right to the best of my (meagre) ability.

Oh, and while I remember (like a sieve these days!), can anyone suggest a cheap and readily available source of 1/72 Jerrycans?  I see lots of pix of Shermans carrying a jerrycan strapped to the nearside headlight (apparently) and I'd like mine to do the same.

[Kingsman]

This is something of a can of worms, because too many people have got used to painting tracks the wrong colour.  Lots of rust and graphite.

 

Tracks used as additional armour would almost certainly be salvaged, either from wrecked tanks or from old tracks that had been replaced.  They were not necessarily from the same tank type.  You often see Shermans draped in Churchill links, which were much more substantial than the Sherman types.  Conversely, I've seen Churchills with Sherman tracks on the turret sides.

 

Colour-wise, the base metal used on all British tracks and the all-metal M4 types was a high-manganese steel.  In its virgin state this is a goldy-brown colour: look at the worn spuds in the photo below.  Not a hint of the silver or graphite commonly modelled.  And it doesn't rust easily because of the manganese content, even after decades, but does seem to weather to a browny-grey colour.  A brown shade like this would be appropriate, plus appropriate dust and mud.  These are worn T62 tracks on a museum Sherman, a type very common on M4A4s in particular.

 

 

Rubber-padded track types seemed to use a softer steel alloy because the rubber acted as the wearing surface.  Like those on the M3-based Yeramba below.  They did rust.  But were less effective as applique armour.  And less common than all-metal types once US rubber imports from the Far East had been cut off.  Each tank set needed almost a ton of rubber.

[Seahawk]

15 hours ago, Das Abteilung said:

 

Glad to see that.  It's 30-odd years since I finished a tank model but I always used Humbrol 173 Track Colour, though I believe that the Track Humbrol had in mind was originally Railway rather than Tank.

 

https://www.humbrol.com/uk-en/173-track-colour-matt-14ml-enamel-paint.html

 

[Fifer54]

Thanx, guys, that's been REALLY helpful . . .

[Soeren]

Thanks for this clarification on track metals. The Pazer aces stuff by vallejo is a brownish gray. The humbrol stuff in the link above looks brownish as well, or am I mistaken?

[Seahawk]

1 hour ago, Soeren said:

 The humbrol stuff in the link above looks brownish as well, or am I mistaken?

No, you're not: it's a slightly greyish brown as well - and not as dark as it appears on my monitor.  The old colour 170 Brown Bess was an acceptable alternative but has been discontinued.

[Kingsman]

I don't actually have either of those colours among my 1,300-odd paints.  Why do you never have the colour you want ...........  I don't use enamels any more.  Time to stop inhaling volatile hydrocarbon solvents..........

 

The colour swatches on screen for the Vallejo PA colour 70304 Track Primer vary tremendously.       I must get hold of some.  Trip to Antics tomorrow ..............

 

At the left hand end of the scale we're not far off weathered manganese out of the bottle.  The T62 tracks I showed would have a touch more brown in, I suggest.  British tracks might have a touch more grey, probably due to alloy composition differences.  Even allowing for differences in dirt, there is a remarkable consistency to British track link colours over time.  Having said this, there are differences in Centurion tracks - some of which are very dark but still not rusty after years in the open.

 

Tortoise.   A10 Cruiser.   A13 Cruiser.   Cromwell. 

 

Churchill.    Centurions.    

 

Canadian versions of Sherman tracks seem more prone to rust, but AFAIK track types other than CDP were supplied from the US.  But with so many suppliers and inevitable variations in material quality and differences between cast and pressed/riveted designs I suppose this is likely, even inevitable.  What we really lack of course are reliable period colour photos.  B/W tells you nothing.  But I keep coming back to the fact that manganese tracks will NEVER wear to a silver or graphite colour: the metal just isn't those colours.  Likewise WW1 tracks, which were made from pressed hardened plate, are a dark brown colour all the way through.  Rubbing graphite or gunmetal pigment on them is just wrong.  Char B and other pressed-plate designs were similar in colour.

 

Ram tracks: rustier.   These are unusual links in that they seem to be the steel-faced but rubber-backed T74 type.  Spud shape is wrong for either of the T54s, unless it's a Canadian-made variation.

 

CDP Canadian-made tracks on a Grizzly.  Much more the "classic dark brown" look after years out in the open. 

 

For completeness, WW1 tracks.  Like many preserved tanks these have been painted black at some point, but you can clearly see the base metal colour on the spuds.  Brown: forget the lighting reflection sheen.  102 years old and no rust to speak of.

[Soeren]

the track primer PA is a lighter brownish gray, but thinned and spraye onto black background, it is much darker. Not as brown as you might wish for. But that would be amendable most likely. The centurion at the museum shows some steel sheen on the bare link at least.

[Kingsman]

That's a reflection trick of the light, which makes the true colour quite difficult to capture.  Flash will induce a lighter reflection, which is why I always try to bounce my flash and not use it directly at the subject.  Those are not all my own photos.  Although of course that effect is partly what we try to represent on our models, depending how much you buy into "painting for lighting". 

 

Highly worn metal surfaces will have a sheen and reflect the light: they've effectively been polished.  But that's no different to a high-gloss paint finish.  Just because a car is shiny doesn't mean we paint it silver or rub graphite all over it: we rely on the gloss of the paint or coating to reflect.  Yet because the wear point on tank tracks are polished and shiny we seem to default to one or other of those colours.  Polished gold is still gold.  Polished copper is still copper - if tank tracks were solid copper you can bet your life we wouldn't be representing wear with silvers or graphite.  And polished manganese steel is still the goldy-brown colour of manganese steel.  Polished hardened plate, whether face hardened or RHA, will still be the brown colour of that metal.

 

The question is how best to represent that.  Base colour is straightforward: it's just a colour, albeit metallic.  A question of mixing.  The polished wear is much more troublesome.  A varnish to give sheen just won't look right.  And if you've applied mud and dust etc and then want to represent the worn bare metal spuds peeking through then you need something of colour.  Drybrushing with the base metal colour is a good start, much better IMHO than silvery shades or graphite: at least it's the right colour.  Of course if your tracked vehicle is depicted in a muddy environment it doesn't matter as the mud will probably cover everything, just leaving the inside wear to worry about.  The roadwheels, idlers and sprockets will do a very good job of squeezing the mud off the inside contact areas.  Light dust and softer sand is less likely to stick to polished metal surfaces, as in the recently-towed Type 69 below.  In a gritty dusty environment you will find crushed grit on the contact points and the contact abrasion will continue.  Look at these in-service Merkava tracks: the 2 on the bottom are the same type and composition of track but in different light and on different surfaces.  The rightmost one is on concrete.

      

 

I was hoping to find metallic dry pastels in artists' materials but it seems they don't exist.  I found metallic oil pastels but I'm not sure those will work for rubbing-on.  Haven't tried it yet.  I have tracked down several shades of metallic pencils under the Derwent brand and I have hopes that a mix of ground "leads" from these might work.  Again, I haven't tried it yet: they only arrived this week.  As my current workbench, and probably the one after that, is WW1 I will be looking at that effect before I come back to The Manganese Conundrum.

 

Anyway, the bottom line is that I'm not trying to force anyone else to do - or not do - anything regarding representing track wear.  I do believe it's something that not enough attention is paid to, and I plan to experiment to see if I can come up with something that is to my eye more representative of manganese steel tracks.  We agonise over just the right shade of Dunkelgelb or OD, but seem to fail to pay equal attention to the colours of track metals.  The Tortoise was a first attempt, but not quite right.

  

[Graeme H]

On ‎25‎/‎01‎/‎2018 at 00:36, Seahawk said:

Glad to see that.  It's 30-odd years since I finished a tank model but I always used Humbrol 173 Track Colour, though I believe that the Track Humbrol had in mind was originally Railway rather than Tank.

 

https://www.humbrol.com/uk-en/173-track-colour-matt-14ml-enamel-paint.html

 

Oh, really, I just bought some thinking it was for armour, but that makes sense, but as you say, why not