Armour modelling pointers sought

[jamieduff1981]

Hello all,

I'm after some advice from experienced armour modellers if anyone's willing. I'd like to think I was able to avoid humiliating myself with aircraft and ship models but have never, ever built a tank.

Now I have a fairly pressing need to get one built. It need not win any competitions, it just needs to not embarrass me - or rather, it needs to show off the paints nicely.

I've gone for Tamiya's late Jagdpanther (the same as this):



mainly because it's in a 3 colour camoflage scheme which shows off more colours.

The thing is that I could work out how to paint and assemble everything slowly but I'm pressed for time and don't want to waste any needlessly. Our first trade show is at the end of April and I've got tonnes of other stuff to do to be ready for then.

If anyone can offer any general advice on temporary assembly, camoflage painting, disassembly, detail painting, reassembly, weathering type steps you usually follow for armour I'd be very grateful.

In lieu of anything else to guide me I'll probably dry assemble the hull to paint the camoflage and paint the wheels and gun on the sprues.

[jamieduff1981]

Prolex-UK said:

Are you looking to show the jagdpanther?

I am half way through doing one myself. It's a late war version so base coat is the green. They left the factory like that with the unit doing camo either spraying or using a brush

Will you be weathering it ?

Hi there. Yes that's the intention. I'd like to do a decent OOB build with some weathering. I'll park it next to the Tamiya Spitfire I posted on here recently as well as one of my battleships.

We have a little paint company and would like to just have an aviation, naval and armour point of interest on the trade table to show from a distance that we cover all three without having to come up and read the colour charts or paint names.

Would you suggest just spraying in Dunkelgrun and then freehanding the camo with a fine nozzle or soft masking or what?

Any thoughts on what to paint when during assembly?

[jamieduff1981]

dr_gn said:

I don't understand - why do you want to temporarily assemble it, then disassemble it, then re-assemble it again?

Well I don't really want to. I just want to make sure the dispruptive pattern camo lines up across all the major components whilst simplifying the detail painting as far as possible - that's why I'm asking veteren armour modellers how they usually go about it

[jamieduff1981]

That's a great help gents, thank you. The tracks were something I had been concerned about but I think I know where I'm going now. Is there any particular knack for painting the rubbery Tamiya tracks?

And PVA could be a good should Doc, thanks Use it all the time on warships so have a ready supply.

I'll get started on this this evening.

[jamieduff1981]

I agree. It looks better / more realistic if applied neatly and then carefully messed up than it does applied at freehand at 35,48 or 72x zoom.

[jamieduff1981]

Not sure - but after the Battle of Britain the Germans seemed to focus a great deal of effort in to developing vomit-inducing colour schemes. Well, they went through a period bland greys then just tried to fight back with minging colours!

A bit like their cars which were all grey until last year when they turned metallic brown.