1/35 Tamiya Cromwell Build Log Complete

Here's my rendition of Tamiya's splendid 1/35 Cromwell done for the Finescale D-Day Group Build. I do a plane-AFV-ship cycle and figure that if I don't push the envelope a little that I'll get nowhere with any of the genres. So I spent most of my time involved in painting and weathering techniques new to me that might be of some interest to others.

KIT: Short section here. A lot of armor buffs are not Tamiya fans, but even reviewers at Perth and Missing Lynx gave excellent review to the Cromwell. No disagreement from me. I found the detail quite good and the fit excellent. (I think this came out around 2000 and should not be thought of as one of the veteran models that once held electric motors. Part count was about 200 but there were none left over.) After the kit was over I remembered that I had the Eduard PE for the kit but, because I kept on the Normandy hood on the rear, none of it would have been visible. I measure the quality of a build on the amount of filler and CA required. I built this kit with Tamiya's liquid cement – and the complete lack of difficulties was almost hard to deal with. I've considered exchanging a couple of my other 90's vintage Tamiya armor kits for DML – no longer. Even the tracks (which I though had adequate detail as they stood) were no problem – the Cromwell was one of the few tanks having a full Christie suspension and had almost no sag. And I knew they were going to get some proper weathering. I had mud flaps for both front and rear to hide sins but left them off. This may be the best kit I've built.

Painting.

I let Mike Rinaldi act as the muse for this kit. Rinaldi's very interesting “Tank Art” volumes illustrate his impressive skills. You have to think on your feet though. In both volumes after introductory chapters he employs his battery of techniques at a series of individual builds. Rinaldi however hasn't reached the end of his road so tricks and tips were modified, changed entirely or eliminated depending upon the kit examined. So I felt free to pick from here and there. Although I think Mig Jimenez could make a wonderful tank with color crayons, Rinaldi's efforts are very impressive and he often marches to a different drummer. It wasn't always easy to keep up.

Started the kit with Vallejo acrylic primer, stuff I really like. It probably does prefer an overnight cure (it's not needed) but I think it's worth it because when ready it's tough as nails and has the perfect texture for a primer. And it's easy on the nose – an important factor for me because I don't have a booth. I then coarsened the texture with glue/putty more than I normally would but, I'm glad to report, just a bit of it survived the entire painting/weathering procedure so I found the right amount.

Then came the modulation, but Rinaldi style. First was a blast of Golden carbon black of varying intensity over the entire kit – beneath the hull was turned to coal. I'll be doing this from now on because it really amplifies shadows later. I'm a color junkie and will squander hours looking for the right hue even though it rarely makes much difference. The target in question is “SCC15” the Brit rendition of olive drab which was similar but not the same as ours. Rinaldi wants the base coat done with Tamiya – I used a 50/50 blend of XF 58 (olive green) and XF62 (olive drab.) When thinned with Gunze Mr. Levelling Thinner Tamiya is the best paint on the planet to use with an airbrush and it laid down splendidly. Rinaldi advised using a water based acrylic for the modulation which in my world means Vallejo Model Color. (Odd really. AK, AMMO and I think MIG sell “modulation” paint kits that employ repackaged Vallejo Model Air. If you played it straight, no paint equals Tamiya at the light coat, thin viscosity, low psi airbrushing required for modulation. I assume these are commercial arrangements as Jimenez, Adam Wilder, Ian Hamilton and others have had connections with Vallejo in the past, although each calls for Tamiya for a base.) I used Model Color 889 (olive drab) and 924 (Russian Uniform) and progressively lightened for three coats with Model Color 971 (green gray or sky) and white. Here's what we were left with:

Rinaldi does not segment his builds into predictable categories – reminds me of ship building. So he's thinking of a major weathering step built into the modulation. He calls it “lacquer thinner reverse dry brushing.” The aim here is to take color off, not put it on. Now you can see why he wants water based Vallejo on top of solvent based Tamiya. You take a brush, dip into Tamiya lacquer thinner and remove almost all of it – nearly dry. Then start brushing delicately in areas that get wear. Rinaldi doesn't like a lot of chipping and wants to show wear by discoloration and I think he's right. I tried this on my last tank except that I used the Vallejo acrylic thinner he called for and – surprise – it took off Vallejo too quickly. (You could use it, but with even more care.) Vallejo, however, doesn't react quite the same to lacquer thinner – although Tamiya would. And slowly I started adding areas around the model that were discolored. This was a very good technique for a D-Day Cromwell because the tank would have been pretty new and allied tanks had more robust paint jobs than did German. But the grime, wear and dirt would have been there even after short use (D-Day vehicles would have seen extensive training exercises and had saw heavy action during the entire Normandy campaign). So if you look at the surface of the kit, especially near hatches, the engine etc, most of the dark coloration comes from “reverse dry brushing” and not staining.

Rinaldi doesn't use clear on prior to weathering because he wants a matte surface for filters and oils. Model Color are satin, but I thinned them with matte medium so we had a mildly satin finish. On Rinaldi advice out came from Vallejo Acrylic Washes. Great news for me. I've been using these products for basic washes for some time. (If anyone doubts the possibility of weathering a tank with no solvent products at all, check YouTube for the “acrylic weathering techniques” done by Mig Jimenez himself.) Rinaldi doesn't seem to like enamels and I don't either. Anyway, I thinned some Sepia Wash and used it as a filter. Did the same with black/gray. Worked great. The next stage I designed myself. First I gave the kit a good covering of Pledge/Klear and let it cure overnight.

With a nice satin finish it was time for decals. Decals and I are not friends and I was looking at dropping a star right on top of a ventilation fixture on the turret. My last build was a Revell Ju-52 which was great fun but had masses of irregular surface that needed decals. So I tried a technique pushed by Finescale editor Aaron Skinner and readied the target area with a puddle of Pledge and then dropped the decal into it which left me a little time to move things around. When it started to dry, I brushed the decal gently and it smoothed out very well and creates a kind of layer of adhesive under irregular surfaces. When dry, I used a hobby knife and cut around the curves in the part and the result was very satisfactory. Then I broke out the Com.Art paints for pin washes. These are acrylic also, but act very differently than standard model paints. The black and smoke colors I use are transparent and work well for a pinwash and panel wash. It's very easy to remove the stuff it there's too much. It also gives a kind of grainy texture that has me thinking of grime and lubricants. (I use “old oil” and gloss varnish to create oil stains.) And because it comes off, it's a good “aggressive” filter. I added a couple of different shades of green (some toward olive drab, others toward dark green) on broad surfaces. It's quite subtle. Then come the oils. Rinaldi uses oils a lot but not the way I'm used to. I've used oils to “dot fade” surfaces – put very small dots of oils on the model, wet a brush with spirits and pull down but don't really mix. Rinaldi uses it more like a paint. You use sepia, burnt umber, or yellow/black (that's mine – instant olive drab) and put it on to detract or emphasize a shadow and always look for a place to pull down for some streaking. It worked well. I finished the hull and turret with black, sepia and gray Com.Art streaks. I did some chipping, but very little. Here's what it looked like after the Rinaldi treatment and before pigments:

Time to look at the wheels and tracks. A while back I did a kit in the style of Tony Greenland who was one of the leading armor modelers about fifteen years ago. Tons of dry brushing, subtle metallic great emphasis of clean build. The guy made incredible models. But, outside of shading, he ignored weathering saying he modeled tanks but not the mud they fought in. It was about this time that Jimenez, Wilder and some others began the “Spanish school” which made evoking the “mud they fought in” a central part of AFV modeling. All to the good in my view even if it leads to some excess especially (again in my view) in chipping and shading. (Who's to say. A fine modeler on Armorama said the “real world” was boring and enjoyed putting WWII into technicolor. Rinaldi, to my eyes anyway, makes some of the most realistic armor models I've seen.) But Greenland and the Spanish agreed that the above the hull and below it should be treated as almost different models. And so I did.

Although the wheels were not put in place until late, they were painted carbon black like the entire tank below the fenders. (Made it easy to paint the black – I was actually painting the green instead.) A light base was put on but everything was very dark. Pigment time. I really like Rinald's approach to pigments. (It's actually very close to that used by Mig Jimenez in his acrylic weathering video noted above.) A kind gent on Armorama gave me a link to a 4X4 club in Normandy so I get get a nice look in modern color at the dirt and mud colors in the battlefield. Normandy is one of the most fertile areas in the temperate zone so the soil runs toward a lush brown. It's hot there in July but soil would be denser than that in the Ukraine. So we're looking at a dense soil that wouldn't look like wet mud but would certainly be visible. I used burnt umber, sienna and ocher Sennelier pigments (cut with some MIG Panzergrau) to build up a pigment surface underneath. To do this you use “fixer” - turpentine would do fine, but I had some MIG and used it to make progressive layers of different hues. To make things interesting you throw in some “fixed” with ISP (that's what MIG's “thinner for washes” is) – gives a different texture and color. Used something very similar on the wheels but also employed some acrylic resin as a fixer. Each wheel was weathered individually, one thing the camera doesn't pick up as well as I'd like. Along the way each got additional pinwashes, acrylic washes and oil washes. I painted the tracks with earth color acrylics and then built up a pigment layer. I wanted it to fill in most of the empty space but not to look like coarse mud. The photo below gives you an idea of what I was thinking of:

After the pigments went on I was pretty happy with the build. It was very tempting to call it a wrap especially as I'm looking a ship for the next project and they're never easy.

But couldn't leave it well enough alone even though many Cromwells fought with no additional camo of any kind. However, I was interested in the webbing wove with the “hessian tape” that appeared on many Brit photos. (Everyone used webbing of some kind.) There are lots of photos of the stuff and some brave attempt by modelers to evoke the effect by intermingling tape and bits of webbing. Unfortunately those techniques don't capture what the stuff looked like – but what did it look like? Best to start with what is for. From what I can tell the webbing has used above all to cover the vehicle while at rest to protect it from air reconnaissance or artillery spotters.

Sometimes it was left partially in place while the vehicle was running and then it broke the surface and created a camouflage effect. Here's a description I got from a kind gent on Armorama who apparently served with British forces in the Cold War:

“Having used many of these old 'soccer' style nets still being issued back in the 60's, we were often having to 'revamp' the scrim as the older nets, especially in WW2 were very spartan (thin) when it came to the strips provided within a new net. The added scrim strips were cut from old Burlap/sacking or undyed issued rolls. Then they were painted/dyed different colors and weaved into the netting to help and compliment the lackluster original. The key was that nothing was issued weaved in a universal straight line but in many twists and turns, almost cartwheel or zig zag style. Thickness was accomplished by folding when wrapping the net around the vehicle.”

So the stuff could be very loose or supplemented with extra cloth and turned into a gigantic sock. I think this Brit Sherman gives a very good look at what we want. Ditto with a post-war museum Comet:

As noted I wasn't impressed with the attempts to evoke the webbing. So I thought I'd put some webbing on the turret sides and the front so it would act as a camo in areas visible from the front and some of the side – areas I would have wanted distorted in Normandy where Tigers, Panthers, Panzer IV, Stugs, anti-tank guns, Panzerfausts and Panzerschrecks were found in abundance. Two web sites advised not using medical bandages so I bought some webbing from Verlinden. The stuff would work okay for a diorama, but the weave was so lose it disintegrated when cut. So I found a good medical bandage and soaked it in Com.Art and the results were perfectly good. I found it was easier to attach the web first and then apply the “tape” instead of doing that first. The nets would have been hung on wires or something that stuck out. I used matte medium for an adhesive because it was clear, matte and held on the webbing. However, it also allowed me to pluck out some threads to weave in the “tape.” Tamiya masking tape was recommended but I found it hard to maneuver and instead used very finely cut strips of cigarette rolling paper (haven't used that stuff in a few years) which is thin but very rugged. I painted it khaki before application but found it simple to touch it up with another shade that was darker than the netting but lighter than the tank. Sounds simple. Took three days. Here's what we had:

We could have called it a wrap here. But having already obscured a pretty good job of weathering with the web, I thought I'd obscure the web with foliage. Very few modelers put this stuff on. It is not easy, but especially in Europe where there were so many good places to hide, foliage of any and all kinds were used by all parties. (It was hardly unknown in Russia. The Germans had even greater reason to employ it if it could hide their vehicles or positions from Sturmoviks or feared allied “Jabos.”) I don't know how much good it would have done a tank in the open, but action during Normandy was frequently at point-blank range when units literally collided. In addition, for better or ill (mostly better once the allies learned to handle it) allied AFVs often found themselves on the defensive during one of the frequent and nasty German counter attacks. Foliage ran the range from zero to things almost bizarre. (I found a photo of a Panther disguised as a barn very effectively.) Here's a Cromwell crewed by nature lovers:

Overall I think the stuff looks pretty good. I've got a small army of late war German armor in the stash and I'm thinking of ways to emulate evergreens. I'm also going to get some leaf like material from Scenic Express – I would have liked it here, but this took long enough as it was. And I've some left over and it might come in handy.

Lastly I mixed some more pigments in with Tamiya A-20 thinner and gave the whole tank a little final dusting. I know a lot of modelers like to do that as an integral part of the weathering, but I think dust does a good job of emulating dust. And because it's thinned with A-20 it's easy to get some off. But there is no such thing as a tidy tank. Every tank at the front was dusty – every one.

Well, I threw everything at the wall and I hope some of it stuck. The one mistake I made, not for the first time, was not adjusting enough for scale. Weathering almost always darkens the vehicle. I don't think the problem is severe but I wish it was a little lighter. Live and learn.

Pics below.

Eric