Of course, after I had the base coat on, the upper hull slipped off the part holder and landed directly on the right rear tail light and guard.  The guard popped off, but didn't break.  The tail light was close to falling off, so I pulled it off and reattached it.

Looks good!  Are those the actual markings of his tank? If so, that's pretty cool. Also, I see you're muddying up the hull and suspension. Don't forget that the bogie housings, nose and especially the back plate / engine access doors and such would be covered as well. 

Cheers!

Ron

Looks good to me! If you have trouble getting the paint to adhere to the tracks you might just dab some 'mud' or 'snow' over the areas instead of repainting the flaked off areas. 

Snow on the ground is pretty easy. Just lay down some plaster and paint it like mud and add some static grass. Then sprinkle some 'snow' over it for a light dusting of snow. Or add the plaster making mounds for drifts, paint it white, and then add the 'snow' for a heavy load of it. 

Davja, Great work! I think the snow looks very good. Doesn't seem overdone to me, but you probably will want to put the tank on a base with snow on it and make some tracks in the snow leading up to its location. As far as the commander's cupola goes, I think the blue is too bright. There would be a hue to the glass, but not that much. I suggest painting over that with the olive drab you used on the rest of the turret to restart. Let that dry, then coat the openings with some medium dark grey flat paint. Let that dry. Then get a bottle of testors enamel dark green paint and let it separate. Draw off some of the clear enamel and then mix just a little bit of the green paint in it so that it's basically clear with a green hue to it. Dip a fine paint brush tip into that and touch that to the grey paint in the openings. This will give you a gloss cover over the grey that will look like glass and create the appearance of depth and the green hue in the clear coat will create the thick glass appearance. I do something similar with white and grey paint in clear enamel to create headlamps when the clear plastic pieces aren't provided with a kit. They look good to me, anyway! Barrett

Thanks guys.  This is the first model I've gone from start to almost finished in a long time.  There are several "in progress builds" in various stages piled up on an old computer desk I have in my hobby room.

Barret, I have some Tamiya clear green paint, thing that would work too?

Hey, Davja. The Tamiya clear green might work. I'd try it on a sample first to make sure it's still not too green or too bright. Also, is it glossy? If not, you may not get the slight relective value that you would expect glass to give. If you're going to weather the windows a little, though, that probably wouldn't matter. A little dust would prevent reflection anyway. Good luck and have fun. Barrett

It looks a little glossy to me.  I'll give the test piece a look tomorrow.

I think this looks a lot better than what I had before.  Thanks to the donor turret from the same kit that came in the Testors box, waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay back in the early 80s.  That's when a cousin gave me the kit.

Davja, Very well done. And I think that greenish tint looks more realistic than the blue. Do you like the appearance of depth that the clear coat creates over the grey? I think that's very nice. If you have the means, I suggest hitting the green with a little dust to tone down the green a little bit more. Congratulations.

I'll look into what I can come up with for some dust.  I still need to apply the final dull coat and was toying with the idea of a very light black wash.  I still have to add all the tools and the tow cable.  I've been procrastinating on those, lol.  But I do like the look a lot better.  On other models in the past, I used some old Pactra Signal Blue from the square bottle, to fake the glass look.  I still have that bottle, purchased from either the PX or a local hobby shop in Fayetteville, NC somewhere in the '89 to '91 time frame.

I like it! 

Nice job. This is the very same model that I used in my "The Last German King" diorama in this forum. I've noticed from other builders of this kit that I got different tracks. All in all this is a nice kit and you did a nice job.

Ok, I think I finally have this thing as done as I'm going to get it, barring any welcome and appreciated tips from this fine community.

I broke the kit tow cable while weathering it, so I cut the ends off and drilled them out.  Then I used some 8 strand picture hanging wire, had to pull 4 strands out so it would fit inside the holes.

I found some thread that was rope colored to use to hold the tarp and gerry can in place.

After exhaustive research, I've discovered that US tank crews used an early formula of gorilla tape to hold all the tools on.  They also used high powered magnets when available.

I had fun with this, relearning some things, learning new things from you guys here.  Though I am just a bit disappointed in the idiot that ran the airbrush and mixed the dull coat, because a combination of things happened.  Said idiot went overboard with the dull coat, and probably didn't thin it enough.  The end result I wanted was the top to look like the earlier photos in the thread, mainly because I think it was probably the best weathering job I've done on anything.

On the other hand, the dull coat error did give it that frosty, it's winter look. 

Yeah, dull coat is a funny thing, I've had it go bad and get all frosty. Sometimes if you overspray it with some gloss it will get rid of the frosty look. Still the frosty look fits with the rest of the tank here!

Thanks Gamera.

Now I need to get my 4th point of contact in gear and get the base done.  I experimented with some clay last weekend, using the old test bed model of this same kit from when it came in the yellow Testors box.