1,000 Roadwheels - 2009

 Gettin closer to earning that stripe.

Oh man, I want one of THOSE!!!!

Fantastic work, Mobious!

Mike

PS: StuG IV is in the detail phase, i'm still wating for my zim to arrive, and I just scored a Tamiya L70 on eBay... Today I'm painting my Merk for the IDF which is over in a couple of days, it remains to be seen if I have enough air in my cylinder to get the job done.

I love that paint job

What colours did you use and what did you mask with.

 TD,Thunderbolt,Panzer88,Bish, first off thank you all for the very kind words.

 This kit has been a REAL BAER, though. the superstructure was warped 3 out of 4 sides. I had issues with the alignment of the drive train as well, not to mention "The Floating Roadwheel" syndrome. I was planning on using silly putty to mask the hard edges, but all the shurtzen brackets posed a problem. They're epoxied on but I've had a couple break lose. Probably the oils from my greasy panzer building fingers made for a poor bond. I decided to use a method that I'd used before on a previous GB project, the LWS from the Service and Supply GB. I began by painting the base yellow then freehanded with an airbrush the green and brown. Followed by hand painting the "Hard Edge". After this I then followed up by airbrushing tonal variances in the greens and browns which helped blend the hand painted and airbrushed applications together. As for the colors they're all mixed, but the base colors are from the 70108 Panzer Colors set by Vallejo. The Vallejo paints level amazingly well. Ol'Stumpy is being fitted for a few skirts right now and baggage. BTW, the PE part that entered the time/space vortex and has taken up residence with Ol'Stumpy again. Thanks again for the positive comments.

Mobious i have been takeing a keen interest in camo patterns, especially for the late war vehicles, mainly to get some ideas for paper projects. I really like how yours has come out, i might try that method instead of putty. And i really like the look of the colours, the green and brown especially.

Whats with the road wheels, i notice the front four on each side are not the usually Pz IV type.

Holy smokes Mobious...that is HOT!

Great great job on that camo. What sort of thinning ratio did you have to use to get it to blend so well?

So I mentioned a while back banging out a 1/72 Jagdpanzer IV after being highly motivated by Wingy's diminutive build. Finished the majority of the assembly while watching The Masters last weekend, finally got a chance to throw some paint in it's general direction last night. Couple of pics:

Done a bunch of ambushed stuff lately, so I'll probably go with one of the green/brown schemes from the top pic. Better make up my mind soon...spraying it tonight! Bottom one is after a black primer coat, then a custom (read:highly lightened for scale) mix of dunkelgelb in the relevant areas.

Comments? Ideas? Anything? 

WOW! I realy realy realy like your paint pattern Mobious!

Some GREAT looking stuff here gents. Here's a few more pics to show my progress.

First up is the Panzer IV Schmallturm, this one is really testing my modelling skills. There's lots of putty being used and sanding to fix all the bad fit spots or bad resin casting and scratch building parts to replace damaged parts.

Next up is the old Dragon Panzer IV Ausf. J Late using a little more photoetch than I'm used to. Each of those little brackets that are on the model consisted of 4 little pieces with lots of bending, lots of smoke came out of my ears during that session.

 Hey detailfreak, I was planning on an urban setting for the mobile pillbox, maybe some broken bricks and rubble on the front and dirt. I did pick up a set of ostkettens though, inspired by that awesome PzIV you built.

 Bish, the first sets of roadwheels are steel. I've only seen these on Late production Jagdpanzers and Sturmpanzers. I think they were originally developed to reduce the wear on the first four sets of roadwheels due to added weight of these vehicles. The standard late war PzIV weighed in at 25 ton while the Sturms at 28.5 ton, and the Jagd's at 25.8 both nose heavy. The reference pic I have looks to be a remanufactured H chassis with just the first 4 sets replaced.

 thanks dupes for the comments. Just the edge was hand painted. I thin "brush" paint quite a bit, not as much as air, but it is heavily thinned. I don't have a formulae, just 2 spots on my palette. One for paint, One for thinner. I thin the paint, then thin everytime I reload the brush to maintian consistency(?). I thin with a 50/50 mix of water and Tamiya X-20A thinner. The thinner seems to slow the drying time just a bit. A jagdpanzer in white wash would be unusual and cool, i've always liked the ambush schemes, the kind of element these vehicles were often fighting from. Anyway you decide, it's looking great. OBTW, that Hetzer in Ambush colors looks awesome. Very nice!

 Thanks again for the positive comments

 Hey Stickman, Thanks for the positive comments. I just noticed the star antenna will have to be redone. I only have four legs fixed when there should be five. Oops! Thanks dupes.

 Panzer88, I have no idea how you can build more than one at a time. Both are looking great. If tried to build more than one at a time I would end up like a calf at the milking barn, "Utter Confusion". Nice work on both. How were the castings on the Small Turm PzIV? The side bulges were for optics, correct?

dupes: ...that thing looks familiar.  Dang that PE must be tiny!  Looks good so far, the airbrush work is superb! Remember on the 1:72 builds to throw a penny or someything in the pic's for scale reference!  I don't think we all realize (or appreciate) the difficultly of that scale....

SMJ - that PE is super tiny! I'll be sure to get out some pocket change for the next photos. Will try to get one later today - sprayed the green and red last night....came out really well as far as I can tell!

Panzer88 - dang! Two at a time! Now that's dedication. Both look really good...eagerly awaiting the painting stage. Refresh my memory here - how are you going about the schmallturm conversion?

MGMikael - too late to get in? No way! Build like mad until the end of '09! Glad to have you...let me know what you plan on building. 

dupes 1/72 armour kits have deffinatly inproved since the Esci kits i used to build many moons ago. Thats looking good.

Are you keeping tabs on how many road wheels we have completed towards our 1,000 mark

You know, I haven't been. This is the much more "relaxed" of the two GB's I'm running (hosting, organizing...whatever) right now. At some point I'll go through the whole thing and do some sort of summary. I know there's already been a lot of stuff completed - a lot more than I thought for so early in the year!

Definitely a very motivated crowd.

Thanks guys. I think that I'm pretty close at throwing some paint on the Schmallturm, but still have some more pe to do for the Panzer J.

Mobious-The castings weren't that bad, the turret has some bubbles that had to be dealt with along with bottom back of the turret wasn't totally cast or in other words missing. I had to build it up using putty and sanding,sanding and more sanding. The resin replacement for the top of the hull was warped and didn't want to fit more putty and sanding. But the detail on the resin IS very good,but very fragile too. I broke  some parts, some I could glue back , others I had to rebuild, like the area around the drivers hatch. And yes the bulges were for the optics.

Ahh yes, so I snapped a couple of update pics of the mini-Jagd (to include one with some pocket change!). Looks something like this:

The decals haven't been sealed and flatcoated, hence the still shiny-and-blotchy look there. That will be fixed later today, as well as an overall coat of some highly diluted dark yellow/buff in order to tone things down a bit and to tie everything together...followed by attachment of tools, tracks, and skirts.

More to come!

Dupes -- I must give these Braille-Scale beasts a whirl, they have great potential! Yours look fantastic! Did you really airbrush those camo patches? I get the feeling I'd trigger the AB and there would be a big circle of rotbraun with a tank in the middle of it!

My zimmerit arrive yesterday and I've done a couple of experimental pieces, it looks like it'll be pretty straightforward zimming the StuG IV. I'll get the bits onto the right side of the superstructure and take a progress pic.

Cheers,

Mike

Airbrushed indeed, sir! Just make the paint VERY thin - I'm going to say 30% paint to 70% thinner - and dial the pressure way back, probably to 10psi or so. Then make sure you keep the tip of that needle super clean to ensure a smooth spray pattern.

Easy as pie!

Thanks man! 

Gulp! I'll give that technique a shot, but the experiments I was doing last year with low pressure and super-thin paint were spattering all over the place... The technique I found worked (on my Tiger for Big Cats) was to thin the paint somewhat over the odds, then push the pressure sky-high instead. Airbrushing is a constant state of experimentation, though, and I'm game for any technique!

Cheers,

Mike