Jack, you know that once you finish this conversion, either Tamiya or Hobbyboss will release a nice 1/48 M4A4/Sherman V kit. That is always my luck on projects like this one.

BB, great work on the Sherman. Do you want me to use that pics or are you going to post some more.

stik - What about weathering the white invasion stripes? Would you use a dirty white wash on the stripes or simply use a black wash throughout the aircraft fuselage?

BS214: As SP said, the easiest way is probably to paint the white areas, then masking and painting the black.. If you do a black undercoat under the NM, just mask again and then spray the metallic.

I'm not sure about the weathering, I'd apply the gloss, then the decals, then overspray the decals with more gloss. If you use a sludge wash over this or something like Flory brand wash you should be able to wipe off the wash if you don't like how it looks.  

I would go with whatever wash you are using overall. BUT... remember that the aircraft may be much older than the stripes, if you are doing D-Day or immediately afterwards. So go very light on weathering them for then. If you are depicting a few weeks after then the would have had time to weather more and blend with the rest of the aircraft.

Thanks all for the comments!  Bish - I'd like to try getting some better pictures of it (I'm not the best at the picture thing but pretty sure I can do better) for posting but that's not going to happen 'til tomorrow.  I was out fishing all day and I'm too tired now.  It's a rough life but someone has to do it.

You're right stik - I do need to go light when weathering the stripes.

Gamera - I don't understand what NM means. New Metal?

Oh sorry- natural metal aka aluminum.

Gamera - would Aluminum be the closest match to Natural Metal (aka: Bare Metal Silver)?  I'll be honest - plain old silver doesn't look like right shade of silver I've been looking as a bare metal "look".

I use Alclad for aluminum aircraft. There are other ways but Alclad is the easiest for me. It's mainly an issue of getting the undercoat perfect (Alclad is too hot to use on bare plastic). If you have any rough areas or flaws they will stick out like a sore thumb under Alclad or any other aluminum paint.

I use their aluminum paint, you can use dark  or light  aluminum on some panels for more contrast. The polished aluminum is really shiny- more like a well-maintained airshow aircraft.

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stikpusher

Jack, you know that once you finish this conversion, either Tamiya or Hobbyboss will release a nice 1/48 M4A4/Sherman V kit. That is always my luck on projects like this one.

Here's my complete Tiger #131 heading to the Normandy Front. I tried to match a pic provided to me from Bish as reference and I think it came close. The kit is Tamiya along with Tamiya zim and acrylic paints. My wash was a mixture of Abteilung black and turpenoid.  The effects and pigments were all fro assorted AK products. Bish was a big help in providing a color photo of 131 and sometime in the future I'll do a diarama by adding some figures and building to match.

Very cool, jibber! 

Terrific job there Jibber, she looks pretty darn close to the photo!

I need to get cracking on my P-38 & P 47 to bomb your tank Jibber LOL

Great job Jib. Looks very real.

BB, no worries, I will wait out for some more pics.

jibber, that looks amazing. I am glad the photo was of some use. I think you have that pretty spot on. Now I wonder who will do his Dio first. Mine has been waiting 5 years now. I'll add a pic to the front page now.

I've spent some time trying to find a tank crew stationed at these positions in the photo. Once I do I have a good idea for a dio. Thanks for the reviews.

This one's done!  Finally.

Bish - Please use whichever picture you think is best as the final one.

Ok BB, done.

BB & Jibber, thanks for much for taking part in the GB and getting us off to a great start. I do hope you guys will stick around, and maybe even join in with more builds if you have the time. I know there's a lot of great GB's going on at the moment, so I am sure we will see more of you guys on some of those.

One suggestion for the both of you if I may. For your photo's, especially those of your completed builds, I would suggest a plain background, a piece of blue or white card is ideal. I only started doing this myself at the end of last year. But it can make a real difference to your pics if there are no distractions in the background.

Will do, I was more worried about lighting than setting. My mistake.

BB, personally I like the third pic. It shows the nice shading, accents, stowage, tracking and the figure. I think it's a great build.

Duly noted.  Am looking around here for something white and not finding anything . . .

No mistake at all jibber. I was doing my photo's that way for years until someone pointed it out. I find taking good pics much harder than building the model. But there have been some good tutorials on here about taking good model pics which I have found very useful