M3A1 Scout Build Update

I decided to give her an overall coat of Olive Drab factory paint and I'll put the desert camo over it. Hopefully it will provide some nice pre-shading.

The initial paint on the seat - Olive Drab with Khaki padding.

Finished with Desert Yellow seats and padding installed.

The cab seats.

Here's the dash all painted and weathered,

It's starting to look like a Scout.  Painted over the Olive Drab in the inside with Desert Yellow.  The color balance is a bit off.

Love your 8 Rad Castelnuovo, the weathering looks great.

Cheers

Tony

Eric, AK Interactive Afrika Korps Colors (AK 550) - Gelbbraun RAL 8000 - is AK 702. And Vallejo Model Color 70879 Green Brown (photo) if air-brushing use Vallejo Retarder Medium 70.597 so the tip does not dry out. Vallejo also has a surface primer RAL 8000 - German Green Brown. 

Another AK weathering product is a filter - AK-065 Africa Korps Filter and AK-068 Africa Korps Wash. Armor86. 

CN: Nice work! If you'd taken the photo outside sitting in a box of sand I'd swear it was the real thing.

David: Looks good! I've become a big fan of Silly Putty myself, just sticky enough to hold but not enough to pull stuff off.

Mike: Hmmmm, I've always used Tamiya XF-59 or the Model Master equivalent but I've heard the North Afrika paint wasn't the same as late war mustard yellow. With paint fading etc I'm not sure you need to get too close though.

Wayne: Yeah you're right- just she's a little more sloppy than most of the recent ones I've done. Nice work there on the truck or is it lorry- frankly I don't know the difference.

Put the wheels on the Crusader just after I took the photos, started on the decals last night.  

Dang, two finished builds already. Have to get my butt in gear! Great looking 8rad castlenuovo!

I've found a supplier in Aus, they stock the shade plus thinner and primers, so there should be no problem when it reaches the painting stage.

There's some construction left to go, including the scratched details phase. My next search is for ultra-thin brass strip for the jerry can rack. If I can't find anything suitable I can do it in plastic, though it won't be quite as strong.

Cheers, M/TB379

Castelnuovo -- great work, it really looks the part, dusty, scratched and chipped!

Jack -- aha! RAL 8020, I think that's it! Yep, the darker colour in the pics is probably down to light and vagaries of film. I did a quick search and AK have that shade in acrylic, I must see if I can track down a supplier. It looks to have the right hues of orange and brown around the yellow to match what I'm seeing in the photos and in Tony Greenland's book. He was using ranges like Compucolour, which no longer exist as far as I know.

Hopefully I'll be able to find an out of the bottle match, which will simplify things considerably. Many thanks guys!

Cheers, Mike/TB379

Eric, I haven't tried any of these but this is what I've read elswhere:

RAL 8000:

- Vallejo Model Color 879 (Green Brown) or Vallejo Model Air (?)

- Life colour UA-203

... and I don't think Model Master made their DAK colours available in acrylic, only enamel.

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-note, when looking for this info I came across RLM79, it was suggested using this instead of Model Master's version of 8020.

regards,

Jack

Good Grief. Another finished build. That looks sharp. I like the dirty look to it, which seems appropriate.

Cliff and David, you both are making excellent progress.

Thanks for the feedback on the paint. I'll go one further, is there any acrylic out there that doesn't need any tweaking? Model Master? Vallejo?

Mike, cool Bovington pics.  Like Greg stated, in all likelihood the museum staff were aiming for the second official desert colour (sandgelb RAL 8020) introduced in March 1942.  I wonder if the pics you linked are perhaps more redish due to the sun?

RLM 79 is actually a Luftwaffe desert colour, though it is possible if there were shortages that it might have been used - one of those situations of never say never.

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Gamera, Wayne and David - cool work guys, looking forward to more.

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castlenova -  definitely captured the scruffy look of desert vehicles, and I think you've also  the sandgelb colour happening with your build.  I think though the 20mm cannon were left unpainted, remaining in natural gun metal.

regards,

Jack

Here is my humble panzerspahwagen. Comments, jokes etc welcome

Mike, I believe that's the color.  I used it on a sPzAbt 504 tiger I.  Remember, that Bovington Pz IV is a museum re-paint.

Grey: is that stripe on your Bishop chocolate brown?  Your Biship's coming along nicely.

Pyrman -- do you mean RLM 79? I have a bottle of that, it seems just a pale yellow with none of the orange to brown overtones -- it doesn't look much like the RLM 79 one sees in illustrations, too light, and re the tank colour, even squinting real hard I'm not seeing much commonality with the shade in photos... I'll do some test spots and view in good light to make a more objective comparison -- thanks for the tip!

Cheers, Mike/TB379

Don, Really like how that Panzer III is turning out.

Gamera, You may think your Crusader looks sloppy but it looks good to me.

I actually got some painting done on the Bishop the past two days

First a coat of desert yellow

  Looking kind of boring right? Will fix that on the next step.Btw it took me longer to clean my airbrush then to paint the little guy

Get some silly putty...

And mask everything out.

Paint some brown and you end up with this.

  I'm happy with the way it turned out.

Next up painting all the little details and road wheels. Also I need to buy some oils to give it some weathering so it doesn't look so dull.

David

Mike: MM/ACRYL's sandgelb is your best bet to match Bovington's Pz IVD

Gamera

Anyway, this is what I've got so far. Kinda sloppy mix of colour modulation and pre-shading but I think she'll look better when weathered etc.

Used Tamiya Khaki for the dark, Yellow XF-60 for the mid-range, and Buff for the light shade on top. Not perfect but looks close enough for me. 

it's armour and supposed to look "sloppy". got most of the big piieces on my truck primed. foound some boggers on the cab that needed fixing. some were legit a couple were operator head space and timing issues. will play with playing with the engine though no one will see it. may get to try out my new SOTAR 2020 on this one.

Most interesting discussion, guys! Gamera, that looks great, I think it should weather up fantastic!

I'm aiming to replicate the paint scheme Bovington applied to their -IVD many years ago (it's no longer in this shade, I believe), and more and more I'm thinking it must have been a best-guess in-house mix, unless it matches an RAL code I'm not familiar with -- perhaps you guys will recognise it??? It's a shade suspended between browns and warm earths, with a subtle orange hue, let me see if I can load a photo or two here...

As you can see, it looks slightly different in each photo, which always makes visual interpretation dodgy. What do you think, guys? My instinct is to mix XF-64 Rotbraun with -- don't laugh! -- XF-15 Flesh...

I got the mufflers done as far as basecoat, and they'll be fitted after overall paint is complete, so my next step is to attach those external tools and fittings which were overpainted in the camo scheme. IIRC I still need to join the hull and permanently attach the stowage bin, then mask the axles and a few other points and she'll be ready for priming.

Cheers, Mike/TB379

PS: Don't be thrown by the long gun and stand-off armour -- this was a -IVD hull originally and they think it was used as a training article for mechanics, it was retrofitted with all sorts of stuff right up to Ausf. H standard, and that's the form in which it ended up reaching the museum. Maybe one day they'll backdate it to it's original service configuration!

Anyway, this is what I've got so far. Kinda sloppy mix of colour modulation and pre-shading but I think she'll look better when weathered etc.

Used Tamiya Khaki for the dark, Yellow XF-60 for the mid-range, and Buff for the light shade on top. Not perfect but looks close enough for me. 

Hey Eric wouldn't get to hard on yourself - it took me a year to finish the Tiger Tank last year in the Steel Cats GB and I've not started my entry yet, Pz IV 'Ausf D' - still working on the Armor Car GB - 232 RAD 8 . Don the Pz III looks great ... I also had a few issues with my sand bag placement and did a couple adjustments / modified to get them position.

As far as paints go - Tamiya colors - I've seen numerous color mixes with Tamiya paints like Jack call out above. I'm currently using Vallejo or AKI paints. AK Interactive last year introduced a few different paint sets matching different WW II periods - one I have been using is Afrika Korps Colors (AK 550) and it provides all the colors seen from DAK's beginning to the end. It includes Braun RAL 8020, Grau RAL 7027, Gelbbraun RAL 8000, Graugrun RAL 7008, Dunkelgrau RAL 7021, and a second Graugrun Opt 2 RAL 7008 (lighter tone of green).

I'm planning on finishing the 232 RAD 8 in an early DAK paint and will primer it in German Grey, then apply AKI mix before painting Braun (RAL 8020) and then rubber / wear off to show through the original grey.  Armor86

There's a number of Tamiya mixes suggested by modellers, but I found these two interesting:

 RAL 8000

Muster 10: 4xXF4+2xXF52+1xXF60

or

Muster 21: 4xXF4+2xXF52+1xXF60+1xXF59+1xXF49

I haven't tried them myself  - any volunteers?  If they look close to the Model Master swatch (which is considered quite decent) then it should do, considering these vehicles were quite dusty.

regards,

Jack

Don: Keeping looking better and better! Thanks for posting photos pre-primer so we can see all the PE and other extras you added.

Eric: Wouldn't sweat it, I'm a little embarrassed here that I never finished anything for my Japanese GB II I started a year ago...

I'll be most interested in the comments on this as I'll be doing Tamiya acrylics on this project (as on most). The shade will be the one the Bovington museum used on their display Pz. IV many years ago -- though whether it was accurate I'm not sure. It'll be mixed...

M/TB379

Yes, few excuses now other then total apathy. it's been a long year already. Maybe by next week I'll start up.

Question: What are your Tamiya paints of choice for an Afrika Korps vehicle?

tigerman

I still haven't started. 

You're not alone Eric-I did get started on another project today (end date is much sooner than this GB...) and was thankful that I was able to find most of my supplies after the move-I know that I brought everything....the only question is what box is it in?

Hope to start on the Sherman sometime in Feb-I have been watching and some great work being done here.

tigerman

I still haven't started. 

So, .....,  .... Start!!! 

I spent the day doing one of my favorite things...., grinding sprue stubs off of road wheels.  Even though it's PzIII, there are 44 wheels in all (including spares) and may have 4 attachments to sand...

To break the monotony, I glued on a few extra parts such as the sand bag armor...

I really like this resin kit, although it probably should be glued prior to adding the lights and klaxon.  I couldn't get a snug fit without potentially breaking off those parts, so I ended up cutting a few sand bags off, sanding the edges smooth, and fitting the parts to this build.  There is still room to add the accurate tracks between the front sand bags (to be added later).

Even so, there remained a gap between the sand armor and the placed armor plate which I filled with Aves expoxy putty. Hopefully, this will look like the sandbags themselves, but if not, maybe some sand spilling from the bags.  The bags on the turret fit fine.

I also added a jerry can rack to the rear from the Dragon PxIII ausfN kit.  In addition, the nicely coiled tow cables just looked too orgainized for an active war zone, so I left one cable coiled; the second will be added later in a position as if it was used and hastilly stored.

To be more realistic, I wanted the attached cable to sag in between its attachment points; this took a little CA glue and patience.  I like the outcome, don't know if it is really visible in this photo.

The antenna also had a molding error in my kit, so I scratch built a replacement with brass parts from my extra parts box and plastic rod.

I'm pretty much at the point to prime and start painting, if the weather will just warm a bit...

Don

Great badges, I really like the Rommel and Monty one in particular.

Cheers

Tony

I still haven't started. 

Great work guys!

Eric, Those badges are cool looking.

If all goes right today I'm planning to get a base coat on my Bishop today. Just need to prep a few parts for painting.

David

Tiny bit of progress, just peripheral, I lined up the exhausts and mufflers of six projects and tackled them today, this involved roughing the surface with the liquid cement trick, then stippling sanding dust into the surface to roughen it further. Next will be a darkened red-brown base coat, and finish off with MiG pigments, and brush paint any bits not meant to be heat-denatured. The Tamiya Pz. IVD main and secondary mufflers are treated here, plus the muffler from the Italeri Jagdpanzer IV L/70 and four others.

Mike/TB379

Yeah, those badges look great Jack!

Btw: Jack threw together a fantastic badge for my Japanese GB, just beautiful work.

And the Crusader is painted, hopefully photos soon - just before I hit her with some gloss and slap on the few decals.