Okay that looks better.  :)

You're right. I should darken those more.  :)

Looks great so far. I suggest that the IR headlight lenses should be black.  Those were still in use when I was on active duty, and the IR light projector lenses are black.

I'm learning that now lol. This is the first Historicaly accurate build I've done.

Ye, you can never 100% trust kit markings. I always try and check when I can.

Thanks Bish!  :)

I'm glad I checked my references. Dragon would have me put the serial numbers on the rear toolboxes. They never put them there. Not one single reference shows them placed there. They were either on the air filters as I have done, or on the forward storage bins.

The only other thing that is wrong with them is that there should be one more star in the second row for a total of 7.

Other than the markings I've pretty much nailed this one as far as how it should have actually looked. Well, aside from the early A1 gun tube dust cover. I wasn't left with many options for that anyways.

I'm getting really close to having it match the reference photos and I'm happy about that. :)

That's looking very nice. I have no idea on the correct OD, but that looks good to me and the weathering seems just right. I do like those markings.

Thanks Sprue.  :) its not quite so bright now.

Tracks have their first wash of Tamiya Weathering Master "Oil Stain" on them. I like how versatile this stuff is. Wet or dry.

oh yeah. "… original color more life" I agree

Ah yes, making stuff look good for the dog & pony shows. I always wondered how they got the vehicles on the parade field looking so. Usually the ones we had out there looked like they just came out of the paint shop at the Support Battalion. Although I do remember in one of my units how our supply clerk  was putting brake fluid on the sidewalls of his M35A2 Deuce and Half tires  after the wash rack to give a nice "armor all" look to them. Shiny black tires on a beat to snot MERDC Temperate Spring truck...

[QUOTE=rbrindos]Michael, I probably should have clarified what I said about washing tanks with diesel. It was never done, unless there was a reason. The only time I remember ever doing it was at Ft. Lewis when we officially activated the 2/77th Armor Battalion. We had a ceremony with the tanks driving by the review stand. We washed and dieseled up the side that was seen by the stands. It was considered a safety hazard and, on a personal note, made the front slope very slippery.[/QUOTE]

I just got this over on Genessis. I will tone this paint effect way down now as it is incorrect. Bummer, that was looking cool.

Thanks Garzonh. I'm having fun with it. First I don't like it, then I finish the layer and think, "Okay, that's neat" lol.

I come here every now and then just to find this amazing build.

I like the color and the shadows you achieved, also the "dusty" layer looks very convincing.

I believe that the Cold War era O.D. was definitely darker and leaned more towards the brown side of the color than the previous O.D that leaned more towards the green side of it.

I'll be adding more dirt tones to the paint pretty soon. The dirt from boots did grind into the paint and tone it differently where the crews walked on the tank most often. I'll be taking this into account while I work more on this paint scheme as I did on the little M-48.

Marine Corps Green was more like a medium green when freshly applied. This effect I just got should be pretty close to how it should look, but since I've had it only described to me and have never seen it for myself I'm not going to say with 100% certainty that this is an authentic paint job. I can't back this one up, but it sure does look cool. lol

Wow, I'd read here about Cold War olive drab being darker than the Second World War but didn't know about 'gasoline washes' and being this green. Thanks guys!

Thanks Karl. This effect occurs even without the camera. But yes it's a bit too green in some areas, but I'll be toning that down with the next layers of washes and if that doesn't do it I can add a touch more pale to it later.

I thought it was great that I captured the effect in pictures lol. Usually if you can see it with the cam, you can't see it with your eyes, and vice-versa.

I'm going to keep my clears thinner after talking to you about it. I feel you have the right of it in this case.

M. Brindos

No Karl I don't decant them. :/

But now I'm thinking about it.

I do like my clear cotes to be a good thickness to protect the paint underneath, but I see what you're saying. I'll let you know if I do finally decant the canned clear. I'm curious about how well that works now.

Thanks for that info. I'll get back to you on that.  :)

That coat is looking pretty "green" in the first two pics; the bottom one looks more in-the-ballpark, Don't forget to monkey around with your White Balance too on your camera, if you have one. You can really alter the tone of a photo with that sometimes.

Here's an update. I've just finished the dot filtering and I'm going to give that a day to dry a bit before laying down a satin finish.




I'd say that "greened" it up pretty good. This is how the tank should look after a "gasoline" wash that both the regular Army and the Marines would do the "Liven" up the paint after they washed them (I forget which one of you guys had mentioned that and I had to ask My Dad if they really did that. Confirmation from an ex tanker of that era says yes.). It worked well but faded the paint even faster.

My Dad has lots of pictures of M-60's in his private stash that show how the MERDC camo scheme faded shortly after being applied. The tan would last the longest, but the other three colors almost faded into one shade. I want to try replicating that effect later, and hopefully on something in a smaller scale lol.

Edit: I really like this effect now that its done. The color changes depending on the lighting and source. It goes from a bright green to faded pale green even in the pictures. Pretty neat!  lol

No Karl I don't decant them. :/

But now I'm thinking about it.

I do like my clear cotes to be a good thickness to protect the paint underneath, but I see what you're saying. I'll let you know if I do finally decant the canned clear. I'm curious about how well that works now.

Thanks for that info. I'll get back to you on that.  :)

The model is looking good, Mike.

Do you decant your clear coats and airbrush them? I hope so, because I've found that spraying them out of the can nozzle itself lays it on waaaay thicker than you would want it.

Update time again.  :)






I've been getting the dot filtering done on the turret. You can see what progress I've made on that part. I've also got the faded gray rubber painted onto the road wheels and return rollers. They're needing a bit of touch up to the green as there is some worn paint on some of the edges due to me not clear coating the finish before all of this handling going on right now. I keep having to spot repair the fender edges too. Which is okay because they actually did that a lot in the real world.

I've got a bit too carried away on the one side with the Verridian Green oil I'm using for the filter. No worries though because it'll all work out in the end I'm sure.

Karl - I've been using a Krylon "Matte" clear and it comes out as a semi gloss. I suppose I should be more clear about that. I do have a can of gloss which is excellent for the coverage and was thinking of using it for the next round of filters, but you've just convinced me otherwise.

I'll stick with the Matte.

Garzonh and Gam, thank you guys! Thank you for the support  :D

Mike, I think it looks fine, and I'm a but dubious about filtering over gloss. I filter over a light "satin" which is just shy of flat. Even filtering over flat is going to get you a better impression of what the outcome is going to be than gloss. You know how gloss tends to darken and alter the actual color of the paint? I tried it once, and while the dispersion is easier to control, it's also a lot harder to accurately judge where you are with the depth. I would suggest trying a acrylic wash with the base coat color if you think it's too "green". The more layers you put on it, the more varied the finish will be too, which doesn't hurt. :)

Looks cool to me, from the photos the dot filtering looks really nice.

Wow, what a model!, with the figures you can see the size as you mentioned.

They blend  far better with a gloss. I thought I'd cheat the process and I'm not liking the effect as much. The little M-48 I build looks a whole lot smoother in contrast to this paint job thus far. But after I finish the filtering of the turret I'll gloss it and get better blending over the current finish.

I'm thinking of doing a light dirt wash over all of this after I dull it back down, just to bring some more brown tones into the overall color after I, probably go too far with the green. I need to do some respraying of the shadow colors on the underside as some of that was worn off after it was roughly hand tossed by accident and I broke off those 5 road wheels lol. Plus the paint is getting worn away from handling on all the corners. I should have glossed it much sooner and now I'm paying for it. However this may actually lend the paining more realism as they were always spot painting these things and never left any chipping to rust or weather for very long.

They kept up on regular maintenance and so these beasts never looked very worn at all.

Edit: The cat lives. He's far too cute to gut, even if he's been eating paint chips lol.

M. Brindos

And I even found the headlight lenses that were temporarily missing due to being a cat owner lol.

Probably a tasteless joke.

This is excellent finish work IMO. I like it so much that after my Tiran is finished, I'm going green.

Speaking of which Tiran, I will do a gloss coat and try filters on it. I've tried filters a couple of times, but cheated on the gloss coat.