What's on my desk? Part 78.
Good morning,
1st of July, start of summer vacation! And it's way too hot...
So let's just stay in, keep the doors closed to preserve what coolness the night gave and get modelling!
The Tortoise has received a gloss varnish, details have been picked out with Dark Wash and then a flat coat has been sprayed as well. In the process, the tracks detached 4 or 5 times again, so that's an ongoing fix...
The left side of the vehicle has been oil-dotted. I'll keep the weathering to a minimum, as I'm depicting a museum vehicle, not an in-service assault gun.
You see the underside of the gun barrel has a wavy white pattern. That's something the British came up with in World War 2. Yes! History lesson time!
Two main types of Sherman tank the British used during the war were the regular 75mm gun armed ones, supplemented with the Firefly, which mounted a huge 17-pounder anti-tank gun. The barrel of the 17-pounder (17 pounds was the weight of the shell) was over two times as long as the 75mm. The Germans quickly learned to shoot the Fireflies first, as those were a lot more dangerous to their Panthers and Tigers. To try and make the long barrel less conspicuous this pattern was painted. How effective it remains quite unclear...
In any case, there are photos of the Tortoise at the Tank Museum in Bovington sporting this kind of wavy underbarrel pattern, so I cut out a wave into a length of masking tape, stuck that on the barrel and sprayed it with the airbrush.
Two weeks ago, I organised a small airbrush workshop and had need of a 'paint mule', a piece of work that can be used as a test piece to showcase the airbrushing process. I selected the Tamiya BT-42. I started it long ago and had primed it in light grey, planning to spray the Finnish three-tone camouflage at one point.
Yes, this is a Finnish vehicle. It's made from the hull of a captured Russian BT-7, fitted with a Finnish-made turret housing an outdated British 114mm (4.5inch) howitzer from 1918. Only 18 were built and they were not very well received. The turret was too big and too heavy and the gun was unsuited for anti-tank purposes. There's one left today, at Parola Tank Museum in Finland.
Captured Russian vehicles were quickly turned over, repainted and put back into service for the Finns. I've been to Finland, driving around by car. If you look around at the landscape, you can see rocks and boulders that have almost these exact colours of grey, with green and brown moss. It's easy to see where the Finns got the inspiration for their camouflage.
So, as the model was now in my shop, I decided to finally paint it. I first sprayed it entirely in Ammo-Mig 208 Dark Compass Grey, then masked this with Ammo Masking Putty. This is a black rubbery putty, that you roll into sausages and spread over the model to follow the pattern. It doesn't stick too much, so you can move it and shape it using a toothpick:
It doesn't affect the paint underneath, can be removed pretty easily and can be reused again and again. Next colour was green (Tamiya XF-67 NATO Green). I left the grey masks in place and masked the green. Tamiya tape sticks nicely to the masking putty, to cover larger areas:
The last colour is brown (Tamiya XF-64 Red Brown). Final result, after removing the putty and tape:
I left the turret in place to let the camo continue smoothly, so I knew I'd have to respray underneath it:
What I didn't notice was that the putty had moved a bit (because it doesn't really stick) and I had some small gaps. This resulted in displaced colours (the green lines bordering the grey shouldn't be there):
I also have some underspray in places:
Also, in general the lines aren't as smooth as I'd like them to be.
All this is due to the putty 'melting' a bit and contracting or expanding in places, and my own handling of the model slightly moving the putty masks.
So, main tasks for this week: continue weathering the Tortoise, and clean up the BT-42 paint.
That's it.
See you next week!