I’m new to this forum and to armor in general. I generally do warships ( WW II mainly ) with photo etched after market railings, cranes etc. I have two questions. The first is what are good sources of aftermarket armor items and the second deals with tracks. I haven’t been around armor much in real life but have experience with tracked construction equipment. I know that the tracks become polished after a short period use. Does the same thing happen with armor? If so is there a preferred technique to duplicate it on a model and if not what color should the tracks be painted for a used “real life” look?
Welcome to the forum. For AM armor items, it depends. There are many great AM companies who make pieces for different vehicles. It would be best to ask about a specific vehicle. We can then give you a list of whats out there. A few of the regulars are: Eduard, Voyager, and Lion Roar for PE and Verlinden for resin bits. There are many others out there though.
For tracks, you are right about how they wear. If in wet environs though (Vietnam or Europe) they will get a slight rust coating quickly, but it will just as quickly rub off on surfaces that contact other metals. In desert environs, the tracks become polished almost immediately. Here is a great post on painting tracks. Most modern tracks have rubber pads on them as well, so that section will not polish nor rust.
Welcome to our dark side. Tank tracks will get a lot of comments. Basically your observation of construction equipment is correct. Tank tracks are exposed to a lot of heat which causes them to rust very quickly, typically over night. However moving the tank even a short distance will knock the rust off the wearing surfaces in short order. The steel is normally a dark brown rust color in the places that don’t get worn a lot and shiny where it’s worn. The rubber parts are black, but weather to a dark gray/black gray color and become heavily cut and chunked. Of course if the vehicle is moving across dirt/mud the tracks will pick up the earth and be that color. I think overall we in the armor community tend to over do pretty much everything, particularly rust. As to the after market market, there are about 60 million places to get AM products. An internet search will bring up tons of them. I use Ebay a lot for PE sets, R&J products for resin stuff and a few others for specific paint/other stuff. It’s pretty much open to your personal preference.
In my experience of working around Bradleys for 3 years; I have to say that generally tracks do not get rusty. In the 18 months I spent in Germany (two winters) The tracks only got some rust after an extended period of sitting in the motor pool and after one day in the field, the rust was gone.
When I drove my vehicle in the Cali Desert for 21 days the tracks didn’t get polished, they got very clean. I lost all the rubber off the tracks by the begining of the 2nd week and I lost the rubber of the last road wheel on both sides during the 3rd week. Only the contact points got polished. The drive sprocket did not get worn down to bare metal, the undercoat of a brownish color was exposed, but not polished.
I like the color of burnt umber for my tracks with a light dry brush of steel. If I did a motor pool vehicle that sat there for about a month or so, I would add a light coat of rust.
Hope this helped.[B]
edited to add…
This vehice sat in the motor pool for a about a month. We just repainted the green.
This one has been out in the field for about a week when this was taken
a blackish brown is a good place to start. A burnt umber, or a mix of Tamiya flat brown, flat black, red brown, and Flat earth. Since tracks get so heavily caoted with dust and dirt, you can pretty much paint them any earthtone you desire. Adam wilder paints them a mix of light browns.
Thanks for the reply. I currently have an M-42 Duster and an M-41 Walker Bulldog (1/35 Tamiya), an M-4A1 (76) W ( 1/48 ) and a 1/35 M26A1 Pershing by Hobby Boss and a 1/35 M-551 Sheridan - Gulf War edition by Academy so any advice on After Market detailing would be welcome on any of these subjects.The downside is I currently have a 1/700 USS Honolulu on the bench and a 1/350 USS San Francisco I’ll be starting with a group build so I will not start the armor soon but the upside is I have time to check out the details and prepare properly. Thanks a lot!
Am I dating myself there? Anyway thanks for the pics. I see what you all mean by the tracks being pretty much the same color as the vehicle its attached to. My experience is with BIG YELLOW CATS. They don’t have big yellow tracks, just shiny, rusty and somewhat dirty ones.
