I’m building an M1A2 Abrams OIF (Tamiya Kit), and was looking to get a few opinions on how to replicate the orange/reddish tint that is seen on the vision blocks of Abrams tanks and Bradley Fighting vehicles. I read about one person using black paint followed by (I assume) Model Master Clear Red Acrylic. Any ideas?
Also, not to beat a dead horse as I’m sure this topic has been discussed many times; can anyone recommend a method to weather the tracks on the tank. I’ve done some searching of Back issues of FSM but can’t seem to find anything. A search of the forums didn’t seem to turn up much.
Thanks again everyone for all the help you’ve been providing!
Ryan
I weather my tracks by painting the base coat, they giving a heavy brown and black wash, a little drybrushing and that’s it. I paint the pads on the track dark dark grey to simulate rubber. After wards, I will mist a real light coat of Tamiya buff to make them look dusty.
I basically use the same technique as JWest21 above. Only I paint the track flat black to begin with, then I do wash of brown, then rust. I paint track blocks black again for rubber, then drybrush with ground colors, sandy for desert, red-brown for tropical, light brown for european, etc. Lastly, I drybrush metal parts with gunmetal to show bare metal where wear is. For desert environs, skip the rust color, or tone it way down. Track gets pretty polished by desert sands and doesn’t rust much.
For vision blocks, the method you described is what I use. I also give a heavy coat of gloss as a last step.
There was post in this forum about using Boyd colors to paint vision blocks. IIRC, the member said to first paint the blocks with gold then go over the gold with either a ruby or violet shade of Boyd colors. HTH.
One way to depict colour vision blocks is by using Theatrical Gels. Frostygirl used these on her braille scale Challenger (see British/Commonwealth Group Build Thread). These gels are used on spotlights and such, to colour the light generated. It is a thin film that can be cut to size, and has it’s own reflective colour. Just glue them on with Krystal Kleer, Humbrol clear-fix, or just plain pva.
For WW2 dark periscope lenses I use window tint film cut to size. It comes in many shades, and usually you can get a few free samples from tinting businesses. One small piece will last a long, long time. Here’s a pic of my nearing completion stug as an example.
