Attention you German armor builders!!!
I’m building the DML 1/35th Panther II kit. Going OK! Ready to work on those individual track links. Was wondering when it comes time to paint them what should they look like? Weathered steel with a little rust? Dark colored steel? Or light? Lots of rust or very minimal?
Any thoughts? Thank you in advance!
Glenn
Hi Glenn,
I paint lots of German armor and I always go for a “rusty” dark steel with shiny worn track leading edges.
Well Glenn; think of how your want your tank. A tank that has been static for a few days will develope rust on most of the track. A operational tank would have alittle rust where there is no contact with the surface plus these areas would build up mud, dirt etc…The contact surface would be shinny along with sprockets’ teeth and any metal on metal or surface contact on movement. What I do for my tracks is use a medium shade of silver tone, then a dark wash to add depth. After which I add some rust, mud, dirt etc… based on the idea I had for the kit. Hope this helps.
Glenn, take a look a few threads down at one called “painting steel tracks”. It might give you somemore info.
Bill
On the tanks etc. I’ve operated, the tracks are free of rust after a few miles, but I think a little raw umber or iron oxide color adds to the depth of a model’s tracks. I’ve never seen a totally rusted track on a running tank, especially where the road surface, road wheels, idlers and sprockets rub them.
What I do is ask myself where the tank has been running, what would be embedded in the tracks such as mud and sand, and where it would be scoured clean.
Like Bill said, take a look at that other thread, it was very good.
Ron.
Thanks for the thread on ‘painting steel tracks’! I’ll work on not making them look like ‘poo’ (a non-technical term too)!
Glenn