Posts made by panzerpainter

I made my Sd222s and Pumas with loose turrets, so I could interchange and turn my 234/2s into 234/1s. I had some pieces in my parts bin that made reasonable radio frame so I also turned one of my 222s into a Sd261. It has a radio, photo-etched brass crew/commander partition, and engine acess panels. The Kubelwagons may well get crewed yet, if I do that, I will give them a thread and repost them.
   These are not as detailed as I would do for a customer, thier isnt as much individual rusty spots, armor damage, or crew wear added to the finish. Since I’m starting my own collection from scratch as of a few weeks ago, I am more into quantity right now.
  But they all have that nice, sandy, gritty, texture. I think by now its obvius my fav color is plain sand. You can also probably guess what kind of pants and shirts I wear - Khakis. If I were in “Toy Story” I would have to for sure be one of those bad “tan” guys, and not one of the greenies.

These 6 Luchs were Flamingos, with front ends resculpted, extra front hull armor, and rear smoke launchers removed. Puma turrets (as-is) have washers added underneath for better look and to allow turret to rotate without scraping engine covers. 4 in camo, sequencially numbered, for a customer, as is the crewed sd 234/4. The 2 plain sand Luchs are for my army, and will have interchangeable Luchs I turrrets.

4x PzIII (from “New Millenium Toys”) - 1:144 scale.
  > 3 modified from 37mm to 50mm (early version), and
  > 1 modified into Flampanzer (identical, except for additional front armor and spare tracks added - this is the PzIII shown from the front.
  > Shown also is 1 “before” Pz III, still with 37mm. I have 3 of these, but they are not repainted (yet).
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4x Praga (AA&M version 1 scale)
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2x Hetzer (AA&M version 1 scale)
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5x BMW (AA&M version 1 scale)
  > 3 with MGs added
  > 2 with sdiecars removed
  > None of these are crewed, as I use seperate crew markers for all open vehicles and guns.

A carry-over from WWI era, heres a pair of old rusty Renault FT-17s awaiting the new-fangled PzIs to attack. These are micro-machines, and very nicely to scale with v1 AAM minis.

These T-26 Super Pershings also had a dual spring support to help hold-up and steady the gun, and a counterweight on the rear of the turret to ease the strain on the traversing gears.
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(I love ithis obscure stuff)
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We gave the Russians lend-lease tanks in WWII, so I called the Kremlin, and they agreed to let me fledgling US army have a coupl eSU-152s so I can have a fair fight with some panzers. They are micro-machine SU-152s.
  Also, here is my first V2 “Super Pershing” (with a pic of one of the 4 V1 Super Pershings I made for comparison).
  This tank was REAL, and it was REAL MEAN. The US army had 2 of these made for them, just before the wars end. They saw service. These 2 tansk were shipped to Europe for 1 reason only. To see if a King Tiger could be defeated in head-to-head combat. Its gun was no ordinary 90mm. It was a true “magnum” with TWO seperat epowder sharges of immense size. This gun could bore thru anything. The ingenious crew of one of these 2 secret weapons had a brilliant idea. They knew they had the gun to do the trick, but not the armor. So they cut apart a dead Panther tank, and mounted its lower and upper glacis plates onto the front of thier tank (in effect giving it 160mm of split-spaced-armor. A custom made plate was mounted to the mantlet, and wrapped around the turret, and was designed to “spring” when hit. This gave the turret plate even more effectiveness than the glassis armor. This would have been impossible to defgeat head-on, and only the tracks would have been vulnerable. Only 1 of the 2 Supers got this treatment. Fortunetly, the one without the extra armor saw no signifigant action. The up-armored one got its chance, on 1 night of fighting (ity one and only battle-action). A king tiger saw this monster and fired a shot, and MISSED. The King Tiger had exposed its flank, and was tore to ribbons. It was a King Tiger kill, but not the head-on assault they wanted (but I am betting the crew didnt care they got “only” a side shot). Next, a Panther saw the action and was flushed out. As it ran, it too was blown to ribbons. Only slightly farther down the road, a Panzer IV saw this new US monster and immediately surrendered. Only a short bit down the road, something opened up on the American column, and the super responded. The crew, tallying its kills, needed to identify what they had just killed, but not enough of it was left to identify. This behemoth racked up 3 kills and 1 capture, and didnt even get its barrel warm.

Some nice desert rats (a diificult camo pattern to make look good), and some more panzer Is for a customer, and 2 Sd250s for my fledgling army.

Some more rienforcements for my Germans. I just need a few more SPGS, King Tigers, and a bunch of Pz IIIs & IVs, and the Nazis will be complete. I took a bit more time on these 4 Tigers, but the Elephants are quickies, as are the guns. The Tiger Is were base coated khaki, then recoated with Linen, then inked with brown, dry-brushed in more Linen, a ultra-dry-brushed in vintage white. Cables are dark silver with patchy rust all over. Rust drips are visable around all the cable latch-downs, and places where the cables rest close to the edge. Fenders rusted, exhaust blackened and rusted. Tools painted and highlighted. Decals applied over still-wet laquer, and re-laquered later. Then weathered and sprayed with matte.
  As you can see, my entire German army will be sand. Some things, like Tiger Is, just need to be plain sand, NO camo. Pz IIIs will be the same when I get to them.

More “Rush rienforcements” for my own game. These are Hotwheels micro-machine Sturmtigers and Panther Fs. Brumbars are “Classis Armor” by New millenium toys (all are 1:144 scale).
  These would be more of a “generic” paint job on these. 1 drybrushing step ommited, only 2 color treads and single color tool handles and such.
Original paint schemes preserved, just darkened in, inked, and highlighted.

If you want a cheaper way: Go to Walmart, go to the CRAFT section (not paint section or hobby section) and get two cheap 2.0 oz. “FolkArt” bottles of paint. Get #419 “Teddy Bear Brown” and #420 “Linen”. They are cheap, but good. You WILL still need to prime them first. Put on 2 coats of teddy bear brown (a half hour to 1 hour apart). Let dry 100%, then lightly brush the linen color over that (wipe the paint from your brush onto a paper towel before applying the “linen” color, you do NOT want that color to be wet or drippy, so it will stick only to the edges). Doing the treads / wheels is generally acceptable in VERY dark brown, dark grey, or flat black. They should have those colors too. You can skip the dry-brushing part. Doing this simple 2-step color process will yield vehicles that look 300% better than single color only. I’d rather shove pointy sticks into my eye sockets than paint anything in a single plain color.
   I’m not much on giving instructions for simpler methods, I’m kinda automatically locked into a pattern of difficult things.

First thing I would do is go out and get a quality brown primer, then look for Krylon plastic-fusion camoflague ultra-matte (I found it al Walmart). They make a Khaki and an Olive that are GREAT. After they are primed, give them a full coat of color. Let them dry, then “dust” on another coat of color, from farther way, so it lands already dry and leaves a slightly dusty look. That will give the ink a better surface to stick to. After the dusty coat is very dry (maybe a couple hours) Then wash the vehicles with a brown ink (make sure you dont get one of those brown inks that looks pink or reddish). Set the vehicles right side up, and let the ink puddle. Dab up the excessfrom the bottom of the treads and any places where it puddled with a damp paintbrush (if you use a dry paintbrush, it will suck up all the ink and leave a bright spot).
   Give them a good day or so to dry, then dry-brush some khaki back over them manually with a brush. Just enough to get the color back to khaki on the major flat-spots. Then go back over them with an even quicker dry-brushing of bone-white (just enough to catch the edges and rivets).
   If yoiu ar going to do treads and other stuff like that: You will need a tiny paint pin-brush, and a lot of time. Try painting treads with a VERY dark reddish-brown, and then just a very quick, light dry-brush of DARK silver over that brown.
  To make rubber wheels look good (jeeps, armored cars & such) paint the tires a dark flat grey.

I had 2 Panther 2 chassis from Milton Bradley “Tank Battle” game, but had some extra turrets. I decided I would not normally need to use the Coelian, Bergepanther, AND the command version all at the same time, and could live with fielding up to 2 of them in any combo. If I dont use either of the 3, then I can still get 2 more normal Panthers into the game.
  The Bergepanther I had to cheat on, and make the spades connected to the back of the superstructure, so it would remove with it. I may still crew the superstructure of that. But these being 1:144 scale, any A&A guys would look like monsters, and actual 144 crew would look like shrimps. In front of the Bergepanthers superstructure is a “false opening” some thin blackened plastic, to give the illusion that the front driver/gunner hatch plate is gone (its not used on the bergepanther). I used the same black plastic to make the box-like superstructure appear to go down into the hull, where pullies and gears are visable too. Front MG added to glassis plate top, as the extra mechanics of the tank take up the normal gunners position. The Bergepanther is my fav of the bunch.

With tank binoculars, and shortened “dummy gun”.

Just how many Panthers did I make to have all these versions?
Thier is 1 Coelian shown (scratch-built turret with balsa, paper, plastic, aluminum tube, and brass rods), 1 Bergepanther version shown (I fudged a bit on the spade configuration in order to make removal possible), 1 Command version shown, and 2 standard 75mm versions shown.
More will be told with the last pic.

SD250s & Sd222’s combined to make these, plus 1 marder.

Of course, I dont have any actual Brenn Guns, so Vickers guns had to do, but they fit quite neice. Crew are from Brit MG team (previously cannibalized for the guns, I knew the chopped-up gunners would be worth saving for something) and some of the Rats crew are from the HQ unit.
  All have treads paintes rust orange with black/brown ink mix over that, then silver added. Chassis have fender and hull rust, as well as weathered-over insignias.
  3x Desert Rats Valentines and 3x Rats Crusaders to come soon.