Global Scale Modeller

Fashionably late to the party I know but here we go. Tamiya's lovely Jagdpanzer IV with Kaizen workable tracks.

Its another beauty from Tamiya, nicely priced too.

The usual box and bits and bobs pics to start with. Nice box art, similar style to the M10 TD I've just finished in the I Heart Tamiya SIG.



The Kaizen tracks are very nice. No mucking about, just cut the links off the gate and use wire to join together. Tension keeps the pins in place so there is no need for any gluing. I used a set of Kaizens on a recent Tiger and was well impressed, they had a few more steps to them than the Panzer IV tracks so these should be a doddle.



Usual type instructions plus a nice colour supplement and info sheet



Separate bags for the sprues



The plastic looks very nice, beautiful detail and texture.







Single piece gun barrel -



Hoping to kick this thing off tomorrow.

Good luck with the build

Thanks Adam

Had a pretty good day yesterday. This thing is just falling together

Running gear and wheels. The mouldings are pin sharp and there is some nice cast texture on the surfaces. Very nice






Rear end and engine deck. I know its Tamiya so the quality is expected but the plastic is so easy to work with. I barely test fitted anything before gluing. Only the side vents beneath the engine deck needed any encouragement - a tight fit but nice and snug once they were positioned correctly.




The kit is designed so you can take the upper hull off during the build process. Should come in handy during painting and putting the tracks on.


Detailing the front end



The rear deck is very busy with the tools and spare wheels etc. The wheels will be a faff to paint on the deck so I will do those separately.



The gun mount looks unwieldy but it works. It gives you traverse and up and down and fits snugly onto the frontal armour plate.



Barrel and mantlet attached. Single piece barrel with a separate end piece. nice one Tamiya.


All in all a good days work. Just a few detail parts left then I can either go for the primer or start on the tracks





Thoroughly enjoying it so far.

Minor update today

Put the last bits and bobs on the hull, the supports for the schurzen (not included in the kit and wouldn't have been used anyway).



Then got started on the tracks. Boring but straight forward. This is the effect they will give, some nice sag on the guide runners. Once finished they will be tighter so the sag will be less but still nice and visible.




Once the tracks are done, its on to the paintwork (aka the fun part)

Nice job fella! Its a dreamboat of a kit to put together had so much fun building mine

Tank tracks, gotta love them.

On the sprue they look like this. 2 left and 2 right links


All the sprues once I had taken the links off. Thankfully the plastic was hard but cut really well (I used a scalpel not the cutters in the photo, they were for cutting the wire). There was no clean up required once the links were off.


The links for one side


One side complete, happy with the sag




All done



Final thing before spraying. I'm going to leave the side rear panels off when I prime and base coat as they will be too difficult to spray behind once they are on. If you look at the panels from behind the tank there's a lot of stuff you can see that the AB will not get to once the panels are in place.



The next session should be a good one!

Excellent build

Really good looking build and the tracks look great (now I've found the right thread )

OliveDrab wrote:Excellent build

Tomcat64 wrote:Really good looking build and the tracks look great (now I've found the right thread )

Thanks guys

Hopefully I can keep the impetus up over the weekend and get some paint onto the beast.

I know I've said it before but I still think Germany lost the war because they ran out of wheels!



Fired up the AB this afternoon and hit the primer. Love this Ultimate stuff. Its the model world equivalent of Autotune for X-factor contestants.

The wheels, oh my, all the wheels!!!!!



Upper hull



Lower hull



Rear end (ooh err missus)



Well happy. May get onto the base coat tomorrow but quite busy so not sure yet.

Stay cool dudes

HI David a very clean build.I think you might be right about the wheel idea
Pete

Great build ,, and a nice kit, good look with painting

martin57 wrote:Great build ,, and a nice kit, good look with painting

privatepete wrote:HI David a very clean build.I think you might be right about the wheel idea
Pete

Thanks Guys

I got the base coat down yesterday. Hope to get the camo done today once I've decided on the scheme.

I got the base coat down on Tuesday. Tamiya XF60



I did the running gear separately



As mentioned before I was planning to paint rear side panels separately then attach them after the base coat. Well the painting went fine but I sausage-fingered a bit of glue on to the paint (on both sides - what a numpty) and the wipe off, while smooth, lifted the paint right off the plastic.



Fired up the AB and got rid of the aberration



I mixed Vallejo Model Air Black with a touch of white for brush painting the rubber on the road wheels. They cleaned up nice with a bit of touching up with more XF60 on the hubs.




I'm still looking at paint camo but I'm thinking a green / yellow 1944 scheme.

Finally pulled out my finger today and got on with the camo painting. I'm going for a yellow / green two-tone as seen in Normandy and later on into 1945. Its a bit creative but since the camo was field applied, there is a little licence.

I switched out my 0.4 needle for a 0.2 (looking for those tight lines) and got stuck in.

Seems to have gone down ok me thinks, I'll need to do some spraying of the base yellow again in a few places just to keep it clean and the camo lines tight before I start on modulation and filters etc. (all the fun stuff).

For now, its just good old base yellow and dark green (both Tamiya and mixed 50:50 with Ultimate thinners)









Now I'm back in the saddle as it were I hope to get stuck in with more spraying tomorrow and make some progress working on the fading and filtering process.

Tidied up the camo today. Worked on both colours tightening the lines and cleaning up any areas where the AB spray had drifted onto the other colour.




I then went for a Vallejo sandstone filter in the hope of softening up the colour differential in the camo and adding depth.



Then it was onto a white for the upward facing panels.



I think I overdid it a little bit, particularly on the roof.



Back to the sandstone to tone it down a bit!!



And this is how it has finished up.



Finished off the painting session with the detail greeblies on the back end.


Next up is glossing and decals.

Looking good

Very nice work. The camo is beautifully applied

Sergiotron wrote:Very nice work. The camo is beautifully applied

privatepete wrote:Looking good

Thanks Guys

Got a bit more done today. Chipping prior to glossing and the decals. I'll do some more further down the line but for now this is what will go beneath all the filters, pigments and washes etc.

Nice and clean



Running gear, I used a small brush and Vallejo black with a touch of white.



Hull - partially done



Finished for now






That's all for now. Glossing and decals tomorrow

Painted the tracks today. Base coat used was Vallejo metal colour dark iron.



Then it was out with the AK rust effects.



Dry brushed to give a hint of rust. They'll get more with pigments once they are on the tank. Its difficult to pick out the colour changes with the tracks (the shine from the lights and window washed out the images somewhat but trust me, the rusting does show up nicely). I'll see if I can get some better pics tomorrow in natural light.



I then used metal colour steel to dry brush the spares.



And used dark aluminium on the main tracks



You can see the difference. I want the spare tracks not to look as worn as the main ones



I painted the exhausts using Tamiya red brown and some of the AK rust paints. These will get some proper pigments for rust flaking later on but for now they are ok.



Finished off the session with glossing the hull ready for decals




I did the whole vehicle as it will need its gloss for the weathering process.

Hi David looking very good, one quick question if I may the Vallejo Burnt Iron it's a Metal Colour 77.721 your dry brushing yes? Canto actually brush paint with it, on the bottle it says' airbrush, how thin is it.
Pete

privatepete wrote:Hi David looking very good, one quick question if I may the Vallejo Burnt Iron it's a Metal Colour 77.721 your dry brushing yes? Canto actually brush paint with it, on the bottle it says' airbrush, how thin is it.
Pete

Hey Pete, thanks.

The Vallejo metal colour range is for airbrushing but its a beautiful paint for brush painting small areas and dry-brushing. Its thinner than standard acrylics (sprays neat) and for brush painting it stays wet longer in the pallet than standard acrylics. I put a couple of drops into a pallet and it last great for what I need it for.

Its beautiful to brush paint small areas with, nice coverage and it doesn't muck you about like an acrylic would with picking itself back off the plastic as you work. I love the stuff so its a big fro me.

Decals on and glossed



The track colour looks good and I'm looking forward to applying more rust and pigments etc. during the weathering process in the coming days.



I fixed the tracks on permanently. In order to create tension on the lower part of the tracks (to aid the sag on the top half) I first glued the drive and idler wheels in place then once the tracks were on I applied a little CA glue where the track meant the idlers. Holding the tracks taught, this ensured all the slack was along the top of the tracks only.



I think the sag looks about right. Its pronounced enough to be seen but not so much that it looks odd (IMHO anyway).







All set now for dot filters. Once they're done, its a wash then pigments. Some more chipping too and maybe some strikes and gouges on the hull.

Dot filters today

Started small




Then went panel by panel








I did the running gear too




Overall, I think its looking ok. Its starting to look weather worn now.







I think I'll do the wash next. After that its rusting using more oils on the hull and pigments and fixer on the exhausts.

Ultimate Dark Dirt was applied today. Its amazing how much coverage this stuff gives. I did the whole tank with from 1 pipette's worth of wash.

It always looks heinous when you put it on!



I used a damp piece of kitchen roll and some cotton buds to clean it off. I was a bit concerned at first because it didn't seem to coming off too well but it came right eventually, especially when I kept going with the cotton buds. I ripped the handle off one of the hatches and then proceeded to lose it. Thankfully I found it later and put it back on. Take that Carpet Monster!

Here's how it looks, all cleaned up





Running gear came out nice, I like the darkening of the hull, should look good under the pigments later on



Close up, you can see how well the wash has sunk into the panel lines and casting detail




Overall





Next up was rusting. I added some gouges and scrapes on the hull





After painting them I got the oils out and used burnt sienna for the rust streaks.








Then it was on to pigments. Concrete dust all over the upper hull and the rubber on the wheels. Then a wet mixture of light sand and red-brown on the lower hull and wheels. Finally sand around the lower edges of the upper hull, mud guards and liberally over the rear end. As I'm depicting a Normandy era vehicle I didn't go for mud effects. The summer of 1944 was very hot so dust would have been the overriding effect on the vehicles in theatre.

Before all that, burnt sienna and pigment fixer on the exhausts. It was still drying when I took the photos, it will dry lighter with more definition (I hope )




Lower hull and running gear



Rear deck



Overall effect









Bench all cleaned up!



Next up is a matt varnish to seal the pigments then its the rear deck for oil stains and soot work. Then its done!!

great work

mick wrote:great work

Thanks Mick

Finished off today. Added some dirt and soot to the engine deck around the grills



Then I sealed it all over with Vallejo matt varnish. It has diminished some of the pigment effects which I'm disappointed with but I'll know next time. I think I'll post a Q in the modelling chat section about it. Anyway, all done for now.






The running gear and tracks look good, the Kaisen tracks took time but the sag and detail looks well nice (IMHO).





The exhausts lightened as they dried, which was great, nice effect to finish with.




And here we are. Just the reveal pics left to do now. Thanks for looking in, I hope you liked what you saw.



Cheers guys

After looking into the pigments issue I decided to reapply the dust effects on the upper hull. NOW I'm calling it finished!

Really nice work, the build, paint and weathering all top class, well done
Pete

privatepete wrote:Really nice work, the build, paint and weathering all top class, well done
Pete

Thanks mate, its much appreciated

The final reveal pics can be found here

http://www.intscalemodeller.com/viewtop ... 33#p255933