DAK Pz.Kpfw. IV Ausf. G, 1942

[Jim R]

Looking good. Good luck cleaning up the Tamiya hook. Not an easy shape to work on. Those figures are very nice. Well moulded and they look natural in situ.

[Guest]

Yes, I’m not convinced it will be an easy job, which is why I delved into my spares boxes first to see if I had any that would need less work The figures are really good, though some of the detail, such as many pockets, is a bit poorly defined. The poses and things like the folds in the clothes, though, are excellent.

[Mini Me]

Like Graeme, I just spotted this also....looks good and the figs. fit it like a glove. Haven't seen an African build for awhile so something a bit different.

[Guest]

Those figures were clearly purpose-designed for this tank, yes. You could stick them (except the driver) into a Panzer III as well, I suppose, but the gunner and loader will be very difficult to fit anywhere else.

[Guest]

Now the wind has lessened as well as turned, so it won’t blow into my attic window anymore, I’ve sprayed this model a bit more:

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A big hurdle here was the colours this tank was painted in. It apparently came from the factory in the so-called Tropen 2 (“Tropics 2”) scheme, of a sand colour (RAL 8020) with patches in a grey-brown colour (RAL 7027) over one-third of the tank. My main problem was that my research hadn’t turned up the fact that in black-and-white photos, the 7027 virtually disappears against the 8020, so I had only ordered Tamiya’s version of 8020, XF-93 Light Brown DAK 1942, but not a paint suitable for 7027. In the end I mixed roughly equal parts of XF-93 and XF-49 Khaki as a decent enough approximation. I restricted the spots to mostly the lower hull sides and a few other places, because the real tank seems to have lacked them — perhaps it was partly repainted?

That done, I added some more XF-93 into the mix and sprayed paler spots inside the brown patches, and then I rinsed out the airbrush so I could put an approximately 3:1 mix of XF-93 and XF-2 White into it to highlight the rest of the tank.

I had already painted the gun barrel in XF-63 German Grey, because elsewhere we concluded that it was probably that colour from the gun factory and not repainted in sand at the tank factory, because guns were painted in heat-resistant paint.

[Guest]

The next step was my usual wash over the whole model, this time Army Painter Soft Tone thinned about 1:2 or 1:3 with water, and followed by painting the camouflage on the turret front and sides with RAL 8000 from Life Color:

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Because that camouflage is almost or entirely invisible in most photos of the real tank, except the front view, I only applied it where I could actually make it out. Whether that’s because there was never any camo there at all, or if wore off, or some other reason, I don’t know. It’s a strange camouflage anyway, that doesn’t seem to fit with the standardised camouflage on North Africa tanks, but hey, I just paint what I see in the photo

After that I drybrushed the model twice with Army Painter Skeleton Bone:

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Why twice, you ask? Because I have two bottles of it, and they’re not the same colour! They’re both a shade of light sand, but one is paler and a bit more yellow than the other, so I drybrushed with the darker one first, then slightly less vigorously with the lighter one.

[Guest]

Tim Marlow was wondering how I was going to do the overpainted 411. Well, a big trawl through my decals turned up something:

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The kit’s decals at the top, an ancient sheet of Almark German aircraft decals below them. Though they’re dark red and the real tank probably had black outlines, dark red is going to appear close to black in black-and-white photos, so to anybody who takes offense at them, I say: prove to me that they weren’t dark red

First, I applied the 4 and the 1:

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Followed by the 215, but with the digits cut apart, for two reasons. One is because they were spaced wider on the real tank than what you get from Tamiya (likely because the kit numbers are fractionally too small as well), but the other reason is that this way, I could line up the 2 and the 5 with the 4 and the 1, which is much easier to do than the other way around:

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Then I added the crosses on the hull sides and rear, as well as the other turret numbers:

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The left and rear crosses are per photographs of the real tank, but those don’t show a cross on the right. However, one could be in the place where I put it, because that isn’t visible enough (or at all) in the existing photos, so again, it’s a logical place and it could have been there.

The numbers were fun to apply over the vision flaps and their bolts … Lots of Micro Sol, and unlike what is always recommended when using that, I pressed firmly down on them between applications, using both a folded-up cloth and a blunt dental tool, to get them to go around the corners and details. Once they’re dry tomorrow, I may have to apply some more, we’ll see.

[Mini Me]

Looks Great Jakko......ummm, are you expecting a visit from the decal Nazis? Build 'er the way you like and "hang" the rest!:thumb2:

[David Lovell]

Fully agree with Rick dont try and justify what your doing she's yours I'll add "stuff" the rest oh and looking great as well. Dave

[Guest]

are you expecting a visit from the decal Nazis?

I forgot that people on this forum aren’t that fussed about this sort of thing

dont try and justify what your doing

I do need to justify it, at least to my own satisfaction — IMHO, it has to be at least plausible, else you might as well paint the tank light blue instead of sand or something

[Jim R]

Looking good Jakko. I reckon if you have "done some research" and "tried your best" then the colours are fine. There will always be those "who know better" but you could spend more time and effort trying to solve "the impossible" than making a model. Restored vehicles, old photos, different times, dirt, fading etc etc. And then there is the can of worms - "scale effect". No one can have a definitive answer.
I'd rather look for unicorns, probably have more success.:smiling3:

[Graeme C.]

The paint & colouring look fine to me Jakko, as Jim has said, there are a lot of variables.

[Guest]

I reckon if you have "done some research" and "tried your best" then the colours are fine.

TBH, the colours as such weren’t that big of a problem — you can buy plenty of suitable model paints for this tank’s scheme that come close enough for my taste. The issue was me not really being up to speed on the schemes used, and that vexing matter of why there is dark paint under the sand when these tanks came from the factory in the Africa scheme … But I solved that conundrum to my satisfaction — all I now need to do is paint on the grey, but I didn’t actually feel like it when I sat down with the model this afternoon.

I'd rather look for unicorns, probably have more success.:smiling3:

Oh, I know where to find those. I have a couple of them there

[Guest]

One of those jobs that I want to do but don’t like doing at the same time:

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… chipped paint. After studying the photos of the real tank, and discussing it with other modellers, I reached the conclusion that the mudguards show Panzer grey where the sand-coloured paint has worn away, but that the forward sections were replaced at some point — if you look at this picture from the start of this thread:

Pz.Kpfw.IV Ausf.F2 from Pz.Rgt.5, 21.Panzer-Division abandoned at El Alamein in November 1942. by Panzertruppen, on Flickr

… you’ll notice a vertical line on the side of the mudguard, forward of which the mudguard only shows wear along the edges, but from that line, most of it is dark. This line corresponds exactly to a seam on the real tank, so my conclusion is that the front bit is newer.

One problem with the grey under the sand, is that the real tanks came out of the factory in sand colours by the time this tank was produced, but I (eventually) realised that the components would probably have been painted panzer grey already before being installed, or even that the whole hull had been built in grey already before being oversprayed at the factory once the new order came through. While I don’t know if the driver’s hatch was grey on the inside, photos exist of Panzer IVs like that, so I went for it here too.

The turret, on the other hand, shows very little or no chipped paint, so I didn’t add any there other than on the stowage bin, which does clearly have it in the photo from the right rear. That also shows remains of a white outline around the numbers, so I also painted that in the places where it showed on the real tank,

[Tim Marlow]

You know, looking at that picture Jakko I’m not sure the hull sides under the track guards aren’t in grey? There is a huge variation in shade between the wheels and the hull side, and if it was just shadow effect the return roller ends would look the same….and they don’t.