Tamiya Sd.Kfz.171 Panther Ausf. A

[AZPhil]

I had to zoom in to see the blue eyes.
Nice

Semper Fi
Phil

[paulscoot]

Looking forward to seeing the end result!

[earlymb]

It has arrived and it only took almost 2 months!

[earlymb]

And I used it today for the first time! The base coat is Vallejo Model Air 71.025 Dark Yellow / Dunkelgelb. I sprayed the wheels individually and then painted the rubber by hand with Vallejo Model Air 71.055 Black-Grey, after which I put them on the model.

I then applied the camouflage, starting with Vallejo Model Air 71.041Armour Brown / Rotbraun, followed by Vallejo Model Air 71.011Dark Green / Dunkelgrün. It looks adequate although I'm hindered a bit that my compressor doesn't have an pressure gauge and I need to do it by guess. Maybe I'll enlarge a few of the brown patches slightly. The next step will be applying decals, sealing everything with a varnish and then I can think about weathering.

[clauz]

Did you do the green and Brown free hand? Good work! Keep posting

[earlymb]

Yes, I did it free hand. After making these pics I did enlarge some of the brown patches a bit as they were a lot thinner than the green patches at some areas.

[HoundsTooth]

Great job, looks good. How difficult was the spray gun? Did you do some test runs first?

Are you going to age it after this?

nick

[Danmark]

Drill a hole and put a pin through the exhaust ends like Ralph did.
You don't want any toy soldiers popping a grenade down there ....do you?

[earlymb]

Drill a hole and put a pin through the exhaust ends like Ralph did.
You don't want any toy soldiers popping a grenade down there ....do you?

I'll make sure they stay on another shelf

Yesterday I applied the decals and fixed them with Vallejo Decal Fix and Softener on areas I first varnished with satin varnish. As I want a Normandy setting I opted for the 2nd Panzer Division; a decal for this unit was provided but I modified another decal and used that instead; everyone else seems to use the LSSAH option anyway.

After the decals had dried I varnished the whole model and applied some Vallejo 71.075 Elfenbein (Ivory) from about 30 cm away to give a dusty effect. After that had dried the actual weathering began by brushing a coat of heavily thinned (90%) Vallejo Smoke 70.939. This gives the model a very slightly darker, dirty look. I then applied a pinwash with a home-made mix of heavily thinned brown and black oilpaints, as my local modelshop was out of of the Tamiya panel line accent products. I have never used them but the results in various youtube vids seems spectacular. I am relatively satisfied with the results of my homebrew mix though.














Next comes chipping, weathering of the exhaust and playing with the tracks.

[Larry C]

I have to ask this general modeling question as I used to build these models back during the 1970s ...and much has improved over the years in detail , assembly , quality and modification.

Question : this is beyond me ..but I have noticed in modeling of these armored vehicles in the assembly and modification stage ...what is the use of the brass like material seen on certain parts and details ?
Why the use of Brass?

I stopped making models in the late 70s and began to pursue playing the drums and women with lovely attributes.

Regards Larry