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Bison Bashing

Weathering

With everything installed, the vehicle was sealed with a light mist coat of Future applied by airbrush as a foundation for the decals and to protect the paint finish from the weathering process. The Bison Decals markings for “Bismarck” were applied and treated with Walther’s Solvaset to insure they snugged down tight to the surface. Once dried, a second mist coat of Future was applied to seal the decals.

I started the weathering process by applying a dot filter composed of small dots of Testor’s regular flat enamels in the small glass jars. I used Sea Blue, Yellow, Red, and White for the dots which were then carefully blended using a thinner dampened 0 round sable brush in a downward motion. This produced a unifying layer to the two-tone camo scheme as well as added very subtle color variation to the overall scheme. To add some additional depth, a pin wash of Burnt Umber was applied to the raised detail and panel lines. After some minor adjustments where the wash had bloomed or been too heavy, the finish was sealed with a coat of Testor’s Lusterless Flat in the spray can. Now that the finish had a bit of “tooth” to it, the same 80/20 lightened panzer gray mixture applied earlier was used to dry-brush the raised detail further enhance the depth of the finish. I also installed and painted the leather muzzle cap at this point using the Eduard supplied parts.

Weathering for the running gear and lower hull took the form of a mixture of Mig Dark Mud and Europe Dust pigments. These were mixed with ordinary water and applied by brush and allowed to air dry over the course of about an hour. Once dry, the excess was removed using a series of stiff bristled brushes and combinations of wet and dry q-tips as needed. To mute the overall effect of the pigments, some additional Lusterless Flat was sprayed very lightly at a distance of roughly 12”. As a final touch some additional Steel was dry-brushed on the track guide horns and contact faces to complete the weathering finish.

Conclusion

As with most kit-bashing exercises, this one was a fun challenge to take two kits that had things to contribute and combine it into a single unified vehicle build project. While the Alan parts required more work, it stretched my skills a bit to get them to integrate with the excellently detailed DML parts and I thoroughly enjoyed it from start to finish.

References: Nuts and Bolts #19 by Jurgen Wilhelm, Panzer Tracts No. 1-1 by Jentz and Doyle, Osprey's Modelling the German 15cm sIG 33 Bison and Grille by Gary Edmundson.