¹⁄35

Sd. Kfz. 231 Early Type

Painting

I used Vallejo Air 054 Dark Grey Blue and 049 Medium Sea Grey in a roughly 50/50 mixture. I added a spot of Satin Varnish and Thinner to improve the flow out of the airbrush. I changed the mixture to roughly 30/70 for the center of the large panels on the upper hull. After that I picked out the wooden handles, although now that I look at the photos I can see a nasty mold line on the shovel, something to fix as soon as I am done with this! After the initial painting I added the decals, pretty light markings just a couple of Balkan crosses and the license plates. The decals all went down very nicely without any issues at all. I sealed everything in anticipation of a bit of weathering fun.

After that had dried thoroughly I started first with a bit of chipping, I used Vallejo 822 German Camo Black and 863 Gunmetal Grey for this stage. I tried to just use a light touch with this, would have liked to go crazy here but the grey vehicles never look quite as cool as the heavy chipping often done on the Afrika Korps stuff. When I was satisfied with the chipping I moved on to the streaking phase. Here I used some AK Interactive AK069 Streaking Grime for Panzer Grey. It goes on pretty heavy, and it can be a bit disconcerting how think it is but the most of it comes off in good time. I used turpenoid to remove most of the grime leaving just a subtle streaking effect.

Following this it was time for some pastels, I used a combination of different products, AK, MIG, and some old MMP but I tried to keep it fairly light as I didn’t want to overwhelm it. Everything from this point on was pretty easy, mostly a bit of dust, some rust around the muffler and guard, and my favorite pastel, AK 086 Dark Steel, for the shovels and other pioneer equipment. Now to find some space on the shelf!

Final thoughts

This is a top-notch kit. I couldn’t be happier with the finished product. It does have a few issues with the instructions failure to identify a few parts here and there and the sometimes nebulous location of different things and the missing detail inside the hull and turret interior. Even with this I would highly recommend this kit to anyone with a bit of experience, AFV Club deserves the high praise for their effort and deserves to sell a goodly number of this kit. I can’t wait for the follow-up efforts with the multitude of variants that this kit can spawn.

References:
Gander, Terry. Military Vehicles in Detail; SdKfz 231/234 8-rad, 8 x 8 Armored Car. Hersham, Surrey: Ian Allen Publishing, 2003. Our thanks to AFV Club for the review sample!