¹⁄35

Die Pressung

MODELS Part I

I originally had planned this diorama to be of a light armored column passing thru a small polish mountain village. I was just going to use a Kettenkrad, Hanomag, and a PzKpfw III but that soon changed. There was room on the base for more!!!!! So after a little debate it was decided that a Marder III would also be added.

PzKpfw III L is a Tamiya kit with the AM PE set. This was basically an OOB build. Besides the PE parts the only things that have been changed are an extra crewman in the side hatch as well as a different tank commander. The kit was finished in a base coat of MM sandgelb rlm79 with signal brown camo. I know its not the correct color (sandgelb) but I feel it gives a very good rendition of the color I have seen on actual tanks. It was weathered with the standard washes of burnt umber. Then filters with a green tint were applied. With each filter I used a wide stiff brush and pulled the filter downward on the model. This step is very important to achieve a realistic look. After this was dry it was drybrushed lightly with a lightened base color. Following this it was chipped and worn metal was portrayed with the use of pencil lead. A final weathering of Tamiya buff was lightly misted on the tanks lowers and then a dusting of pastels to finish it off.

Kettenrad is a DML kit that I had left over from my last diorama. Again the build was straight out of the box. It was finished in the same way as the above-mentioned panzer with the exception being that this received a 3 color camo pattern. Also a good friend of mine, Nato308 (Paul) had been thinking of starting up an accessory company and he graciously gave me some of his amazing boxes to try. With these I made cargo for the Kettenrad to be hauling. These boxes add a lot, they are a great addition to the kit as I am sure you all can tell from the pictures.

Hanomag Sd Kfz 250 is an old Tamiya kit. This is the type of vehicle that Rommel used and it really leaves a lot to be desired. It is built out of the box with the addition of two ancient (1970's) Italeri figures that were wedged into the driver's compartment. Again this was finished as per the other two vehicles with the exception of it being a solid color (sandgelb). Two of the crewmen also received hornet heads as the figures just weren't good with this kit.

Marder III by Tamiya rounds out our vehicles for this project. With this vehicle I experimented some. This is the first open top AFV I have built and from pictures on the Internet and others models I had decided on wanting a well used vehicle. The build is, once again, OOB. I first primed the vehicle in panzer gray paint. After this had dried, I used the salt chipping technique and applied the salt. Now it came time for the camo, which was the sandgelb base, followed by redbrown and olivegrun. Once a satisfactory scheme was achieved it was left to dry. Once dry it was time to chip the salt off the model. Instant chipped paint!!! It was on to weathering after this. Since I wanted a mix matched mess of troops and vehicles I decided to weather this one a little different than the others. With this the filter was skipped and not as much drybrushing was done. I added pencil lead patches to some of the paint chips and added rust streaks and weathered more heavily with pastels. Also the only changes to this are the crew (Tristar) and some resin crates that I received from Graywolf (Engin). These again are a very nice addition to the AFV.