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Borrowed Goods

The 37mm PAK (PAK35)

Since the image I was working on showed three Germans that were putting a 37 mm PAK on the back of the jeep I couldn’t let it out …. It was part of the story. The PAK I used for this was the old Tamiya 37mm PAK which I did out of the box. It’s a really fun little kit to built and builds up in a decent representation of the real thing. One thing you have to look out for is the fact that there are a couple of huge sinkholes present on the gun and all are in sight. 3 on the inside of each wheel, 4 on the backside of the gunshield and two on the thing that hangs next to the breech but that is about all. See Image 35.

Painting the Gun

The whole gun was airbrushed in dessert yellow as the basecoat. Since almost all the German vehicles during market garden had the three tone camouflage (Yellow, Brown and green) and that same tone is found in several variants I choose the gun to have a thin striped camo pattern in the color brown and green. The brown I used was Brick red from Humbrol and I picked “just” a green for the green camo. I applied the camostripes with a brush and made sure the paint was quite thinned. This was for two reasons. Unthinned paint when it dries you can really see it is painted on the surface as it sticks out a little bit and you can feel it too. Second reason was that because of the thinned paint you see the yellow underground through it giving the gun a little faded look. Further I added a couple of washes and filters in several colors to give the gun that used/ weathered look. Last but not least I used an ordinary pencil to give all the raised detail on the gunshield the metal finish like scratches and other bare metal like on the corner of the gunshield. I applied earthcolored pigments to the wheels of the gun which I first added White spirit too then brushed them on and when dry I brushed off the most till I had the satisfying result. With black pigment I discoloured the muzzle of the barrel. More on the gun later. Review images can be seen in Images 36, 37, and 38.

Painting the Jeep

About this stage is not that much to tell. I took some Olive drab from Humbrol and added some drops of Khaki drill in it. The khaki drill makes the paintcolor a bit lighter and gives it a dusty appearance. I sprayed the whole model with this mix. Review images are 39 through 44.