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Building the Eduard Hetzer!

painting & weathering

The model was complete, except for the MG34 and all the side schurzen. All the hatches were held in place by very thin ‘sausages’ of blutack inside the hatches. I gave the model an all over coat of Tamiya Nato black XF-69, followed by a light misting of Tamiya XF-60 Dark Yellow. Then the dark yellow was reapplied in a heavier coat towards the centre of panels and around details etc. Then it was time to apply the camouflage scheme. I had decided to go with the first version in the marking schemes offered by Eduard, that is a Hetzer of Pz.Jg.Abt.743. This was the one eventually captured and remarked by Polish insurgents, but since I wanted to include this Hetzer in a diorama setting later I went with the scheme of it’s original owners.

There is some argument as to whether this scheme consisted of irregular brown patches with a green outline or green patches with a brown outline....I decided to go with the latter. With the air pressure turned up and the paint turned down, I applied the patches to closely resemble those on the Eduard instructions, using Tamiya XF-67 Nato Green. The outlines in brown were also airbrush applied using Tamiya XF-68 Nato Brown. Then all the details were brush painted using Vallejo acrylics, and the whole vehicle given an all over coat of Tamiya X-22 Gloss Varnish in preparation for decals and weathering.

Initial weathering consisted of a pin wash of burnt umber oil heavily diluted in white spirit. This was applied with the tip of a very fine brush and allowed to ‘flow’ around the rivets and details etc. The gloss coat helps this as without it, the matt paint tends to act in a similar way to blotting paper, and any wash applied tends to ‘spread out’. When this was complete a liberal dusting with Mig pigments P028 ‘European Dust’ was applied, especially to the tracks. A flat wide brush, dampened with white spirit was then used to drag the dust downwards and give the appearance of streaks. The whole vehicle was then sprayed with Hannants Xtracrylix flat varnish. The schurzen were at this point unpainted, and needed to be temporarily attached to mark out the camouflage scheme. This was done and then the side schurzen were painted in the same way and attached permanently. The vehicle was then given a light dusting with Tamiya XF-52 Flat Earth, more heavily applied towards the bottom of the vehicle, before adding scratches etc. using neat burnt umber oil paint and dragging it down at random to represent rust streaks.

in conclusion

There you have it. Displayed with the hatches open it looks quite impressive, although not much of that interior can actually be seen clearly. There are things that could be improved by Eduard, such as the inclusion of the photo etched schurzen, and I must admit to being puzzled as to why one of the premier photo etch company’s can’t include things like photo etched fenders, which the sort of fenders in this kit lends themselves to. It is an expensive kit, but I do like the finished result!

Thankyou to Eduard for the sample.