Hi,

I'm an experienced modeller but there's one thing i've never been able to get right.

How to paint the substructure of German WWII AFVs...

I'm just about to start AFV Club's Nashorn. Do people paint then assemble, or assemble then paint? Do you blanket spray with dark earth before dry brushing with Dunkelgelb? Do you spray with Dunkelgelb then weather with chlaks etc.?

Any advice would be appreciated.

If you are talking about the wheels and tracks,I usually try to paint and weather the entire hull leaving off the wheels and tracks,it gives you more room.then I paint and weather the wheels,and finally paint and weather the tracks off the the tank,then add them.a final touchup may be required to clean up.

hope this helps you

Roland:

Hi! My recent-returnee-to-hobby take on painting the "sub-structure" ( I am assuming that you mean those parts behind and around the running gear and the hull beneath the fenders?) of vehicles switches between the "from earth" approach presented in the Armour Modelling book by John Prigent, and working up "in natural order" from whatever the presumed paint coats were on the vehicle.

It depends on how much "dirt" versus "paint" you want to show!

Not having the actual book right in front of me, I'll just try to describe what I recall of the book approach here-

The A-M book presents a Marder I based on the Hotchkiss H39 hull. If I recall right, he completed sprayed his under- stuff with all dark earth- emulating a completely-soiled and dusted vehicle with all "true base paints" fully-obscured by road dirt and the like- and then went on to dust and weather his unders with maybe a wash and pigments. In this approach, the concept is that NO actual hull paint colour would remain visible. And it looks super, to me (his work is MUCH better than anything I can do!).

I usually want to have some of the original paint revealed thru the dirt, so I go the "from base paint in natural order" route and apply the "real" hull coats (I "pre-shade" with black or with rot-oxide types, followed by a complete base - "gelb", in the Nashorn case)- and then I spray over some varied earth and dust coats to the degree I am seeking (is it just lightly dusted? is it supposed to be really dirty and wholly-obscured?), and follow up with chalks for blending and further weathering and dusting effects (to me, NOTHING looks more like road dust on a kit then some chalk dust!).

IMHO, both approaches can yield good results- I favor the "from the real base" as it allows easy variation in exposure of the base paints through a "natural order of application" of dirt, whereas if you start with all "earth coats", you would have to go back and very artfully apply the "base coats" over your "dirt" to show any sort of varied paint exposure. To me, it's just easier to start with the paint coat, IF I want to leave some original paint exposed! IF NOT, then I go "Prigent" and paint all-earth first.

As to gear-on or gear-off painting- usually I go gear-off for the base coats, assemble the gear on, and weather.

Cheers! Bob