I'm working on a Tamiya Sturmtiger. Sometimes I wonder why Tamiya is so appreciated by modellers. OK... detail is impressive, pieces fits OK. But there are some annoying things.

The instructions of the model are poor. Color indications are awful. Example: there is an wood box on the rear chassis. Tamiya indicates its color as red brown, exactly the same color as used on the camouflage scheme. I can imagine dozens of brown tones better to paint wood instead of red brown.

This makes me question other indications from Tamiya about the colors:

1) The crane. Color indicated: metalic grey. On the covert art it seems more like a bronze or something. Any sugestions?

2) The interiors. What color should be applied for this model interiors?

By the way... I don't know what is the so called "ambush camouflage shceme". What is it and why is it called "ambush" ?



it's not somethning from other

Hi Torgut..the painting instructions are really just a guide and you can't really go by the box art either. It's just an artist's rendering of what he thinks it looks like. Of course you need to use reference material like books and magazines and even the internet. You also need to use your imagination. Experiment with paint mixtures and see which colors seem more realistic to you. Weathering also adds realism to your model.
As for the Ambush Scheme..It was a late war camo pattern that used the basic three color
scheme of rotbraun,sandgelb and olivgruen then had small dabs of the opposite colors applied over the whole vehicle thus making it a very disruptive pattern. In other words small spots of sandgelb and olivgruen were placed on the rotbraun and vice-versa. Very effective but futile as it came at a time of the war when the Germans had lost the initiative and really didn't have the resources to paint the majority of thier vehicles in this fashion.
Tamiya is ,in my opinion the, the best AFV manufacturer out there. They need to expand their product range a little..but the craftsmanship is EXCELLENT. That said...Italeri's Sturmtiger is right up there with the Tamiya version and at about half the price...it even includes zimmerit. Hope this helps....Jeff

Hi Bodeen... you are free to call the painting instructions "just a guide". In fact, this Tamiya painting instructions are just that. But they shouldn't be. If you want an example of rigorous instructions regarding to paint, take a look at Revell's models. There, colours are indicated exactly as they should be... if there is no color available in the paints catalogue, then you receive indications of the percentage of each paint to obtain the desirable tone. Much differente from the simplicity of Tamiya... for this Sturmtiger, according to Tamiya, all I need are 11 colors.

Now.. about my questions... I feel that metalic grey is not the best choice for the crane. I was wondering if anyone did this reseacrh before so I could spare this time

Thanks for the info about the ambush scheme. Im still curious about the origin of the name... ambush ? Why ambush? Funny designation.

Ah.. Zimmerit included on that Italer's model... nice.. well.. I guess I will have to do my first try with Tamiya putty for my Sturmtiger zimmerit.

Hi. Haven't built Tamiya's version of this vehicle, but a couple of years ago I did build the Italeri version and really liked it. Esp. that molded on Zimmerit pattern.

I agree that some makers instructions can be a bit frustrating, but there are some out there a lot worse than Tamiya's. I'm currently thinking of Dragon's Nashorn where there were several major mistakes in those instructions. A totally unaccpetable state of affairs for any major modeling manufacturer in today's market.

So references and doing research is just about a must anymore, whether done in books or on the Net. Luckily there are certain sites out there with tons of information on a particular vehicle so it's really no big problem finding what you need to know. (And this site is one of the best for one-on-one info. sharing.)

On interior painting, I just paint mine a light grey auto primer color and after doing some washes and weathering it looks okay to me. I think that the original color was a buff, or off-white, but don't quote me on this.

Good luck and take care, sgirty.

ambush scheme is the three dot color scheme if i remember correctly. i did that camo scheme on my mobelwagon

Torgut, here is a pretty cool article on the refurbishing of a 1/1 Hetzer which shows the colors used and how-to.

JAGDPANZER 38 HETZER

http://community.webshots.com/user/tankcarl
Go look in the tank collection album,I have my Tamiya Sturmtiger there.
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Correct me if I am wrong, the reason it's called ambush scheme is that during the late stage of the war, German Panzers were used more in defensive roles, that is hide, then take a few shots, then shift fire position at once. The scheme is adopted for fighting in most of woodland in central europe, the spots on the camo looked like sun light shine through the gaps of the overhead trees that the panzers are "Ambushing" in. Hence, the ambush scheme. IMHO, it's the coolest camo scheme and makes a lot of sense. You can see quite alot of this scheme in late war Heavies, and Stugs, or Jagdpanzers. HTH.