I have a tiger on the workbench, and i am about to apply a whitewash. I was just wondering if you guys wheatering before applying the withwash or not. Dont know if the real tank were new when received the white paint.

Rosario

Rosario;

My punt as follows...

It's all a bunch of IF's and your preference! I'd suppose that the whitewash would have been applied in the field over whatever the camo scheme and coat-condition was. If a battered, worn tank and paint coat, that would be what got -washed.

The cool side (and your real opportunities) lies in whether that whitewash was (is, on your kit) supposed to be fresh and complete (so maybe pretty white and entire, leaving little or no base-camo showing from behind) or already tired and worn (in which case it may be thinned out, scraped off, leaving lots of camo showing, as well as being variably dirty or mudded in its own right). IF the latter- you leave lots of camo exposed- you are now in the lucky position of deciding whether that exposed camo was tired and worn or fresh when the whitewash went on!

This is exactly the case I've found myself in with an old Tamiya flakpanzer IV Wirbelwind I've built. I saw a pic of one taken in Spring 1945 showing what looks like varied a decaying whitewash job of whitish bands and streaks left over from the winter. The w-w coat was pretty tired and lots of base camo was exposed. That camo looked rather tired in its own way. So that's how I'm building her up - I painted the entire panzer with a tricolor scheme, weathered and faded it, and then layered on some weak whitewash with lots of eroded-out patches exposing worn camo. I'll drape the thing with a few dirty bed-sheets (just as seen in the pic) -which probably were intended to lend some assist to the shabby w-w coat.

Hope this helps!

Bob

Thanks for your reply,
i think i will follow you approach. i am planning to give a light witewash with a lots of camo showing and i think this is the correct way to go.
This is my second build and between hairspray method and whitewash etc etc i am little confused. I hope to post some photo of the final model. The third is already started, an old tamyia kit ((japanese motorcycle reconnassance set).
Thanks to armorama and all of you guys for the invaluable help to keep me going.