Hello fellas,
Here's my finished model of the Nashorn. This Nashorn was in the battle of kursk. Seem lots of thunderstorms raged through the battlefields of kursk, I decided to make the mud with a wet appearence. This is my 9th model tank build and i'm pretty happy with the results.
Comments and tips welcome











Callum.

Wow! Great job for your 20th build, much less ninth. Made me remember I have a Hornisse waiting to be finished. An observation/suggestion. Your mud is visible, but not convincing. It looks more like it just drove off of a beach. I use a spray paint for wet mud. Not sure if you have it domestically, but it is Rust-o-leum textured paint. Another method I have found for making mud is to mix a little water with brown enamel or paint thinner with brown acrylic. It turns to a slime, but when dry, retains a "wet" appearance. Beyond that, the weathering is very well done. The tracks on German vehicles, being the same as the primer, were oxide red. Not until late in the war did Germany no longer use this as a primer.

AND, MOST IMPORTANTLY, as long as you enjoyed building it everything is as it should be.
PS I really like the camo!

Great build I would add more mud to the front and back of the tank. The aimming stacks should be painted red and white strips

Great looking model. Awesome paint and weathering, other then the aiming sticks noted above, the ammo belt on the mg should hang more vertical from the weight. I normally do this buy putting the plastic(or resin) belt in boiling water then shape.

Great work.

Thanks for the comments and advice! Matt i'll have to give you technique for wet mud a try. This time round I used mig pigmets with the wet mud mixture. I would apply the mixture then using a brush "tap" the pigments over the wet surface, giving it an accumulated effect. Later, I would then, using an airbrush spray the wet mud mixture over the dried pigments to give off a wetter effect. I think a note for the future would be is to add even more pigments.
The annoying thing is everything takes time, as i want to improve my skill to be up there with the professionals. But I can only try new things one model at a time

I never knew that the tracks were primed. I always thought they were just bare metal, so I sprayed them with humbrols gunmetal colour.

Matt, i'll touch that up this afternoon. Also in the photo of the MG 42 i can see the plate above the radio hasn't been chipped, so i'll get onto that as well.

Kevin, thanks for that tip. I tried bending the pastic without heating, and it almost broke. So i left the belt like that. But i'll use boiling water next time for sure.

Callum

I can't see in the pictures, but if you haven't done it, make sure the underside of the fenders (especially towards the back have a good coating of mud thrown up by the tracks.

Also, you might want to watch the chipping. There are some areas on the vehicle were the paint would have a tendency to be worn, scratched, and chipped, but there are other places where it just wouldn't happen as much.

Overall, a pretty nice piece, though.

I really like the camo. Very nicely done.

My comments would be to make sure the road wheels actually sit down on the tracks. Floating road wheels really throw off the 'realism' of what is supposed to be a 20+ ton tracked AFV.

Also, the tracks may or may not have been primered. However, any primer would have been gone VERY quickly once the vehicle was operational.

Very nice build, nice realistic weather and paint chip well done

Hello Bob, thnks for the feedback. I'll research and check out reference photos of where the chips should really be. As for the fenders, I didn't apply much pigment there, as the way I have it displayed, you would'nt be able to see it. However in future builds I will, as it is a nice touch to have.

Thanks for the comment Jesse, glad you liked the camo. I will take notice of that in the future, it was hard to get it right this time as the suspension moves and it's the 1 piece tracks that were used as well.

Thanks Paul, i'm glad you liked it.
Callum.

If you're going to put it on a scenic base, then the moveable suspension is nice to have to conform to the ground. If it's a shelf queen, why not just glue the suspension solid? Or are you one of those guys who likes to drive your tanks around on the carpet?

Hahaha, I would if i could... I'm still undecided on what i'll do with this model. It will most likely be a shelf queen, as I don't have appropiate diorama gear just yet. But as I said. I was undecided when I built the suspenion, i'll glue the suspension when I build my Dragon 1/35 Stug IV No. 6612 and Dragon Panzer IV No.6300.

The red oxide primer used by Germany was incredibly resilient. There may be some bare metal or even rust, but the primer would still be evident.

Great work on this. How did you make your camo and fading? Looks really good.

G'day Greg,
To answer your question, I sprayed the camo with an airbrush by hand; no masks or anything. As for the fading, when the model was in it's final stages of weathering, it didn't look right. So I sprayed with with heavily diluted buff colour, and has seemed to be a good touch. I after that, just added pigments where the dust and dirt would be and it didn't turn out all that bad.

I'm buying that DVD by Mig on weathering with oils to see what I can get out of it and hopefully improve.
Callum.

Nice job Callum...

How was the kit to build?

Paul

Hi Paul,
sorry for the very late reply. The kit was an excellent build! Very fun kit, the parts fitted very well and the instructions weren't to bad. Lots of detailed parts with minimal flash and ejector marks. I highly recommend it!

Callum.

Nice !

G'day fellas,
I followed the advice I was given on what needed to be improved and here's my completed edited Nashorn.