I have painted MERDC Pattern before, but I only use an airbrush, an d the edges are soft compared to actual photos of vehicles with the Merdc pattern. which has solid edges. What are the methods and possibly techniques that can be use to achieve a more accurate representation of the MERDC pattern on models? Thanks for any input.

Check out this post where the builder used silly putty as a mask for MERDC camo.

I've used poster tack, but silly putty should be fine.

MERDC camouflage was usually applied locally. I was on a detail to paint a bunch of vehicles in our Headquarters company, and also in the vehicles of my platoon. We used both a spray gun and paint brushes to apply the paint. Also, although the book (US Army TB 43-0147, I think) showed patterns applied to vehicles, it was more of a guideline and many variations occurred.

Richard,

I don't think there is any magic formula for doing the MERDC paint scheme on models. I personally spray paint the green and OD colors and then hand paint the black and sand. If the green and OD colors need a sharper edge in places, I then go back over those edges with a brush and feather it into the sprayed color. As Popup states above, the patterns shown in the TB was a guide only. We used white chalk to rough out the pattern and then sprayed or brushed on the colors on the real vehicles.

These are two models I did with the MERDC schemes. Both weathered and pre-weathering.







BTW, the paint I use is Model Master Acryl:

MM Dark Green #4726 - FS#34079
MM Olive Drab #4728 - FS#34087
MM Armor Sand #4711 - FS#32077
MM Flat Black #4788 - FS#37038

Hope this helps.

Dave

The magic of MERDC is that there really isn't a wrong way of doing it as long as you use the pattern as a guide. For example I have a picture of several M113's next to each other and each track has a slightly different MERDC pattern. Some have softer edges than others, with evident overspray while others appear to have been masked. I spray the base color and the secondary free hand and then brush the crows feet and sand.



Erik