I just picked up a tamiya marder II and im wanting to try some new weathering techniques, mainly shell damage, and I was wondering if anyone know where to find pictures of damaged marders, or if they could give advice on how to realisticly re create that, at this point im using a hand drill, then im using a knife to make the hole less uniform, lastly im putting some tamiya white putty around the mouth of the hole to make it look like the shell melted through the armor, anyways and tips on new techniques or how to improve my current technique would be appreciated

How the impact point looks, depends upon a lot of things, but they can be summarised by "how badly was the armour overmatched by the AP round". It also depends upon whot kind of armour ar you using. Pretty much all German AFVs used a face hardened armour that performed differently than Allied homogeneous armour.

If the overmatch was unsufficient you get the gouges with raised lips but no penetration.


The 6 gouges on the glasis

If it just overmatches, the round penetrates and leaves a lip.



If it overmatches by a lot you can get a pretty clean punch through that is nice a round OR you can get a shatter where the hole has no lip, but is ragged and much larger than the round.


Here you see both, the glasis penetration is pretty nice and clean, but the side penetration is a shatter.

If it really overmatches by a lot German plate had a tendancy to shatter.


And, of course, the thinner the plate the greater the chance it will be greatly overmatched and shatter.

Marders had really thin plate and, from the middle until the end of the war were usually up against tanks with guns that greatly overmatched their superstructure armour.

Making the shattered plate is really hard to do, mush less the massive internal damage that occurred when the thing imploded after shattering.

Paul

that helps alot, I saw a diagram of different shell damages, I was thinking of trying to recreate the damage from either an anti tank rifle or a heat shell, as far as I know, anti tank rifles punch through clean or just bounce off, and heat and high explosive shells usualy cause alot of melting, that way I couold avoid attempting a shattered armor

Make bazooka round penetration. They burn a neat round hole, about 1 to 1 1/2 ins. diameter straight through, with just a lot of burn marks on the exterior.

You could get some of the shatter effect by freezing the plastic first, followed by a quick impact.

I think i'll give the bazooka holes a shot, im still not feeling to confident about the idea of trying to shatter part of a tank, I could see that getting messed up very easily

Remember: the bazooka ingress hole is about the diameter of a quarter in real life. Your goal is to show the explosion behind the penetration.

Gotcha, im probably gonna put the hole in the thin armor protecting the gun, but on one of the far sides, that way I can avoid having to re create too much damage, thanks for the tips so far guys, it helps alot

I would like to expand on this question and ask how you recreate battle damage? I, like Jonas, want to replicate ricochets on a plastic kit. I have seen some that looked like they were created with a Dremel or razor knife.

well from my experience, ricochet shells usualy dont go deep at all, there usualy pretty clean groves with a bit of displaced metal on there sides, when i've done those usualy I use a pin vice or hand drill to make the base of the grove, then smooth it out a bit with a knife, and after thats done I use tamiya white putty to simulate dispaced metal, im sure other people on here have better techniqes then that though, im still pretty green to the hobby

Unless you are going to put your model in such a way that you simply can't see inside, you are going to have to do a fair amount of detail work to get realistic bazooka/HEAT round damge inside your Marder.

After peneetrating, HEAT rounds spray white hot metal plasma over everything in their path. If a round hit the superstructure of a Marder, the insides would be gouged and spattered with metal gobbets, any stowage boxes would be torn through and the contents burned out, the gun or gun mount would probably show damage the thing probably would be burnt out. If you put the impact anywhere near the ammo bins, the tank would be turned inside out with the ammo fire and explosion.

If you don't really want to get into the massive amount of work that damaging the visible parts of a Marder would entail, perhaps the entry point could be lower, like into the enclosed driver's compartment or the lower glasis, etc.

You might want to check out this article here on Armorama!

https://armorama.kitmaker.net//features/4012

Hi.
In the past I did give it a try, to build a destryed train in 1/87 scale. The best way to do this is to replicate the specific part you want to damage in a thin sheet material, like brass. Do some research on the innerside. Explosions or whatever lokks very convincing using the thin bodywork. Fixation is easy by soldering the holes.

Regards,

Robert Jan

well at this point I might do a heat shell in the hull of it, and do one or two holes from a anti tank rifle,, that way I can still beat it up a bit, but not have to simulate so much damage

What's the point then ?
I say go for it. You'll learn loads doing it. Simulate cracked armour plates by scoring the plastic until it is almost cut through and then push and twist it with your fingers. Practice on some styrene sheet or an old kit first

The best results I ever got, after so much trial and error was to use a paper clip.

Straighten out the whole thing, then bend one end into a hook/loop the size of the shell you want to use to damage the tank.

Hold a lighter under the hook until red hot. Hold the clip with some pliers so you don't burn yourself. Then use that rounded loop to melt the damage in.

For a soft bounce turn the loop in a circle barely touching the surface. It gives a nice circle affect that raises the edges up.

For a ricochet you can scoop the hook in at the base and pull it in the direction of the shell path. The effect of the melted plastic is perfect. It raises the edge creating a trough.

If you want a full pen it is the easiest of all. Heat up the loop, push it through the surface and turn it a full 360. It leaves a perfect shell pen and as you remove it, it creates that upper lip that Paul mentioned.

Get an old model and practice destroying it first. I found an old Pz4 I made as a kid and went to town on it. It doesn't take many goes to work out what looks the best and the best way to create the damage. Make the loop larger and smaller for different sorts of damage. Using just the sharp end with no loop, makes very nice small arms damage too.

Good luck mate!

Dazza: that makes sense for a well armored vehicle like a Panther or T-34 -- but I can't imagine any surface on a Marder II that would take a gouge or deflection unless it was an extremely small caliber (>37mm?) glancing shot.

The Marder II was pretty thinly armored given its likely opponents.