Hello, guys. Here's my first attempt on armor modeling. As of this posting I've only got five 1/72 WWII aircraft under my belt. I've read good stuff about Tamiya's M41, and since it's cheap, I decided to give it a go.



My initial interest is on Soviet armor, but who knows, maybe I'll get into American armor more. My initial plan for aircraft models were German ones, but I ended up doing Japanese ones.

Anyway here's what I've been up to so far.

Basic construction. I've decided not to fill in the holes under the hull and on the underside of the fenders. Being an old kit, there was quite a lot of gaps and poor fit. Some of them I filled in, some I didn't bother filling.




After a few weeks and finishing some aircraft modeling, I got back into the M41. I've primed everything with Mr. Surfacer 1200 thinner with Mr. Color Leveling Thinner.



Then disaster struck. Apparently the vinyl tracks won't accept the primer.



But nonetheless I decided to push through. I took out some Tamiya acrylic Gun Metal color and airbrushed the tracks even if some of the primer was literally flaking off and flying away. I noticed that the Gun Metal wasn't as dark as I would've wanted, so I took some Tamiya Panel Line Accent Color (black), a big old brush, and just attacked the tracks with reckless abandon. The result can be seen in the right set of tracks here:



And then I proceeded with airbrushing the base color. I've never done preshading before, and I didn't do it here either. I used Tamiya's Olive Drab.



That's all for now. Hopefully during the weekdays I can finish painting the black parts of the road wheels and the other tools/stowage pieces.

Cheers and thanks for looking!

Vincent,
Good luck with your build.

Yep, vinyl tracks are notorious for not wanting to hold paint. Occasionally I have no choice but to use vinyl tracks, but otherwise I will pretty much always swap them out for something else.

vinyl tracks are pretty much the devil in my eyes. the Tamiya kits are great for beginners, but when tracks are in question, they are typically the most challenging part. vinyl tracks, wont only not hold the paint well, but then you gotta find a way to get them to hold. different ways work for different people. I have only used vinyl tracks once, and it was the last time. trying to get the ends to meld together was hell for me.
on the other hand, single link tracks are tedious, and to me, aren't necessarily beginner level as "most" beginners want fewer parts. If you aren't worried about the amount of parts, I would always recommend individual plastic tracks.

You picked a good kit to start with. It's reasonable in part count and assembly. Once you get your feet wet with it, it's on to bigger and better. Then individual tracks.

I have to admit that was my first armour build back in the late '80's It was a good kit as I remember.

Paul

Sorry for the long time without an update. Here's what I've been up to.

I've painted the other smaller areas such as the rubber part of the wheels, the spare tracks, and tools, and then I tried my first attempt at producing a rust effect. I took a mix of Tamiya Red and Hull Red, an old brush, and started stabbing the edges of the exhaust covers.



Then I sealed it all with a gloss coat, applied the decals, and now it's ready for a wash.



Here's where things got worse. I've seen videos of using soft pastels + water + detergent to make a wash. I tried it, and what I got was specks of dried detergent instead of the proper color stuck in the nooks and crannies!



It turns out the detergent I used was homemade from a family's friend, so my only solution was to take a wet brush and try to remove as much as I can.

After a little clean up, I took my Tamiya Panel Line Accent color and started applying it on the nooks and crannies where I initially intended to apply the wash. These two photos are right after I applied the wash and are prior to a major clean up of the excess black paint.



And after a major cleanup, I decided to take some outdoor photos of my current progress, which seems to have turned out for the better despite the mishaps. I'm happy these stuff happened now on my first model rather than on a future project. I also decided to attach the tracks now to avoid further flaking off of the paint.

Of course I wasn't content with the rust effects I made on the exhaust covers, so I decided to go a notch up and I bought some Vallejo pigments, Rust and Dark Red Ochre plus their Pigment Fixer.

I didn't want the exhaust covers to look too rusty so I didn't apply any fixer and huge chunks of pigment. What I did was rub in some Dark Red Ochre with cotton buds and a paintbrush, and then rub some Rust color afterwards.



The camera's flash bleaches the colors too much, so I waited for the weekend where I can see the weathering progress under natural light. It turns out it's just the effect that I desired.



And that's all for now. My next plan for this model is to drybrush some of the details and then apply some earthly pigments to the wheels and tracks, and then finish with a heavily thinned Tamiya Buff filter.

Thanks for viewing! Comments and criticism and suggestions are very much welcome!

Looks really good - the best part of building Armor is that vehicles are almost always dirty! I have found that the more "natural" you can make the dirt/dust/mud the better it looks. I use lots of fine soil from my garden and mix it with mud with great results. Keep up the great work and look forward to more pictures!

Sorry for the lack of updates, I've finished this kit for almost a month ago. Here's what I've done:

I used Vallejo Pigments to add mud. I initially wanted to do a subtle dust effect for starters, but the cracking of paint in the tracks made me decided to just add thick mud effects to cover them. I mixed the pigments on a dish with a few drops of Vallejo's Pigment Binder and applied them liberally on the tracks and wheels with a brush. I also did some splash effects by flicking the brush bristles on the lower hull areas.




I also applied a dust filter, but somehow I don't think it had any effect. I probably haven't added enough Tamiya Buff paint to the thinner.



Anyway, I'm calling my first tank model DONE! I know it still looks a bit clean on the upper half, but I've decided not to overdo things. Any further weathering techniques, I will be applying on my next armor model.

I've had a lot of fun building the M41 even though it's an old kit with some fitting issues and the crappy vinyl tracks. I'm looking forward to building another armor kit soon. But I'm still not finished with this one since I still have to do a proper photoshoot for it. These two final pictures will have to do for now.



Here's a little figure of Kay from Girls und Panzer. I'm sure some of you are familiar with that anime series. It turns out her figure can fit in the cupola. Although she's quite loose because her hair's weight keeps making her fall into all sorts of directions.



Cheers for following this build!

very nice work!!!!

I have built this kit as well, as I'm sure most guys here on the boards have. I do not have a problem with the vinyl tracks, although I go about getting them ready for paint in a bit of a different manner.

I spray them with Nato black, then dry brush them with a few different colors to get the effect of wear and metal parts being exposed as I want.

Nice work!!!!! and keep it up.