I read some post in this forum where Sabot explainned that a tank track couldn't be so rust as people are modelling, so my questions is:
Sabot, how do you paint your tracks for a reallistic look, and do you differ it method when you model a modern tank over a wwII tank for example?
My best regards to all you, fellow modellers!

No, I paint my tracks based on the type of tracks they are, i.e. mainly rubber shoed or all metal. Base coat for metal tracks can be a dark brown, metal tracks a gunship gray color. Track components are very hard metal. Any rust accumulated is basically a light surface rust that would be rubbed off at the slightest touch. Tracks almost always have a dusty look (dust colored metal).

So you just don´t put a pastel chalk or something like it that can simulate rust, is it?

Now that I think about it, I drive by a M4 Sherman everyday on my way home from work. It's in front of the National Guard building. And it's an operational tank too. I never noticed any rust on the tracks, and I remember some manufactures painting instructions saying to paint the metal ends rust. I always thought that was weird, but I mostly built aircraft. So I would paint them rust what did I know, every picture I've seen of a Sherman it was in black & white.

I will dry brush some rust onto the tracks, very lightly, but when you see someone's tracks and they are a nice shade of orange, they went too far. As I said before, tanks in the field have mud colored (covered) tracks and in the motor pool or roads are dust colored.

And Rob I am sure you would know this answer more than I, but the average age of a Sherman tank after June 1944 couldn't of been very old. I would think a tank rolling along a road in France, that it wasn't that long ago it was rolling off the assembly line back in the states. I don't know much about tanks, but right now I am reading "Death traps" a very interesting book.

Ron Cimorelli
Ashtabula, OH

So the tracks would look almost black? Is silver an acceptable color for dry-brushing all-metal tracks? I noticed that the cleats on earth movers are polished from friction with the ground.

Instead of dry brushing silver I take an emery board and sand through until I get the effesct I want. Idid this because ssilver out of the bottle is to bright and running a lead pencil is to dull. Besides My way is exactly how it happens in real life, so the carefully done with washes and pastels applied you should have very convincing tracks.

Josh WEingarten
aKa shiryon :-)

tanks with all metal track will indeed have some light surface rust, but were the
metal rubs together will be a bright silver. other parts of the will be a gunship,or a
gun metal color. rubber shoed track will be the silver color as before mentioned
and that is where the rust appears. I know i've changed enough of them

IMHO, when weathering the tracks one should also take into account the historical/geographical location of the particalar vehicle, for a Pz IV operated in the rich soil of Ukrain, the track's weathering should be greatly different than a M48 in the red soil of the Mekong Delta.

My 2 cents