Well, there will be some desaturation based on the desert environment weathering, but fading will be minimal. The vehicle I’m doing was from late May-early June of ‘42 which means the Grants had only been in theater for a few months and out of the paint shop for well less than that. The desert environment creates wear quickly, so there will definitely be some, but it will not be heavily worn.

My current intent is to desaturate with light oils, but that may change as I get started.

I’m not sure if I answered your question well enough... If not, please let me know what additional info you were looking for, as I’m not trying to be obscure, I’m just not following a set pattern for this build.

Fair enough sounds like a good plan & no it wasn’t a rhetorical question, I’m always open to how others do/perceive things and particularly interested/curious what your preferred methods are going to be. If I did have anything in mind it’s only that in all the thousands of photos of AFVs that have passed before my eyes, they all seem to have suffered wear & fading within seconds of leaving the factory

You are absolutely correct. Brand new military equipment begins to show wear almost immediately. My plan is to find pics of the early desert arrivals and hopefully come close to those wear patterns.

Cheers!

Today I applied the markings for this build. A heads up for all builders of this kit, the white for the decals is translucent. If you intend to use them you’ll need to under paint those locations or ensure that no color transitions happen under the white portions of your decals.







On the plus side, the decals conform to detail beautifully and respond well to Micro Sol and to Solvaset. Those are the only two solvents I had a chance to test, so others may also work well. A word of caution with the Solvaset; very little is needed and you won’t want to leave any droplets on the decals as they can bubble at that location.

Hope this info helps someone.
Cheers all

I really like and appreciate the effort you have put into the painting of this model.

Thanks Darren. I’ve enjoyed the build very much. I’m hoping to get the second clear gloss coat on maybe tonight or tomorrow evening so I can press on with the build.

Cheers and stay well

Looking good Paul ! I too have enjoyed the build and have learned a lot. Not just tips & quirks about the kit but general modeling tips. Your PE soldering seminar helped to de-mystify the process for me.
Looking forward to the day when you say, "done"!

As always, I appreciate the support and the kind words! I’m definitely looking forward to seeing this one on the shelf complete myself. I’ve enjoyed doing the build and also doing this build log. Hopefully people can tell me where it went poorly and what needs to done to make future logs, if there are any, better.

Well, that is a pretty paint scheme. Nice work, good choices in color selection.

Greg, you made me laugh! I never thought of it as being pretty...

I went with this scheme because it was different than the the standard Light Stone or Portland Stone schemes common on the early Grants or the much later two and three color schemes that are more popular.

I hadn’t personally seen a Grant built with any of the locally developed early camo schemes done with leftover paint stocks available in May-June 42, so I went with that.

Wow! What a fantastic job! Inside and out it just looks amazing. Beautiful work Paul!

Thanks! I always appreciate it when people take the time to provide humor, comments, advice, constructive feedback or ask questions.

Cheers and stay well

Very nice paint scheme. Heavy or light weathering?

I’m planning on doing relatively light weathering. A bit of wear, some dust, not absolutely inundated though. This one hadn’t been in the desert for very long.

I'm really digging that paint scheme. Kinda reminds me of the Bovington Grant!

I admire your interior work too, though I'm not sure I'd want to tackle that part. Do you intend to display it with open hatches? Be curious to see what's visible!

Yep, the current plan is one batches other than the gun ports. Turret hatch, drivers viewport, both hull sides and the engine bay doors will be open. Having the gun ports open spoiled the lines of the turret too much for me.

I had a busy week and didn’t have a lot of time time spend on the Grant, but I did make some small progress. I’ve removed the hatches that were temp installed for painting and did the touch up painting for those areas.





I also painted the grill on the upper deck when I did the touching up.



I’m tweaking the color of the running gear as the change to the paint scheme meant the base color wasn’t right. I’m not satisfied with it yet, but it’s a lot closer than it was when I removed the masking.



And I’ve also started the desaturation of the colors on the upper surfaces and the decals. I’m using a thin wash of 502 Abteilung Buff. This will be done very gradually, to ensure the markings aren’t too pronounced but don’t look faded.





Hopefully I’ll be able to get more done this week.

Cheers

Excellent model, she's really looking great on you.
Congratulations, Omar

Thanks Omar! Right now I’m waiting for the desaturation oil wash to dry. I’m trying to keep it subtle versus heavily faded. We’ll see where we are when it dries a little more.



Cheers

Warts and all, here is the Grant after the desaturation wash of Abteilung 502 Buff and another light wash and subsequent pin wash of Webber Raw Umber.









Once the raw umber is completely dry, the matte coat goes on and l’ll start with the relatively light desert weathering.

Still waiting for the oils to dry, so I tackled adding the tools to the rear deck so they would be included in the weathering step. I wanted to try doing the straps in a different manner than the usual PE straps because they seem to sit oddly sometimes. I didn’t have any PE buckles to use with tape or Milliput, so I decided to make my own.

Here is picture of the buckles I made from very thin aluminum sheet. I made punch out of steel rod and used it to create the center hole. I then used a chisel tipped Xacto blade to cut the exterior shape.



Here are the tape straps and the aluminum buckles installed on the Grant.



The color of the straps is Vallejo Red Leather.

Cheers

Finally, the oils dried enough for me to apply the matte coat. It’s a bit easier to see how the colors integrate better than before the oils were applied. Once this matte coat cures I’ll press on with the weathering.

Slowly but surely, I’m making my way through the weathering and detail installation on the Grant. Today I made And installed the replacement muzzles for the hull mounted guns.



You can see that I’m currently working my way around the model doing light chipping and have begun to create the dust coats with oils and enamels.





I still have tons of work to do on the finish, but I wanted to post an update since it’s been a while.

Colors used so far in the weathering stage:

Vallejo US Olive Drab- dark chipping
Vallejo Model Air - Radome Tan - light chipping
AK Interactive Enamel - Africa Dust
Webber - Raw Umber Oil
502 Abteilung - Buff
Bob Ross - Yellow Ochre

Cheers

Going well, Paul, camo is blending really nice. Do you weather doors and hatches separately or install them temporarily during the process?

Hi Raimondas,
The answer to your question is both. I usually start the weathering for those items off of the model and then as I complete a step, I set it in place to ensure I haven’t skewed the colors from the chassis. I do this because keeping the doors in place creates hard lines around openings that cause difficulties trying to integrate them when you intend to show the vehicle opened up.

Hope this answers your question.

Cheers