Somewhere in the east on a cloudy day, i.e. diffused lighting


Doesn't give the impression of a bright shiny day but the polished surfaces of the tracks reflect lot of light which means that the surface is very smooth and reflective. I suppose that this could be replicated with some kind of alclad paint. Considering the lighting conditions in my display cabinet I think silver or aluminium metallic would give a very good replication of this appearance.


Another cloudy day?


The peculiar polishing on the inside wheels on the Panther




Now for something completely different (at least I presume that the alloys are different ....)
Polished to low quality mirrors

I have tried to blackend tracks from Friul with good results. In most case i dont need to use cyan glue for the track pins because the blackend process give the brass wire a coarse surface that locks the pin. But has any of You tried to blackend metal tracks from Masterclub? They use resin pins and I fear they would easily break when scrubbing the links. Of course the resin pins must be painted.

To have a meaningful effect on wear and abrasion resistance without causing other problems the steel has to have huge amounts of manganese, like 8-10% as I recall. The classic "manganese steel" stands at about 12% Mn. In contrast the wearing track parts on US tanks were 4xxx, 5xxx, and 8xxx Cr, Mo, and Ni alloy steels that are below 1% manganese. Those alloys look quite as one expects of steel. When wear resistance was needed, such as on some grousers, Colmonoy nickel alloy was weld-deposited on the surface, and these areas did not even rust.

I was not really paying attention to this property in my travels, but I don't recall ever having a problem attaching a magnet to a steel track, US, German, or Russian; vintage or modern. Manganese steels, on the other hand, are non-magnetic.

While construction equipment may frequently use manganese steels tanks did and do not.

KL