I was thinking about adding some bullet holes in a guntruck iam working on. I've tested out a few different things on a test model but I dono if they look right. What I did was I took a file with a point and twisted with my hands. It put a small hole in the plastic and after that I used some silver paint and painted around the hole. My question is how deep should the hole go, how wide, etc. Or if bullets would even put a small hole / Indentation in the armor. Any ideas?

Thanks,
Mike

What i found out is to take a sodering gun and have a tiny amout of soder at the end, then heat it up and press into your model!!! It will make smoke and smell bad but it will leave a hole with some shiny soder (that looks like metal) left!!! go here to see the result

Hey TimberWolf, that is a pretty nice method of making bullet holes. I'll have to try it. What i do is use a small drill bit in my Dremel and make a small indention in the model. While pianting and weathering, I will paint the bullet hole with model masters metalizer, then mask it when I apply my bascoat. After the bascoat is dry, I remove the mask, and weather it with the aprropriate colors. :-)

Hi,

You should get Armour Modelling No.25. Makato Takaishi prepared great article (with many photos) how to reproduce hits.

Hope it helps,

Michal

TimberWolf,

Do you do that before or after painting/wheatering?

For Bullet impact or hole, I use pin to drill a little hole, or just half way though, to simulate a dent, then paint a little flat aluminum in the center, and some black color around the holes.

For large caliber impact/non-penetrating. I got a couple of small balls from a girl friend's neckless. I heat it up a little bit, and pressed into the surface to creat a little round dent, then add a little bit of putty to scuplt some testure. Then paint.

HTH.

I do that last, because the little bit of soder on the end makes it all siver looking and covers up the lost paint. Just have a fan running....it SMELLS!!

Here are a few pics ....




This gives you a little idea of what non penetrating hits look like. They've all been painted over, but use your imagination

John

Let me make a quick comment about the damage on the Sherman, especially for the new modelers: This vehicle looks like it was a range target at some point in its life. You would rarely (if ever) see this much small arms damage on a vehicle in combat. Infantry don't usually shoot at tanks with anything that won't take out the tank -- it tends to attract unwanted attention.

Three most common mistakes made by new armor modelers:
1) Unrealistic battle damage (try to use actual combat photos for reference)
2) Stowage hung incorrectly (in the wrong place and/or stuck on like refrigerator magnets)
3) Overdone silver and/or rust wear 'n' tear

I have to agree with Hollowpoint. It is fairly rare to see bullet damage on a tank. At best, the damage normally only shows in the sheet metal (fenders, covers, etc.). Damage from larger than small arms is even rarer, since it is even more foolish to shoot a tank with a cannon that won't kill it. (Cannons don't run away nearly as quick as an infantryman.) The reason that photographers took pictures of such damage is because it was fairly unusual. Far more common is damaged or ripped off fenders and such. Tanks apply a lot of pressure to a part that touches an obstacle, and bent or torn sheet metal is relatively common. Check the references.

Regarding silver paint....go easy with it. Most damage to armor results in a dark gray or steel gray color to the exposed metal, not bright silver. The damage rarely stands out. One exception is aluminum parts that result in, well...aluminum colored damage, particularly on edges of tears and around holes. Foot traffic will rarely produce silver marks, and bright red rust is also rare (it only appears on very fresh exposed metal, like the torn edges of an armor penetration. Rust on armored vehicles is normally a dull, almost dark brown color.

Personally I just randomly shoot my model with my handy-dandy 1/35 scale M1 Carbine! Works every time!

Tread.

So what you're really saying is your tanks show no damage whatsoever!

I don't "build 'em clean," but if you enter IPMS Nationals, that is what has historically won in Armor categories.

I have to share this: back in 1980-something, they had an IPMS National in St. Louis. I entered everthing I thought was "good" -- most of them heavily weathered. What won? A "Don Cossack in German Service," what I thought was a rather lame mounted figure conversion based on Tamiya's old "Mounted Infantry" figure. Sure, I tricked it up a bit, but a first? Come on ... the horse was spastic, the hat was wrong ... don't try to repeat this as I think they have educated themselves about Cossacks since I entered this.

I still love WWII Cossacks. What a story. What a different kind of model ...

I'm sorry, did I say M1 Carbine?.....I meant to say Atomic Cannon!

I usually do the same too, I mean shooting it with my 1/35 little rifles. The thing is I currently ran out of 1/35 ammos, so I placed an order with Tamiya and DML, the ammo haven't arrived yet.... #:-)

Okie-dokie, Tread.

In "real life" the only major concentration of small arms fire you will typically see is around the turrent area, where people might take pot-shots at an exposed tank commander or gunner. You will also see some machine gun fire, but as stated earlier, most of the time people didn't bother shooting a cap gun at an elephant.. but now and then you might spray some 30 Cal or 50 cal just out of shear panic.

As for "making bullet holes" (as opposed to non-penetrating "mar spots")... try a hot needle, held with pliers over a candle flame. Makes a nice and realistic penetration ridge, but be sure to poke the hole from the INSIDE to get it correct! Works extremely well on thin aircraft armor and on things like a jeep fender or thin side armor skirts, etc.

Hope this helps.

i guess I should have mentioned the part about the range target. Thanks for the catch.
It was just a little reference to show what bullet holes/ricochets look like in real life applications (unless you live in LA, then just look outside )

A question for KFMAgee : when using the method of the hot needle, why is it important
to do it from the inside ?

PenPen-

I can try to answer your question...

If you look at photos of battle damage from large caliber guns, you will find that the shape of the hole depends on the thickness of the target metal. In thin metal, you get the familiar punched-in shape of hole, with the metal pushed in as if the bullet dragged it through the hole.

The traditional hot needle from the outside is a good way to do this, keeping in mind that bullets rarely strike anything square on. Bullets tend to strike at some angle, and that tends to tear the thin metal a bit. The flatter the entry angle, the greater the tearing. At very flat angles it can be very difficult to tell that the damage is from a bullet, because the hole is elongated and distorted so much it doesn't look like a bullet hole.

In thicker metal (armor plate) two things can happen. The first is that the penetration is actually pushed up on the nearer side, as if the projectile sort of pushed the metal aside as it penetrated. The hole is surrounded by a ridge of metal on the side the shell came from, and looks kind of like a popped pimple (Ewwww...gross! But that IS what it looks like!) This type of hole is common with lower velocity (most guns in WWII, and many modern HEAT rounds). By using a hot needle from the inside, a small amount of plastic is pushed up and out of the hole you make, resulting in a pretty realistic hole.

With very high velocity shells (88mm in WWII, and most modern AT or Sabot rounds) leave a very clean penetration on the outside of the armor plate. The result of a hit is basically a fairly small hole with very little blast marking or other damage on the outside. The inside damage is significantly higher, bordering on catastrophic, of course. It is often difficult to find the penetration from a sabot round, because the hole is deceptively small and has none of the markers you might expect. This type of damage is best replicated with a drilled hole, which is then roughed up (so it is not perfectly round - slight striations inside the hole are all you need) with a needle file.

I hope this helps!

I use match head after i light them and blow them out of course or a pin vice