Well I guess you guys are getting sick of these Challenger 2 pictures of mine so I had my friend take a few ..(thanks Daniel) :-) I've been working on this project for quite a while now and enjoyed it completely ..So here are the final pictures .( I do still have to add a flat coat to the tarp and add the antenae) Any comments are welcome..












and last but not least I wanted to show the quality of the Bison decals ..I can't recommend them any higher..



all comments are welcome

Rick

Your Challenger 2 looks really great! I don't see anything wrong with it. I like all of the attention to details and I like the amount of weathering. Where'd you get or how'd you make that really awesome name plate?

That was the easy part it came with the Tamiya P/E set for the grills.. Tanks for the comments.

Rick

Great looking Challenger! Congratulations. If I should change anything I would actually change the name plate. I think a brass plate would match the very nice "mahogny looking" base even better.

Cheers
Erik

Awsome , I love the chipping on the turret/engine deck

Good job

Ian

hey great looking tank there Richard i like it alot i like some of the newer armour but i am still true top the roots :-) anyways ive tryed to make a sherman to look like others out there in suckgood detail like yours. great job cant wait to see more.

Graeme

hey once again one question for you since i missed your other posts on this great tank. what make is it?

Graeme

Wow, this is really excellent work. The surface detail is amazing. Great job.

Very nicely done there mate! Mind sharing with us how you got the surface to look the way you did it?

How did you get the scratches to look like that?
How did you highlight your panel lines?

Sorry for the 20 questions but i recently purchased this same tank so am using your photos as reference.

Great looking model. Paintjob and weathering looks amazing.

Splendid job! Paint chips looks great, rest of weathering too. Are you going to make some groundwork or it's final base?

Piotr

Great job Richard.
I like the weathering not to much not to little.

Jim

Excellent Build!
BTW, what's the scale?

Some inputs thought, the decals are a bit out of register esp the white part if off-alignment. Otherwise, great modelling skills!

Fine looking build there. I've been thinking about doing one myself. Great job.

That looks superb, Richard. Extremely good on the details. I really like the look of the chipping and scratching on the turret top. As others have said, I'd like to know how you did it. Normally I prefer a track on a dio, but that wooden base contrasts nicely with the tank.

Gosh thanks for all the comments...A guy goes to work and comes back to all this ..How neat is that! To answer some of the questions .. First this is Tamiya's 1/35th scale kit..As for the texture on the hull I used Mr Surfacer 500 and a paint brush with the bristles cut short and dabbed it all over the areas that need the anti-skid surface..For the panel lines ,I first painted the whole tank with Tamiya's NATO green all over the kit ..this was also used to creat the chipping and scratches...Before painting the sand color that I mixed from Tamiya's Buff and white with a few drops of flat Yellow added...I used sea salt and sprinkled it over the kit where I wanted the wear to show through...When I finished spray the yellow I reprayed one more time adding a bit more white to the mix and 5 minutes after this I took a rough paint brush and removed the salt all over ..a bonus effect of the rough paint brush is it created scatches on the paint and also scuffed the edges of different panels.(Cool!) As for the base Yeah I think it'll stay this way...I did do a bit of sand but the plaster I used cracked so I said the heck with that and scraped it all off...
Erwin that picture is in super Macro and looking at the real thing it is really un-noticable.
Jeremy if you have any questions at all ,just PM me and I'll help you out in any way I can .
Tanks again for the nice comments

Rick

Cheers for that Rick. Thats was some good tips you have there. Might give it a go on my M113 which im doing now to see how it turns out. The mixture of the paints was the most useful as i was going to just lighten the Tamiya Desert Yellow colour but wasnt sure how that would turn out.

Hi Jeremy ..be careful as the U.S sand color is not exactly the same and it seems to resist chipping much more than the British paint .

Rick

When you say it resisted chipping, what happened? Did the paint start to peel as you removed the salts?

Hi Jeremy ...When I said it resisted chipping better I was talking about the real vehicles...US paint seemed to stand up better to the wear and tear over the British paint.. As for what the salt does is that the sand color paint doesn't get under the the salt and when you wipe off the salt it exposed the green paint under the sand color. The salt did cause the paint to get lighter around where the salt was , I just incorperated this effect into the weathering ..another good side effect!

Rick

Richard -

Truly a masterpiece piece of work. The details and weathering are truly inspiring. I'm thinking of trying the "salt" technique on a Tiger II that I have planned for later this Fall. I'm basically a WWII armor guy, but that Challenger 2 of yours (and watching the History Channel special) has convinced me that I've got to get one for myself. Now of course, I'll have to reorder all my projects, but that's part of the fun. Also wanted to thank you for your support with information, references, etc. That has been extremely helpful in many instances and I've learned much. Now with this added bonus of outstanding builds to learn from...many thanks.

Blade48mrd

Thanks Mike ..that is very kind of you .

Rick