Mid-Week Update for the 12/13/2009 Goal

Okay so the stripping, scrubbing, priming and base coating are done.  So the StuG III Gs are at the same phase of painting as the Panzer IVs.  As I have now learned, they were not as originally thought StuG IVs, remember count the road wheels, divide by two (or read the contents of the box).  The Schurzen (side skirts, i am too lazy to figure out HTML umlaut code) are back to a nice German Yellow (dunkelgelb) after undoing my first attempted at Ostfront camouflage.

Here you see the spaghetti sauce jar getting pressed into service of the Reich.  There was also a round of soaking in Windex.  I had horribly botched my first attempt at camouflage, and the Schurzen needed redone from scratch.

Here you see the results of cleaning the StuGs.  The Schurzen of the Open Fire! starter set are molded, in resin, directly onto the body of the assault gun.  Thin resin, plus the occasional shake and scrub led to the broken plate you see on the left StuG.

Battlefront makes the vast majority of their armored vehicles out of a very brittle resin compound.  In the mainline kits, these have numerous white metal and, in some cases, plastic components.  The Open Fire starter set StuGs, however, are single piece resin (as noted above) plus a white metal barrel.  the normal StuGs and vehicles are resin cores white white metal tracks.  Why is this important?  Look below....






On the right, you get a nice view of how the resin tab protrudes beyond the bottom of the tracks, causing a floating in scape look.  On the right, you can see how the tab for a normal kit Panzer IV Ausf. H is much smaller as there are not tracks getting int he way of it being cut close to the body.  Originally, I was just going to do the models "straight out of the box" but the broken schurzen and the floating tank syndrome were too much.  So while I am not using my extra tank stowage bits, those things are getting




So some time in the vice and a little green stuff to correct for operator error the cleaned up, I present the StuGs with more ground clearance than a Corvette.




Here you can see the quick repair of the broken resin schurzen via some plastic card and some more green stuff on the bottom of the StuGs. The card blends in decently for as slap dash as it was done. Once built and painted and weathered properly, it should look a a little disjoint as schurzen were separate plates in real life.



Primed and mounted and ready for base coating.



And now the whole family assembled for a group shot now that base coating is done.

As a side note, Menoth White Base is a great touch up for my recipe for Dunkelgelb. Tonight I put on the Reflective Green and Red Brown primer the Germans used for camouflage.

Hopefully, I'll be posting a small tutorial on how to Dremel resin, as it isn't as safe as one would think.