On the Workbench - Sd.Kfz 251/1 Ausf. D Half-track - Part 1

I recently purchased my first airbrush (a Harder and Steenbeck Evolution Silverline 2 in 1) and before I get started attempting late war German 3-tone camo on my backlog of tanks and vehicles, I decided to have a practice on something that I'm not planning on using for the army.

Last year I won a 15 mm scale Plastic Soldier Company Sd.Kfz 251/1 Ausf. D half-track model in a competition run by Osprey Publishing, which proved ideal for a test bed!

Battlefront released a video tutorial on YouTube a couple of years ago to instruct people on their method of painting a Jagdpanzer IV/70 in 3-tone camo (embedded at the bottom of this post). The tutorial is very informative, and forms the basis for most of the techniques I've used on the half-track below.

I used the following method to paint the 3-tone camo using an airbrush, note that all Vallejo Model Air (not the primer) were thinned 1:1 with Vallejo Model Air Thinner, and I was spraying at 15 psi. Everything is from Vallejo's Model Air range unless otherwise specified.

1. Prime with Vallejo RAL 7028 German Dark Yellow (Dunkelgelb) surface primer.
2. All over coat of Vallejo Model Air 71.025 Dark Yellow.
3. Mask off the crew compartment with blu-tack.
4. Zenithal highlight with 20% 71.001 White and 80% 71.025 Dark Yellow.
5. Zenithal highlight with 40% 71.001 White and 60% 71.025 Dark Yellow.
6. Mask off the front wheels and the drive train with blu-tack (on the real vehicles it was rare that these areas ended up being painted anything other than dunkelgelb).
7. Wavy lines of 71.041 Armour Brown.
8. Wavy lines of 71.092 Medium Olive.
9. An all-over coat of Mig filter P242 - Tan for Tritonal Camo.

Behold the end result! Notice how the dunkelgelb on the superstructure top is lighter than that of the drive train, an effect of the zenithal highlight.

The right-hand side of the halftrack, note the large gap in the body halves (not the fault of the kit manufacturer)

Unfortunately, removing the blu-tack from the drive train took some of the paint (including primer) with it! Next time I think I'll pick up some proper masking tape for the job.

There was a slight hiccup when putting the model together (hence the gap in the hull visible above). I decided to prime the two halves of the hull separately so I could get at all the details, but when putting it back together it went a little awry (long story), so now there is a bit of a gap between the two hull halves. I've contemplated going back and filling the gap and then repainting the camo but at this stage I think I'll just leave it as this is just a test model.

Overall I'm happy with the way it has turned out so far, I got a bit carried away with the lines on the left-hand side of the hull so they are a little thick and too uniform in shape, but I'll bear this in mind for next time. Now I've painted in all the details the base coat is done and it is ready for a coat of gloss varnish, decals and a pin wash, followed by a good dose of weathering.

Below is Battlefront's Jagdpanzer IV tutorial mentioned above.



Lessons

• Get some proper modellers masking tape, the blu-tack I used to mask the road wheels ended up pulling off the paint and primer.
• Practice painting finer lines for the camo overspray.
• Have a go at drawing in the camo lines with a pencil before spraying them in to ensure a realistic pattern is achieved and I'm not making it up on the fly.

Update: The finished vehicle can be seen in this post.