Ready for weathering & new gun (Patreon)

My friends, I finally got it all done and sealed under a layer of varnish. 

Decals were okay, but they had a noticeable "step" around the decal film. I tried dealing with it by spraying the area under the decal with gloss to protect the MMP base against decal setting solution, then spraying the decal again with Tamiya gloss and sanding it with a micro fine sponge and water. I wasn't able to sand it as much as I wanted because the MMP started to peel off, while the Tamiya brown and green held up with no problems. So I stopped and sealed them again with gloss. The remaining "step" will have to be hidden with weathering 😄

Detail painting was only about picking out the tow cable ends and insides of empty tool clamps with Ammo dark yellow which has a slightly different tone than the one I used as a base coat. I also painted the inside of the commander's hatch and that smaller "hatch" which covers the periscope with it.

Then I sprayed the whole model with VMS satin varnish, seriously probably the best varnish I ever used, it has to be applied wet, so you're pretty much flooding the surface, but when it dries it creates the smoothest finish ever. It can even level out some subtle orange peel. 

And then, I brush painted the oxide primer areas with a mixture of Vallejo paints - Cavalry Brown, Lemon Yellow, Red and some Tamiya flat base. The reason for painting these parts after the varnish is so they'll be matt compared with the rest of the vehicle which is satin. 

Wheels - at first I wanted to keep them yellow because the historical photos show them in a pretty uniform color, however in some of them there are some color variations. I guess it could be either way, once they got dusty it would be hard to tell their original color anyway. The tank looked quite weird with them painted yellow, and I already weathered a set of these steel wheels in yellow on the Tiger, so I decided to camouflage them as well. 

And the new airbrush arrived. It's nothing fancy! Just Fengda BD180 which costs only 38€, but my friend who's really good with airbrushing swears up and down it's one of the best brushes he ever had, and his results are really something I look up to. So I'll give it a shot, well I already did, and the results still aren't perfect, but I'd say they're better. He also said there's room for improvement and if the pandemic situation allows it, he'd give me some private tutoring because I must be still doing something wrong. Well.... we'll see! Now I kinda want to get a Panzer III kit and paint it in this striped camouflage 😆

Anyway, it's time to make a video!