NAB,
Tools are looking grand! A suggestion for those cables is a coat of flat gunmetal then a black wash of Tamiya or similar type. Use a little rust dust dry effect brushed on and they should look very realistic. Don''t forget to paint the eyelet cable shields the same color as the tank base coat. Following along.
regards,
Painless
Funnily enough that's exactly what I ended up doing to the cables! Minus the rust.
I get the impression that the crews would spray over everything including cables and tools but as a modeller it's nice to add some detail like that.
In Bovington the whole cable was a different colour to the tank so I used some cold bluing on the ends of mine.
Will get some pics of them up tomorrow.
The smaller cables I will have to use the plastic supplied ones unless anyone knows where to get them?
Trial fitted the mato metal drive wheel and idler.
Drive wheel went on no problem but the idler bearing was slightly smaller so after a gentle bit of sanding of the tensioner with the dremil it went on nicely.
But I now need some washers to pack it out a bit as the screws on the back are fouling on the screw head that holds the tensioner arm in place.
Interestingly I have metal arms on all road wheels? Is this normal in the 6.0s tanks? I've read the people say they're plastic.
Some more bits primed ready for dark yellow.
The tank primed in dark yellow. The bottom hull and wheels are already in dark yellow from the Heng Long factory so will just weather them.
And the towing cables so far. Will probably give them another dark wash or 2 before they're finished. The ends have just had some cold bluing on them.
I've fabricated some for the lower ones and should be able to do the upper one too but the commanders hatch has so many! Will have to have a think about how to do that