Updates 9/28/2013 - Correcting the Paint Mistakes in the turret
Before I forget, some of you may have noticed I am airbrushing indoors now.
Well I have ditched my jumbo air compressor and bought this compact air compressor from Tamiya.
I have used it during the painting of the camouflage for the panther and I think after that I could give it a proper review. My verdict? I really really like it!
Advantages:
- Its very small and compact. see pic below of the air compressor next to my airbrush so you can get an idea of its size. As you can see it really is very small. This makes it ideal for airbrushing indoors. I find that I can setup an airbrushing session on our kitchen table, which makes it very convenient.
- It spits out an even 10 psi of air. Not very much but I find this enough for my needs and allows a tremendous amount of control with the paint output. 1/35 scale modellers and smaller will find it more than enough. As a side benefit, this miniscule air pressure makes you very conscious of how you thin your paint. A paint that is too viscous (not thinned enough) will not come out of your airbrush as there is simply not enough pressure to push it out.
Disadvantages
- It overheats easily. The air compressor manual states not to use it for more than 30 minutes at a time. This can be an issue if you are the kind of person that paints continuously and non-stop. As for me, I like frequent breaks anyway so what I do is I put just enough paint in my airbrush for a 30 minute paint session so I am forced to stop when I run out of paint. I then just mix another batch of paint (which takes approx. 5-10 minutes).By the time I am ready again to paint, the air compressor would have cooled down enough to use again.
- it pulses. The compressor does not have a reservoir tank so that the motor directly feeds output air into the hoses. Again however, I don't find that this was an issue with me since the air pulses at quite a high frequency (more than 100 times a minute) that it evens out the air coming out of the air brush to such an extent that it does not affect paint output or quality.
So with that mini review, I decided to just re-do the turret side that had the ugly paint runs. Following PainlessWolf's advice, I got some very fine sandpaper and just sanded some of the paint runs out. I then masked the already painted areas with Blu-tac to prevent overspray.
I then repeated the process of painting the camouflage. First Dark Yellow, mask, Paint Red Brown, mask and finally apply the Olive Green.
Crossed my fingers as I carefully removed the Blu-tac when the paint dried.
Very happy that the fix came out very well. Turret finally done! Now it actually looks better than the opposite side.
With the turret off the hull, I took the opportunity to re-attach the swing arms. Since the swing arms sits lower to the ground than the hull, I put some tape around it so that the paint on the swing arms doesn't get scuffed.
I also finished up the turret by painting the barrel with the camo color. Below are photos of the results.
First off, the barrel detail.
Also, I purposely sprayed the camo colors from the top and side of the barrel only so that I have this feathered effect of dark yellow on the bottom of the barrel.
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Here are the rest of the photos of the Panther in various action poses.
One effect of applying the camouflage after the tank is fully assembled is that patches of red oxide will appear on the upper hull when the turret is rotated at various angles. This is my interpretation of what can happen if the Waffenamnt directive is followed since I don't think factory workers will have the time to rotate the turret at the factory just so they can spray paint the hidden undersides!
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Eagle eyed readers might notice the very apparent pattern to the colour fields in the camouflage as I applied it here. After looking at hundreds of panther period photos,
I have come up with this pattern that I believe is as close to the factory directive for MAN for the application of camouflage for Dec'44. Some of the pattern rules are very evident.
- the large swath of Dark Yellow in the hull front going diagonally on one side and then moving to the opposite at the hull bottom.
A MAN Panther. Notice the front glacis camo pattern.
- large to narrow band of Dark yellow running diagonally from top of turret to mantlet side. This pattern was well used during Sept-Oct '44 but was no longer followed strictly after Oct 44- onwards. Here I decided to still use this pattern for my panther although the pattern I used is no longer closely follows the Sept-Oct, directive.
Panther manufactured between Sep-Oct' 44.
Panther manufactured after Oct, 44. (I used this photo as basis for my camo pattern)
- Red brown usually sandwiched between 2 Dark yellow bands. You can see this on the mantlet front, the repeating bands on the barrel as well as some patterns on the tank's sides.
- When the 3 camo colors overlap, Dark Yellow is always on top of Red brown and Red brown is on top of Olive Green. (In that order) From this pattern, I believe factory workers for 'real' panthers would paint the Olive Green first, Red Brown Second and then apply patches of Dark Yellow last.
