RC Tank Warfare community hobby forum

All i know about weathering is not much, but I know it's too easy to over do it. That said everyone seems to have their own ideas about weathering, I just look at models the real experten have done, that look good to me then try to copy them. Because of scale, every little mark of weathering has a big effect on the look of the model. Faded or uneven paint is the first effect i try for since it should be the base coat for the other weathering anyway. And this is not hard to do, by lightening/darkening the paint shade from the airbrush. Here's what i mean. Here is one of my favorite models, an H.L. Mk III, and all i did has use this simple airbrush trick. To me the effect is very pleasing to the eye. but one I haven't been able to duplicate on a tank with more then one color for some reason.


And tanks were not always rust buckets, since few of them lasted longer then a month or two in combat anyway. Most of them were probably destroyed by enemy action long before they had time to get major rust or get really filthy. Even looking at all the wartime photographs, most tanks do not seem greatly worn out or beat up by the elements. Whether it was because of wartime censorship (not wanting to show photos of beat up equipment to the civilians at home, for morale reasons, so these photos got censored out and lost to history), the high loss rate of armored vehicles, or the fact that soldiers spend much more time maintaining vehicles then fighting in them - most wartime vehicles do not seem to show a lot of weather effects, even the abandoned ones.

I must agree with Mark. Almost all the wartime photos I've looked at of WW2 vehicles in color or colorized show very little rust other then some surface flash rust of the tracks. Even burned out tanks which sat abandoned for a year show little more then some slight rust where the paint was burned off. I think it had something to do with the steels available at that time.
Someone somewhere said he thought it was because after nuclear weapons where used all regular steel being made after WW2 is infected with something that makes it rust easier. Look at pictures of post WW2 made destroyed tanks abandoned and it seems they get coated with shallow rust rather quickly once they get sit out in the weather and get wet.