STATIC CAPITAL

The Elefant.

Zimmerit. I was supplied with Tamiya’s self adhesive zimmerit but was not happy with the result it gave so I replaced it with my own, using white superfine Milliput and a small screwdriver. This was a very time-consuming job but was worth the extra effort. In this shot you can also see weld beads that were added using stretched sprue softened with liquid cement and textured with the point of a scalpel blade.

This shot shows some of the extra detail added. This includes brass and copper wire replacement hatch handles, hinge bolts cut from plastic rod, hooks for hanging the tow cables made from P\E scrap and a bracket to hang the sledge hammer  from plastic card.

With construction complete the model received a coat of dark yellow and the tracks were painted a mixture of Tamiya red brown with a touch of flat black.The contact points of the tracks were coloured with a Prismacolor silver pencil.

The camouflage colours were sprayed quite subtly as per my reference and a bucket from the spares box was appropriately beaten up and hung from the jack bracket. The kit’s string tow cable was replaced with copper twine.

A couple of spare track links were hung from the tow cable hooks on this side.

The tracks, road-wheels and generally all lower areas were liberally coated with a mix of pastel chalk dust and turpentine.

All the raised detail received a very carefully applied wash of oil based black/brown. This included a heavier but no less careful application to the detail on all the running gear.

The spare track links (front and rear) received a very heavy dusting of pastel chalk powder.

Lots of scratches were added with the aid of a very fine brush and a very sharp 6B pencil.

More wear and scratches.

Finished! Or so I thought.

At this point I realised that I had forgotten to apply the tactical number decal to the rear end.

Finished!