Hanomag Sdkfz 251/1's Winter Scheme

Progress has been made! The 251/1 is nearing completion and I'm already eying up the next project. Before I get into looking ahead too much, let's finish this one. I had a day off this week and I was able to focus on painting and chipping the vehicle while watching Bruce Lee's Return of the Dragon. The kids were in school, the wife was gone and it was awesome! I was even able to have the volume loud enough to hear the dialogue, in all its overdubbed awfulness over the intermittent drone of the air compressor.

I used the same red primer on the machine guns as I did the vehicle.

I hand painted the guns with Model Master Acryl Gun Metal. I didn't have "wood" paint so I mixed Leather, Dark Earth Ana and a touch of Rust. The guns still need a dry brushing and wash on the wood.

Before applying the white, I sealed the primer and base coat with matte lacquer, then I sprayed on the chipping fluid.

I tried to apply the white unevenly.

A little more uneven on this one.

With some water to activate the chipping fluid and a brush, the chipping worked pretty well.

After a few weeks of sitting I coating the wheels with Alclad Gloss. I still need to get better with painting wheels. I think the trick is having a glossy surface, and thinning the paint so it flows into the edges and carefully spinning the wheel while holding the brush still.

Terribly painted wheels. I used Flat Black with a couple of drops of Flat White mixed in.

The machine gun shield before I realized I could take a better picture by not holding it. Duh.

Perhaps it is chipped too much? Oh well.

I did some oil washes and streaking prior to putting on the white acrylic paint. I was going for an old streak/new streak thing, but you really can't see any of it after the white was applied. I did seal it with a matte coat to make sure there were no adverse reactions between the oil and the acrylic. In this picture I used the calipers to take some measurements of the decals to create some masks out of an index card. I used some sticky tack to hold it off the surface a little to create soft mask lines.

Masking is done. I also just noticed at this point that the left fender guide broke off. I have no idea where it could be, so I guess it will just be part of the vehicle's wear and tear!

After painting was completed. Again, I tried to keep it uneven and it worked out pretty nicely. I wasn't crazy about how the masking turned out, but I dealt with that to soften it up.

The more I look at these pictures, the more I like the vehicle without chipping.

When I pulled the masking off, the sticky tack took some license plate with it, doh! More "wear and tear".

I'm not sure what I think about the chipping at this point. Some of it will soften up in the later stages of washes and weathering. At least I think so.

For the mask lines that I wasn't too happy about,  I tried to soften those hard edges by chipping it away.

The Iron Cross got pulled up a bit when I using some Tamiya tape to pick up some Q-Tip fuzz. I used Tamiya tape to loosely mask under the fender during painting. If you notice, a good chunk of paint and primer came with it. I hand painted it in with primer and some Panzer Schwarzgrau to cover it up. It will also be behind the wheels so I'm not too concerned about it. More "wear and tear".

Here's the stuff I used for painting the vehicle.

Hopefully this weekend I'll be able to gloss coat the vehicle and do some washes and weathering. I still need to paint the tools and the tracks. I think the wood paint mixture worked out pretty well and will probably use that on the tools. "Thank you, come again."

Hanomag Base Color and Decals

I've reached the slowest point of the project, painting and weathering. So much waiting. Not so much time. I don't think this is going to get done in the next 6 days. 

During the painting process I was able to "watch" Welcome To the Jungle (the Van Damme movie, and not related to Guns & Roses) and Gettysburg on Netflix, so about three hours. I saw things, followed a story, didn't really hear any words because of the air compressor. Something tells me that Welcome To the Jungle isn't going to see any Oscar nominations.

So exciting, pre-shaded wheels on sticks.

Nearing the end of the pre-shading extravaganza, I started to get the hang of it! Pre-shading was done with flat black. I was having some trouble getting a nice clean, fine line out of the airbrush. When I was shooting a fine line it was coming out like very small round dots. Maybe it was a paint consistency issue?

I seriously had doubts as to whether or not pre-shading was a futile exercise, but I thought I would give it a try anyway.

It's like a wheel graveyard!

The base coat is Panzer Schwarzgrau (black-grey). I think my skepticism was mostly accurate. It was difficult keeping the pre-shading visible, but it's a little more noticeable in person. My original plan was to chip the base coat to reveal the oxide primer. I didn't because I wanted to accelerate some progress on this build at the moment. I'll give it a shot soon though.

Now it looks pretty close to the plastic it was molded in!

After three coats of gloss, the decals were applied.

Based on some minimal research, Hanomags did not appear to be heavily marked.

The stuff I used here was Model Master Acryl Flat Black and Panzer Schwarzgrau. The gloss coat was Alclad II Gloss Klear Kote (ALC 310) Lacquer and the decals were set with Micro Set and Micro Sol.

I used this website for some historic photos of the Hanomag, World War Photos (Hanomag) 

Now that the decals are done, I will be putting on a few more coats of gloss for some basic oil streaking before moving on. There is plenty of work left on the little parts, rubber for the wheels, the tools, the guns and finally the tracks. I still need to figure out what to do with the tracks.