I almost finished painting and took the baby out for a duel with my DBC-equipped panzer III, as well as for a sound check at maximum volume. After returning home I added the turret numbers and insignias.

Indoor...




...and outdoor

Really nice Borealis, it looks like steel, and the rust job on the mufler is amazing!

The Blitz

very nice , a credit to you ,you can almost hear the clang as the hatch shuts !

The steel, translucid effect is obtained by spraying a coat of chrome silver before the coat of German Grey.
I don't know if it's a common tecnique, but I like to use it on non-camouflaged models.

Thanks borealis, I think I am going to try that on my New Stug, and maybe even go back to my oil blown Tiger 1 where I got carried away with the flat black on it!

What is German Grey do you have a paint color number or is it a Tamiya color?

The Blitz

Yes, it's Tamiya's XF-63, also known as 'panzergrau' but Tamiya's name is 'German grey'.

Yes I started doing this as well. I paint the tank with a finish called hammered steel, then a coat of redbrown primer, followed by German grey. It really makes convincing paint chips when you use a small flat tipped screw driver to distress the paint, and you can see the layers

If you omit the red primer maybe you get a more 'steel' effect, but lose the higher realism in paint chips. But the method is great to reproduce very thin scratches too: I too used a small flat screwdriver, as well as a small saw (those used on the hobbico handles) to make very thin stips.

I find it more realistic, since you reproduce the same wear process found in real world.

I just added the track tensioner from www.tank-modellbau.de.
The new lower position of the idler allowed me to lower the 4th return roller to a more correct position.
Now the tracks have the correct shape around the wheels.

Some pictures of the assembling process, and the final result.

Looks great! How much did you lower the return roller? And, how hard was the tensioner to install?

The return roller was lowered about 3mm.
The track tensioner is quite easy to install: you just have to cut a bit, drill a bit, and you are fine. You can do it in an hour of work or little more.
Most of the job was cutting the return roller support without destroying it, and re-mounting into the new position.