Trewets journey into Bolt Action German Panzer Grenadier 901st

Have had a pot of Model Mates rust effect hanging around my work bench since last years Salute,and have been itching for a project to use it on.

The thicker you apply this stuff the darker the rust it can be re activated using water and moved around the model to stain areas around the rusted metal object to have painted to give a somewhat oily stain.If you do this you can then build up thin layers of the effect to give a light rust effect where you want it.

Really like this stuff but my pot has thickened with time/age so got a dark rust straight out the pot.When I first used this stuff as a trial after first getting it on a piece of terrain it had a much lighter orange rust finish.

A few new additions to my 901st grenadiers and maybe ,just maybe some SS help.

The 901st. We’re part of a very mixed bag when it came to the Panzer Lehr division they were part of. It had elements of Wehrmacht,armour and SS all attached together.

It makes for an easy army list build,take what you want if a little daunting when it comes to choices.

That said here are my reinforcements,some painted some not.

The Tiger and  Hanomag were primed using my air brush with Vallejo grey surface primer and then a base colour of armour brown(71.041) freehand air brushing of two other colours, green brown(71.039)and cam green(71.022) in opposing stripes to give a general cameo pattern. Both were shaded using diluted nuln oil and dry brushed lightly with bone white(72.034) to bring out the edges of the vehicles.

I am not too sure if this pattern is authentic but it looks good to me and is as close as I could guess from pics and other data I can get hold of to date.

Th groups in the background are a mortar crew,a machine gun crew and a motorcycle with sidecar(don’t know yet if or how to add this to any list but I like the idea of a mobile machine gun platform.

Crew in the Hanomag are from the Opel blitz truck box that I got at the Western desert Bootcamp

I have more of these that will be painted in a more fitting grenadier uniform than the desert colours,but wanted to see what it looked like loaded.The Jerry cans on the outside will also get a different colour but have not decided what would be best.Green,brown,sand,or grey?

The very end of the Stug main gun has been weathered with track dark brownweathering powders(almost black).

First up apologies for minimal photos as I forgot to photograph the progress as I was concentrating really hard on the new technique.

The final result of undercoating the model with panzer grey, waiting for that to dry, then varnishing with gloss varnish and letting that dry. Next step is spraying the model with hairspray and topping that with a flat white acrylic paint. This is then followed by a very careful nervous rubbing of the white with a damp brush.

I found that soaking a section of white paint to reactivite the acrylic paint then gently rubbing with the brush gave a better result then rubbing a wet brush, as you need to brush harder and then when it reaches a saturation point for the paint to move you inadvertently take more paint off than you want to. The reactivated paint then moves over the model like a fresh white paint glaze.

The model was then weathered using powdered pigments, a red brown and darker black brown.

Some lazy hangers on have managed to blag a lift from the commander.

All have had magnets super glued to the bottom of the figure.

This allows me to remove them when they are shot at in game or I could add magnetised baggage/ stowage.

Now I have owed and used a cheap air brush and compressor set up for a number of years…….I am by no means an expert or amazing airbrush officionardo, I get by.

Air brushes make it mush easier to paint larger models like vehicles to a higher standard than I personally am able to achieve with a brush.

I want to push my skills further in this project so have set myself the target of learning how to use the hair spray technique to weather the white wash winter camouflage pattern  I have decided use.

In my family the use of hair spray is not a high priority due to the lack of long luscious locks as some of you might have noticed from my log in picture lol.

So that said a visit to the shops to buy a can of strong hold hair spray is on the cards…

The stug is going to be the next upgrade to my German forces in our on going escalation league,BUT I want to use the Stug later as a transport for a squad of Begleit(Stug riders)

This means some forward planning on the build front,so I have drilled some holes in the Stug model and installed magnets at key points to take the metal warlord Begleit squad which I have also magnetised.

The holes in the Stug are roughly filled and sculpted with green stuff to help make the magnets less obvious when the squad of riders are not used,I am toying with the idea of magnetising some storage to help with this as well but have not got that far YET!

So for February I have decided to support the infantry squads of the 901st grenadiers with some armour…..probably from the 243rd armoured divison

I have decided to field a STUG III,depending on the level I take this I could also have a few tank riders