PSC Stug WIP Progress!

I have been making progress on my PSC StuGs. I managed to find the side skirts which I had placed "somewhere easy to find" -- which of course meant it wasn't. But I digress. I bought three sheets of the GW Kampfgruppe Normandy transfers when they were on sale but of course I can't find them now either. Luckily I managed to find some transfers in an old Esci StuG kit.

The skirts camo pattern and decals done. Now they just need fading and weathering.

The Esci kit had four sets of crosses and different numbers but in the same style. This meant that they were sufficient for all my PSC StugS and I will have one set left for the Esci kit. Eventually it will be the fourth StuG in my unit.


Two of the serial numbers were close to each other so I started with those. 233 and 234 would mean the StuGs were from the same platoon and company. I will try and rejig the other numbers later to at least show vehicles from the same company. The transfers were applied on top of a layer of Decal Softener and then I used Decal Fix to make them lie flat. I was a bit worried since the transfers were probably more than 15 years old, but the softener and fix did their job.

The transfers are faded and the skirts are weathered ready to go on the tanks.

The biggest problem now was to weather the skirts so they looked the same colour as the tanks, it's always hard to match colours when you paint some parts afterwards. I successively drybrushed the skirts first with the Dunkelgelb and then Dunkelgelb mixed with more and more  Camo Beige and White. This created the faded look of the transfers and the camo pattern. I then did a pure white drybrush concentrated around the edges, followed up by the same MIG Filter I used on the hulls. Finally the panel lines and bolt heads were pin washed with GW Gryphonne Sepia.

Notice the chipping and rust streaks.

At this stage I glued the skirts on. The skirts were chipped along the edges with Coat d'Arms Slate Grey using a very fine brush. I also did a lot of chips on the sides to simulate shrapnel, general dings and scratches. I mean, they get driven through woods and bushes and even shot at, the poor things.

One of the panels are missing, blown or torn off.

I removed one of the armour panels from the left skirt to further enhance the worn look of the StuG. I wanted to model a unit that had been in combat for a while so this and a few rust streaks really tells a story.

Finished!

The base and the lower parts of the StuG got a healthy dose of European Dust from Mig Pigments, concentrating on the running gear and tracks. It's not hard to use, just put it on with a soft brush, wipe off anything you think is over the top. Then use Pigment Fixer to make it stay in place.

I added a cross on the rear too, and dusted the stowage a little bit too.

I have only finished one of the StuGs. I find that when I work on more than one model at a time I loose patience as I near the finish. So I keep working on only one model of instead of switching between all of them. I guess it's because I see the end and want to reach it as soon as possible, even if it's just with one model. So I did this time too.

A close-up shot of the weathering.

I'm calling this one done although it needs some grass on the base, that is easily done and I will do that at the same time on all of them to get consistent looks to the bases. I'm really happy with the way the weathering and chipping turned out.

"Aww sarge, can I keep it? It followed me home!"

One thing that was an eye-opener was the process of doing the camo. I do have a cheap airbrush but I don't have a good hobby compressor so I rarely use it. Instead I try to mimic the effects of airbrushing with a regular brush. This time I decided not to. The camo was improvised and I came up with the idea of drybrushing with the underlying colour to fade it and then just weather by drybrushing the whole model, decals and camo and all. I was then reminded of usin the exact same technique on a Tamiya 1/35 scale Panther I built over 25 years ago. So I was literally re-inventing the wheel here, rediscovering stuff I already knew.

In the timeless words of the great Homer: Doh!!!