Afrikakorps and Conversions

Spend some time at the weekend with the airbrush. Preparing my Afrikakorps, which consists mostly of Rubicon vehicles and Perry infantry.

I started with Vallejo black primer. You can use it directly from the bottle, but i thin it down a bit never the less. You get a thinner coat with the airbrush, compared to the spray can. But it takes a bit longer. And it is a bit more matt finish. At the moment the motorized part of the Afrikakorps consists of an Tiger I, a Panzer III and IV, SdKfz 251 and Opel Blitz, with two more to come. The Greif and Kübelwagen aren't prepared yet and will follow in another batch.

Another advantage of using an airbrush compared to a spray can, the paint dries a lot faster, as the coat is thinner. The cool down between the coats is much shorter.

With the Afrikakorps i will go with a plain desert color scheme and heavy weathering. Originally i was going with the Bolt Action spray paint, but decided to use the mig Jimenez "1939-1943 Early and DAK German Set" and for the details etc. the AK interactive Tracks & Wheels set.

I let the black dry completely, cleaned the airbrush and loaded it with Mig 010 / RAL 7028 Dunkelgelb. A nice little detail of the mig paint bottles is, that they already have the small metal balls inside, that help mixing the paint properly. The paint itself is thin and you could use it directly from the bottle, but i thin it down a bit with Tamija X-20 Thinner.

A short test with the turrets, to see if they still fit. If your layers are to thick, the turrets may get stuck. Remember several thin coats are better than one thick. Next up i'll paint the further base colours, beginning with the tracks and wheels, followed by the tools and additional equipment.

Then there was the new Flammpanzerwagen from Bolt Action (I'll post a review soon). I was one of the few unlucky ones, that got a mispack. I had non matching sprues, one of the Ausf. C, the other Ausf. D., so you can't combined upper and lower part of the kit. Warlord Games replaced the kit without hassle, and i was thinking what am i going to do with the mispack?
Well, i assembled it as far as it could be build and decided to cut away the upper back part to make room for a platform. I added plastic card and made it look like an unfolded structure. Not yet sure, what weapon to put up there, maybe  2-cm-Flak 38 like on the SdKfz 251/17 or a Flak-Vierling. I'll see. The last picture is just a mockup to show you, how much / little space i got to spice things up. Feel free to drop a comment or suggestion, what this SdKfz could carry into battle.

Thanks a lot for reading, come by again soon and leave a comment or give me a like on Facebook if you like this blog!