First repaints

Here are the first Sho't and Magach to be repainted in the Hannants Israeli Tank Sand colour.

First tanks painted correctly.

and the before shot (no pun intended)

The first photo isn't finished - I haven't painted the lenses, the markings or weathered it, but you can already see the difference in shade. I painted the new paint on, and find that it dries very quickly after you put it on the palette, so I'm going to go for an even damper wet pallette when I paint up the next tanks. It took me 1 and and a half hours to repaint two tanks, which is a bit of a shock to the system after the super quick Tamiya spray, army painter dip and varnish that I originally used to paint them!

I didn't strip the tanks down and I don't think that I've lost any detail in painting over the previous coat, but it was important to highlight the edges - that is the laborious part of the process.  I didn't weant to use the Army painter dip again partly because I don't know how effective it would be and partly because I don't want to risk a reaction with the paint when the varnish goes on.

I'll slowly paint up all of the tanks, one platoon at a time, and of course I'll paint anything new in this style as well. And I do have a bit of new stuff - two M48s Magachs from QRF, 5 M3 halftracks from Plastic Soldier Company, 6 BTR 152s, 3 M50 Shermans and 4 AMX 13s. 

And the repainted Magach 3

I'll post more on this project as I continue to build it.

Nate

The Sigh-nai Grey blues

I've known all along that the colour of my Israeli tanks was only correct if you look at them at a certain hour through a certain lens on a certain camera.  In other words, it is wrong. In an act of reciprocity I have been inspired by the painting of fellow gamer Daniel McCoy to repaint my Israeli tanks (apparently this blog inspired him to get back into his Arab Israeli Six Day War project, which is nice to know). He uses Vallejo Medium Grey, a colour that I never even considered, but which gives an excellent finish. This will be my fall back colour if the following is unsuccessful. I trawled the net looking for just the right colour and believe that I have found it in the Hannants Xtracrylix Israeli Tank Sand Grey. I went to order directly from Hannants, but they don't accept any order less than 20 quid, so I found Relish Models who have despatched three bottles of this precious pigment to me. When I get it, my first mission will be to repaint a tank and post a picture.

Changing the colour from this...

...to this

Wow... that colour difference is really noticeable - even for a colour blind guy like me!

The other announcement on the Arab-Israeli front is that I have been inspired to extend the collection to cover the Six Day War as well. Now there will be a certain amount of 'make-do' - my T-55s are in 1973 camo and I am not repainting them or buying another 21. But I am going to buy some T-34/85s (10) and paint them in the light sand colour of '67 Egyptian armour. I've already repainted the SU100s for this (the scheme hadn't changed by '73).

I also need new APCs, and I think that I'm going to go with BTR-50s rather than BTR-152s. Both will also cross over into the Yom Kippur War, but I like the idea of the 50s better I think. 

I've already ordered some M5 halftracks for my Israelis, so they are on the way, but I need a few more tanks - specifically AMX-13s. I also need some more Shermans, and I'm tempted to get some M48s and not upgrade their guns but leave them as 90mm.

I've ordered a Tamiya 1/100 Mirage III and a MiG 19 for the air support (such as the Egyptians had). I'm halfway tempted to build a Jordanian army, but this will be built from scratch - infantry plus Centurions and Pattons. So all pretty exciting really.  We played another Arab-Israeli Flames of War game on Friday night. This time the Egyptians actually managed a win with a double envelopment! Forgot my camera, so no pics sorry.

If anyone had told me three years ago that modern tank battles would be my main project focus for wargaming , I wouldn't have believed them. Now I can't get enough of it!

Nate