World War II Project - P107 (f)/U304 (f) 21st Pz Div Halftracks - Paintwork

Its been a while since I have worked on these but its time to get them across the finish line. I did a little more research because I was getting a little confused about some of the information I was reading. I blame it on Becker. So the P107 (f) itself is actually the unarmored version, which looks a lot like a halftracked truck. The original function, for the French, was as a light artillery tractor or an engineering platform. Enter our friend Alfred Becker. The 21st Panzer Division was short on all types of armored vehicles, but especially the SdKfz 251/1 halftracks. Becker took the P107 and from them created the armored U304 (f) halftrack. It looks very similar to the SdKfz 251 and I suspect that was intentional to help avoid friendly fire as the angled armored sides would not have been easy to construct.

I'm using the Warlord Games P107 (which should be called the U304(f)) which required some fairly major "adjustments" to get it to come together properly. Warlord also makes a U304(f) with the PaK 36 (I'm not sure how I missed that). I don't know if its the same body as their P107 or a new model but I'm fairly certain it was not available when I bought my P107s which was, admittedly, a number of years ago. I have also learned that Mad Bob Miniatures is also making the U304 (f) now and that would probably be my first choice if I were to do it again or just needed more. Mad Bob makes two AA versions (armored and partially armored) the MG version and the Pak 36 version. Their castings tend to be a little on the rough side but the simplicity of construction and the price go a long way in making up for that and really there are plenty of ways to fix a rough casting.

Here are links to the previous progress on the U304 (f)s:

The Beginning
Axles
Windscreens
Machine Guns
Primer
A Spot of Paint
Decals

And with that I started off with the paint sequence (still trying to figure out the best sequence for this, so subject to change without notice). I applied a filter first to tie the colors together a bit more. I did two very thin coats which harmonized the colors a bit more than a single coat would do. Following that I did the lining. This really starts to make the vehicles standout and its definitely a bit tedious. You don't just apply an dark wash over the whole vehicle which would really hide what I was trying to do with the filter, instead I use a brush with a reasonably good tip and outline the areas, especially around raised panels, panel lines and the like. I don't use my good Kolinsky sables for this, I'm using Ammo's Dark Wash which is an enamel wash and enamels will eat a brush really fast. Which means I finally found a good use for those double ended brushes I got on a kickstarter so many years ago now. Oh and apparently I didn't really get enough gloss varnish over the decals in a couple of places and the filter really ripped them up. However, I think they look quite good after that so I didn't bother to replace them. They will help with the chipping.

After that was finished I started to fade the upper surfaces a bit. I'm trying some oil colors from Abteilung to see how those work differently from the Ammo Oilbrushers. Unfortunately I really didn't really let things dry adequately so the initial work was not what I had hoped for. Time to step away and let things dry before I try it again.

I have just started the lining on the U304 on the left, it really stands out from the one on the right even at this stage.

Lining is complete, next I'll move on to fading some of the top surfaces. If you look close you can see the disintegrated iron cross on the middle U304, the result of not applying enough gloss varnish over it.

And from the back

The step I was hoping to get to, fading using the new Abteilung oils I purchased. Best to spread these out on a piece of cardboard to absorb some of the excess oil, helps it dry faster too. I'll go back to these after the U304s have had some more time to dry.