This Panzer III was my first serious attempt at winter camo as well as my first try with the resin engine set. It dates back about 3 years, the kit is from Dragon and I have used resin conversion from CMK for the engine bay.

The winter camo wasn’t originally much of a success story. I wanted to try hairspray method, but somehow it hasn’t worked. Nevertheless I was left with a slight texture on the surface of the engine hatches. When drybrushed with dark oils, this has created very nice chipping effect, so at the end it wasn’t as much of a disaster as I was afraid of, though the effect was achieved in completely different way than originally intended.

The engine set was very nice, though designed originally for Tamiya kit, it fits nicely into Dragon one’s too. There was some modifications I had to do at the bottom to match different hull tub floor, but nothing can be seen through the hatches. Which is also bit sad, as many of the fine details are hard to see. There is very little documentation I was able to find in terms of the painting of the engine and other components, so I had to work with some assumptions…

Original tracks were replaced with Friul ostketten tracks. I like tracks from Friul also because, unlike other aftermarket track producers, they always include a lot of spare track links in their sets. These came to good use as I have placed them, together with the original kit track’s links, on the kit as add-on armour on the front glacis and top of the turret. mounting brackets for these were made from brass strips.

Model was painted in Tamiya acrylics and most of the chipping was done with artist’s oils.

Markings are those used by the 3rd Panzer Grenadier Division during the Stalingrad battle in 1942.