Marder III M, self propelled
75mm anti tank gun 40

I bought some after market products, that are more or less worth their money:

• Blast Models BL3500K "Update set Marder III M"
• ABER 35L05 "German 7,5cm gun barrel for Marder III M"
• Friulmodellismo ATL-13 "Single track links for Marder III M"
• The tarpaulin from MIG-productions in the picture to the right was not used, as I changed my first plans for the final layout of the Marder. Besides: it would not have fitted either due to the thickness of the parts...
  

The much too heavy armour plates of the crew compartment (as it is always with those "cabriolet-tanks") were substituted for homemade aluminium ones. The bolts had to be cut from the original parts or tinkered by means of stretched sprue and a handdrill.

Besides from the interior set from Blast Models many self-made parts - mostly from copper - were filled into the crew compartement to have extra-detail at this key zone:

Aluminium plates

MG-mount

Ammo-storage

Radio set

Shield

The exterior details like clamps and handgrips but also the tool box, muffler and towing cable got major improvements by making new pieces from copper, fishing wire and plastic card, as one can see at the following pictures:

Handgrips

Aerial mount

Driver´s hatch

Muffler, cable

Tools

The excellent metal gun from ABER ist really like a smal kit: it contains of not less than 7 parts, including the screw for the muzzle break. One can surely use the two halve 7,5mm gun from the Tamiya kit as well - if one likes sanding jobs!
 

Painting

This time a three tone cammouflage was choosen. This kind was in use in the last years of the war from 1943 onwards.

Prior to painting the whole vehicle one has to have done all the interior parts and all the details there because after the assembly of the crew compartement it is nearly impossible to reach every spot!

Also with this model I did all the priming and pre-shading as usual (see the articles in the "Tips-section" for more details!). After having applied the cammo pattern with an airbrush at very fine vent, I cut an stencil with the "Gerda" letters out of Tamiya masking strips and put this onto the armour plate. Also the digits were stencilled ("Stencillit"- brand) and now airbrushed with red and white. Slight corrections by means of a fine brush finished this part of the work.

Interiour

Interiour

Gun

Base cammo

Micro painting

Finally washings, dry-brushing, pigments and detail painting helped to bring live into this model.

The chipped paint at the muffler cover was achieved by masking over a dark yellow base colour and then painting a lighter tone in round spots over the masks. The consistency of the second cover should be very viscous because when you remove the mask, the rims of the second cover should lift a little bit (see the last picture in the gallery below for details).
 

The Diorama

I cut a small piece of styrofoam to get the shape of the slope and glued it onto the precast piece of wood. Some plaster bandages gave tis shape more subtle design and as a bonus, seals the styrofoam. Onto this I applied a mixture of white glue (like "Elmer´s"), celluclay and water. Now one has enough time to work on the ground details, as this mixtures takes a long time to cure.

An old Vinyl track from my spare part´s box helped me to imprint the track traces. Around them I posed short and long artificial grass from the railway modeller´s accessories (NOCH-company).

Several natural grasses and lichen, elder and a plant that is often used to fill up bouchets of rose flowers amended the flora. To finish the small diorama I had only to blend the tones with my airbrush and set some coloured spots - especially onto the "flowers" - with oil colours.

The Marder III M war screwed onto the base which helped to get the suspension system snuggled to the slope.