Hello fellow modellers,
I haven’t written much about the Renault FT that is on my workbench right now but I nevertheless finished the building and started the painting of the exterior. The Meng kit is just great: the details are beautiful, the options are nice, the instructions are clear and the fit is not as good as Tamiya’s but still really good. Attention needs only to be paid when we close the upper hull above the radiator: a little sanding of the radiator and of the inside of the upper hull needs to be done to achieve a good positioning of the upper hull on the flanks of the tank. I didn’t use the gas tank since there’s no way it can be seen even with all hatches open. This was my first experience with Meng and I really enjoyed the build. I’ll probably buy other models from them.
I started the painting job as usual with a coat of primer from Vallejo and a first sandy color with Tamiya paint diluted with the lacquer thinner of the same brand. I wondered how I would realize the three tone hard edged camo and I thought about using “silly putty” but I had none and there was none at my new local hobby store (there is no modelling store in Brussels anymore, the last one unfortunately closed in November 2017). I then decided to try with Tamiya’s masking tape but the curvy pattern of the camo and the very uneven and small surface of the FT made it too complicated (to me) so I decided to paint it with a brush and Vallejo paint instead of using the airbrush. It’s actually been a reaaaaaally long time (something like 23 years or so…) I haven’t painted a model with a normal brush and I must confess that I was dubious about the result. I kept faith and started painting the camo by brushing thin layers of diluted (Vallejo thinner for airbrush) paint. The two or three first coats are just…ugly and you really have the impression you ruined all of your previous work but as I said, you need to keep faith and after four to five thin coats of paints you can reach a fairly OK result especially since the camo is going to be weathered afterwards which is going to mask some of the imperfections that might be seen at this point. The result is not perfect and I can still see some brush strokes but I’m happy with it for now and I believe most of them will disappear during the weathering and with the painting of the black stripes that separate the sandy color from the other colors (at least I hope so J).
Here are some pics. Enjoy and feel free to leave comments or (constructive) criticisms.
HAPPY MODELLING!
