Here are a few more rather unusual things I have seen people do to their Roco Minitanks vehicles. This SdKfz 234 armored car has a nice camouflage paint job. Over the bare plastic.
My first thought would be that the previous owner had simply failed to finish painting the model, that they would paint the rest of it eventually. If that were true, they would not place a decal on the unpainted portion of the model!
I added the spare tire as part of my refurbishment of the model. I also put a bumper on the front but it got knocked off when I dropped it. It is up for repair and painting soon. My plan is to keep the original paint and just paint the bare plastic parts. I can't figure out of the original owner was being frugal by not spending more on paint, or lazy by not painting the rest of the armored car.
This is another theme I have found on many different old Roco vehicles. The majority of the vehicle is left in the original plastic. But liberal use of silver paint has been made on all the raised surfaces. I suspect it's supposed to represent wear and tear on the paint job, with "bare metal" showing through. But how do you explain the front wheel support and the tire hub?
Looks like a nice chrome center hub on that main wheel! Note the tire itself it painted black. Would you want to eat from a mobile kitchen that is this worn?
It has also received a very nice pair of US white star decals.
Just so you don't think these are isolated vehicles, here is another one with the silver paint "weathering" process.
This one has several small details painted, note the red fuel filler cap for example. The tank also has a white star decal. Look carefully at the turret just to the upper right of the white star, and see the hole in the turret, a casting flaw. There are also two major casting marks one on the edge of the hull and one at the bottom center of the turret, no effort was made to clean those up. This tank probably dates to the 1960s before both spray paint was common and before hobby or craft knives were widely in use by model builders.
Back in the old days people often used a pair of fingernail clippers as their only model tool to remove parts from the sprue or cut off flash.
This is the other side of the same tank, I had at least six of these in my collection. I am upgrading my M47 fleet and so ones like this are getting the paint stripped off and new paint applied.
The tip of the barrel on the previous tank was painted yellow. I have no explanation or speculation for this idea. The headlight are painted as tall vertical bulbs. I would think if you were going to use this much silver paint on a tank you would paint the tracks silver.
Bunker Talk Blog
Mike Bunkermeister Creek