Model of tanks are cool and all tanks have tracks. Tracks add weight and heaviness to appearance of tank models and therefore it is very important to have realistic look of tracks on your models. Here I would like to share my recipe for robust and easy way to make nice-looking tracks on a tank or another tracked vehicle (tractor, half-track, etc.)







For this example I used white metal tracks for T-72 Soviet tank from Russian company Masterclub

These tracks combine white metal track links with resin pins and before painting them I burnished the metal in the track blackening solution A.MIG-2020 (image 2). The resin pins that give realistic appearance (and look much better than just wire) were then primed using A.MIG-2005 black acrylic primer from AMMO. This is very important as resin can be nasty to treatments with weathering products and it is not enough to just paint it with acrylic paint, but primer.







After blackening the tracks look good, but really fresh, so next to highlight the shape of the tracks I did a wash using A.MIG-1002 AMMO Track Wash and A.MIG- 1206 Dark Streaking Grime. These two products were applied in random order and sometimes blended together with a bit of enamel thinner.



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Next I started adding dust and dry mud to tracks using pigments and pigment fixer. Here I first applied fixer in the grooves on the outer side of the track links and then dropped Pigments (Dark Earth, Europe Earth and North Africa Dust) on wet tracks without touching them. With this manner the small grains of pigments do not dissolve, but adhere to surface, therefore being fixed as they are. Of course you need to drop a lot of pigments to get cover the whole surface of 2 track runs. My intention for this short tutorial was to make tracks covered in dust and a bit of mud, however, if more texture is desired you can add plaster to your pigments or real dirt grains so that there is a lot of textured mud on the tracks. Similarly, if you wish to make dry rusty tracks it can be done the similar way, but the other way around – first pigments are applied dry on the tracks and then fixer is added. This way the fixer would melt the pigments and they would create realistic dry rusty surface. Remember – more tones of pigments would give better result.







When the fixer dried the surface of the track looked exactly as I wanted – dry dust and mud, including small grains, however, this is not the end of our journey.

Here I continued creating diversity within the tracks appearance by using enamel products from AMMO. A portion of enamel was taken with wide brush and then speckled on the tracks. At this point workbench becomes really dirty! Again, in my example I was using earth tones, but the same technique can be easily applied to a different setting – rust, dirt splashes, etc.

Satisfied with the progress I decided to add a bit of contrast by adding darker areas on tracks using Fresh Engine Oil and Wet Effects. These two products darken the surface and give a slightly different appearance with Wet Effects being glossy in appearance.

Finally, I polished the outer surface of tracks with a file (where the tracks are in contact with ground, stones, roads, etc.) and on the inner surface I made a clean dark metal area where the tracks are in contact with road wheels and idler using a graphite pencil Ready to set on the model.



Overall, the whole procedure took me several hours including drying time, the fixer being the longest time consuming operation. Of course I will adjust the weathering of tracks a little when they will be set on the model so that everything looks organic (T-34 model tracks were finished using similar sequence, the model itself was painted with A.MIG-7107 AMMO Soviet camouflage set).



I really hope this short tutorial would be helpful for other modellers in creating nice realistic tracks on tracked models. Moreover, same approach can be used on plastic tracks; you will just need to find a good metallic paint for polished elements of tracks such as A.Mig 3009 Gun metal. If you do use plastic, be careful not to force dry the fixer with hot hairdryer as it might damage plastic or resin pins, like in case with Masterclub tracks shown here.

By Roman Volchenkov