Tank Restoration Project

A few weeks ago a local gamer was selling off some extra German tanks.  Always on the lookout for a good deal this on caught my eye.  There were about 20 tanks, mostly Panzer IV variants.  I made an offer sight unseen.

I thought I was kind of low-balling but it turns out I might have over paid.  I have never been afraid of an army restoration project and have done lots of 40K stuff that was severely used.  This was going to be a massive project.

Here are three of seven PzIV F1, F2 and G that were in the lot.  Most had very heavy paint with the looks of 2-3 repaints.  Many had damage that needed repairing.  All were very poorly assembled.  The tank in the middle is featured in the pictures below.

This Panzer IV G was the worst of the lot.  This picture shows the hull after 6-8 hours of soaking in Simple Green.  The top layer of tan came off very easy but the other 5 layers of paint took a bit longer. EDIT: The more I look at this picture the more it looks like it was pulled from a Russian bog after 60 years.

A few more hours of soaking and a hour of scraping with dental picks give you something like this. 

Not all the tanks were in bad shape and some cleaned up rather easy.  Here is a good one with less than an hour of work compared the worst after about the same amount of time.

Here are 6 of the 7 tanks after all the paint stripped off.  The worst one is in the upper left of the picture.

This is the worst of the lot after paint stripping and reassembly.  All the tanks got a fresh coat of Panzer Grey. 

In the end I managed to salvage 7 Panzer IV.  These took about 10 hours of work, not including the soak time.  These are ready for the next step to getting back to the table.  There are still about 13 mort tanks to restore in this lot so stay tuned for more.