The Achilles has been a long build, but I didn’t realize how long until last night.

As of today, the 17-pounder has been taking space on the bench for sixty-four days, far longer than any other kit I’ve tackled since coming back to modeling.

Now, at long last, the end is in sight. The weathering is all but complete, and all that remains is the painting of the lights and perhaps some minor drybrushing of the track connectors.

In this post, I’ll review the steps I took to weather the British tank destroyer. These are largely similar to the process I followed with my Tamiya Sherman, albeit refined and a bet better executed.

Step 1 – Drybrushing

As with the Tamiya Sherman, I kicked off the weathering process by drybrushing the Achilles with Model Master dunkelgrau. The brown/gray really works well with the greens of Allied armor.

Step 2 – Oil Weathering

After the drybrushing, I moved on to oils. My first pass was a filter of raw umber thinned in Mona Lisa Odorless Thinner, applied with a wide brush and then streaked on non-horizontal surfaces with the excellent Aqualon Wisp (the best brush ever for simulating streaking).

Once the initial filter dried, I began the dot filtering, working with raw umber, burnt sienna, yellow ochre, transparent white and lamp black. These were dabbed on with toothpicks, then streaked down the sides of the hull or blended in to surfaces with brushes damped in thinner.

The black was reserved for the areas around the fuel caps.

Step 3 – Pigments

For a relatively pristine vehicle, I probably could have stopped after the oils and called it a day. But I’m going for the look of a vehicle that’s seen service in dry, dusty Italy, so I broke into the pigments. Personally, I felt MIG’s Europe Dust was a bit too on the dull side, so I used African Earth instead. This was applied first on its own and fixed with thinner, and then mixed in a thin solution and applied to upper surfaces. All non-horizontal surfaces were then hit with one of the Aqualon Wisp brushes to accentuate the streaking that was obscured by the pigments.

And…that’s the weathering. Look for a final wrap-up post soon, and then it’s on to Dragon’s Panzer IV Ausf. G!