Desert Fox 6 W.D.

This is another commission vehicle. The customer asked for the vehicle to be "battle-weathered". He was extremely generous in providing advance payment, which exceeded what I thought the job was worth - so I plan to exceed his expectations, as well!

To begin with, I broke the whole vehicle down and removed the decals. The decal residue was cleaned off using Goo Gone and then all of the parts were washed with dish detergent and a toothbrush. While the parts were drying, I hopped online and sent an e-mail off to Ruben Jiminez, my normal source, asking him to ship me a set of Desert Fox decals.

Once everything was dry, I used an X-acto knife to trim down the foot pegs on the gun mount. They no longer look quite as tidy as the original mold did, but they now accommodate the foot holes for the modern era figures, so the customer will be able to pose those figures on it.

The next step was priming and painting the missiles, machine gun and gun mount. The missiles were done with flat OD green and were given details in yellow (these are the colors commonly used on High Explosive ordnance in the US military). The gun was done with a metallic "gunmetal" finish and the gun mount was done with OD green with a drybrushing of gunmetal to show wear on the paint.

While the spray-painted parts were drying, the entire vehicle was given the metaliic drybrush treatment. High-traffic areas where troops would be climbing in and out were also "scuffed up" to show where dirt, grime, sweat and other stuff adhered to the vehicle's paint. The pic to the right shows the vehicle as it was at this point.