To your point - Korea:
Ft. Hood:
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All great examples of freehand. Kudos to you all. I will have to attempt it one day when I have more free time. While using putty to mask takes up a lot of time, fixing errors from doing it freehand might take just as long. I will definitely try it one day though.
As stated above, masking takes a lot of time. It took me six hours total just to mask it to paint the NATO green. It only took five minutes to paint the NATO green. It took another two hours to remove all the masking. One thing with using Blu-Tack is that after three to four uses, it gets very gummy and extremely hard to remove so not worth it using it more than three times. The good thing about the Blu-Tack is that it is inexpensive so buying a few packages at a time isn’t going to break the bank.
Yes, I do know that the NATO camo pattern is standard o the specific vehicles. I used the Tamiya paint guide for mine but even though I followed the paint guide, masking isn’t 100% accurate. The Tamiya paint guide is accurate as I looked at reference photos of real M113’s in the NATO camo and the Tamiya paint guide matches the reference photos I looked at.
One thing I noted even though the NATO camo pattern is standard, these two M113A2’s in Panama which have the NATO camo shows two distinctively different camo patterns though. Notice the second M113 has a different pattern than the one in the front. You can see the different patterns on the left side under the smoke dischargers. The one in the front matches other M113’s in the NATO camo and also matches the Tamiya paint guide.
Anyway, here it is. Just the NATO brown to do next.
I totally forgot, one of my friends gave me two airbrushes a few years ago, I think back in 2021. One is a brand new Badger 100G, two stage, gravity feed. The other is a slightly used Iwata Revolution BCR, siphon feed. I have not tried them yet but I guess this would be a good time to test them doing some freehand camo.
Last month I got this battery operated airbrush compressor but again, have not tried it yet. I got it for future use if and or when I do move into an apartment. That decision is a few years away but I will have to test it to see how good the PSI is. The manufacturer claims good to 25PSI but some reviews I read said the PSI is more like 15-18PSI. That should be good enough for gravity feed airbrushes. Some reviews said it was too weak for siphon feed. It came with a cheap gravity feed airbrush.
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I’d suggest a paint mule first. Your camo job is looking good. No sense risking it with something you’re not yet familiar with.
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Thanks! I am going to start masking off for the NATO brown later today. Hopefully I can get it done in time so I can paint it tomorrow morning. I won’t have time to do much of anything next week except for Monday. The rest of the week I will be busy doing the usual stuff for my parents. I am hoping I can mask off the second Tamiya M113 over the weekend and get that painted in at least the NATO green. It was already painted in the NATO black a few months ago.
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Looking good 
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Depending on how much of the brown you plan on using it may be easier to just brush it. I like the putty snakes for the major parts of a pattern, but at some point they get in the way, especially the edge of another color line.
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@JJohnson59, thanks!
@Bkkinman, I overlap the putty but leave the edges sticking out from under the putty so the next color overlaps the edges of the previous color. Sometimes I do miss an edge here and there and have to do touchups.
I just did the NATO camo on this I Love Kit JLTV a couple days ago. Scroll to the bottom. The masking didn’t take as long as it did on the M113. I used the same putty technique on the JLTV to paint the NATO camo.
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Nice!
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Got the Tamiya M113 masked last night for the last color, the NATO brown, which will be painted today. Yesterday I accidentally painted the NATO green over a section of NATO black so I will need to redo that after the brown dries. Hopefully no other touch ups will be necessary.
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Finished the NATO camo just now. This will be as far as I can go as next week I won’t have any bench time. The NATO camo patterns is not 100% accurate. I followed the Tamiya paint guide as close as I could but some of the sides were covered by the CIP’s so only guessed how it looked under there. I will be adding the CIP’s so those areas will be covered anyway. That’s no excuse for the rest of the pattern though but masking with putty is as good as I can do.
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That looks pretty legit!
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Looks great, good job!
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Close enough for government work 
The NATOflage turned out great! 
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It looks great dude! All the effort you put in paid off.
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Thanks everyone. While it was tedious masking off for the NATO camo, it was well worth it. I have another Tamiya M113 that will be in the NATO camo from Operation Just Cause so will have to do it all over again but won’t get to work on it until around Sept. 14th. I also have the Academy M163 and M981 along with various other kits that will also be in the NATO camo so lots more masking in my future.
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Nice work, it came out great.!
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Thanks!
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Fascinating discussion.
Years ago, I read a veteran’s account of finding an abandoned Iraqi (ex-Iranian?) M113.
Said they painted chevrons on it and appropriated it. Sadly, no photos.
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The US has plenty of M113 stocks so would seem feasible they could have refurbished it.
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Added the road wheels, sprockets and CIP’s last night. The front CIP is made from sheet plastic and tape.
I had planned to keep the hatches open but I dropped it and broke the troop hatch. One of the pins snapped off and the hatch cover now sits uneven. Should be an easy fix to glue it in place in the open position but even so, you still can’t see much of the inside. You can see more of the inside with the rear ramp open. I left it workable. I need to touch up the sides and parts of the interior of the rear ramp though as I missed painting those areas.
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