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I picked up this kit from a not-so-local hobby shop down in
Delaware.
I decided to do the “Eight Ball” version instead of the
hedgehog. I didn’t think I could do the
sandbag and wood slat “armor” justice and decided to keep it simple.
I tried a few modifications.
First, the front piece, the curved part of the armor (I don’t know the
proper term) was split in two with the top and bottom halves of the hull. I thought that would be very difficult to fit
and fill once the hull was close up so I decided to remove it from the top half
and put it in place on the bottom.
Before:
During:
After:
And with the top hull dryfitted:
I thought I would have an easier time filling the seam at
the natural join of the armor to the hull.
Mostly I did. But I still had
seam issues after it was all together. I
don’t think it shows up in any of the pictures of the finished model, but the
seam was still visible after painting.
Got to work on that skill.
Next up was the shovel.
Now I don’t know the fine details of what is or isn’t accurate on a
Sherman, but I do know that shovels don’t have closed handles:
So, I drilled and cut and filed until I got this:
And finally:
And the M2 machine gun.
Again, the fine details may escape me, but I know that the spade grip
doesn’t look like this:
Again, some drilling and cutting and filing yielded:
And finally:
Had some issues with the tracks. Vinyl. I tried painting them with enamel
first, but they weren’t drying and I started to get concerned that the paint
was attacking the vinyl. So I stripped the
paint and then used an acrylic clear coat to try to seal them. Then I started with the enamel paint. I think the overall color was a bit off and
too glossy, even after a flat clear coat.
Have to try something different next time.
Final assembly before decals and weathering:
My weathering wasn’t too good. While the overall dusting was okay, the “mud”
for the tracks and boogies was not.
Still too glossy. And it looked
exactly like it was – a “mud” color painted on.
I used some pastel sticks to grind the dust and then added some paint
colors to make the mud. I think next
time I’ll simply stick with the pastel dust, a lot more of it to build up mud.
Thanks for looking,
Paul