ARMOR - Sherman Family Group Build

I feel your pain Renarts,

It took me about an hour to scratchbuild the track skids. I had to build 8 to get 6 good ones. Fortunately, after the first 3 it got much easier and faster.

But it was worth it!

alright .. will the two biggest suspension fanatics please put their hands in the air.

Oops ..... I see they have already checked in.

Shermanfreak, can you add my son to the build? Jacob is doing the M4A3 Sherman 75mm Gun and will be adding Winter camo and other goodies.

My wife has asked to paint some of the figures in the Diorama too

well I have some glue and have started my M3 Stuart [this is a practice tank for sanding/ putty work and painting...] while waiting for my Sherman's to arrive

Looking good Latch !!!

And Mike ..... hang in there .... you'll get 'em whooped !!

Thanks Robert,

BTW: How many bolt holes are there suppose to be on the front side of the bogie? 4 or 5? I think it's suppose to be 4.

I sure hope so, because I only have 4 there right now.

Boy, you guys build fast.

Latch - 4 is correct

And did you recieve the second set of pics?

QUOTE: Originally posted by Dwight Ta-ala Boy, you guys build fast.

what do you mean, Fast??? I only got most of my interior done right now!!!

I got them Robert.

Thanks for the pics and thanks for the answer.

I thought I sent you an email in response, I apologize because I obviously didn't.

Still doing the Panther Build, but finally sneaked away to do some on the Achilles.

Bogies and road wheels all cleaned up (why did I pick to do the spoked ones!) and idler and drive sprockets all done.

Lower hull interior all built except for the ready rounds. I tried to cast some extra's in milliput, but either the high humidity here at the moment, or the age of the milliput, left me with 5 sticky blobs. It was supposed to be fine and cooler today, but ended up being wet and cool - so the weatherman was his usual accurate self - maybe this time I will have better luck. Have cast this way before with no probs.

Umming and ahhring, over whether to use the muzzle brake off my Eduard firefly barrel with the rest of the kit parts or cut the whole Eduard barrel off at the rear flange and ream out the counterweights to fit the Eduard barrel - noiw where did that coin go?

Have filled the copius ejector pin marks on most other parts and will be sanding down for a while. Going to start the main gun assembly and slap a base coat of paint on the inside of the hull today.

Got to go or the Panther guys will start looking for me. Keep up the good work, sounds like all is going well over here in Shermieland.

Driver hatch tension spring. I didn't hook the spring up yet but layed it in position so you can see how it will look. The hatch will be open (or closed...decsions, decisions). The Assist. Driver hatch is rigged similarly.


Bogie, after modification. It will need some clean up still but I may have it figured out, to make the others go smoother.


Mike

Renarts: Such details...I can only wish...Very nice.

Great job Renarts!!!

Looks Great!

Thanks. Listening to Robert, I think the suspension "quest" is the easiest of the tasks compared to the indy's.......

Mike

I was on RonGeorge's site...and wow...the hatch spring is amazing...and the bogie assemblies....another wow.....

Dan

Dostacos - Have Jacob covered, welcome to the build young man !!!
I'll update the site tomorrow.

Mike - great stuff !!! The spring is amazing.
Don't let my whining about the indy tracks get to you, so far the only ones I touched are the resin product for the Ram. And in a nutshell, they are a mess !!!! 3 days of cleaning and not there yet.

Petbat - sticky blobs you say ... sounds the the tracks I'm working on, except for the sticky part.

'Happy' Monday All!

Robert, Thanks for the link.. I'll show it to JoAnne.

All the builds sound like they're going great! I spent the weekend correcting the little deficiencies in the Dragon M4's turret and composite hull. A little texture on rolled plate is nice, but Wow! That poor DML M4's hull must've been sitting in the surf for about twenty years! Same for the differential housing (nose). All of the rolled plate I've ever seen on Shermans has been pretty darned smooth. Oh well, nothing a little putty won't fix!

Renarts, your detail is as usual, super!

Ron

I am currently doing the Oil wash on "Project 68" (I am having a blast with this)

My Jackson is also coming along nicely. I will be getting the suspension parts ready for pre-painting after work this eve.

Worked most of the weekend on my Tamiya M4. Got lower hull, suspension, drive & idler wheels done. 2 coats of OD on most everything. And got sponson sides on the lower hull. Next weekend I plan on starting the turret and upper hull. Waiting on barrel (should get this week). I'm doing OOB with the barrel the only AM piece. Want to take pic's but I can't figure out how to get new computer to work with old digital camera.

Oh, and I used the 3 piece trans housing with the spoked wheels.

Help, help, HELP!!!!

I see some of you guys are building the DML. Anyone doing the latest Firefly (#6182)?

I have run into two snags, both in step 2 (moving right along!!). Where does part #H17 go? Looking at the instruction sheet, does it go just to the left of the little platform looking thing, or on top of it?? (Remember, directions are reversed as the hull is upside down on the plan.)

second, How does part A13 fit? It seems to be blocked from fitting correctly from the bracket that part H13 is glued into. I'm about ready to shave this part down to the bracket down to a point where A13 will fit as I think it should.

Thanks, everyone. Hope someone has solved this and can help.

ok my hull interior is all done and painted except for all those rounds. I got hockey tonight so I won't get a pile done, bu I'll probably finish all the rounds and there holders.




Hey! this is my 1500th post. seems like last month was when I just hit 1000, hmm.. it was a month ago. almost exactly(1 day off, that makes an average of 16.6 the last month kinda scary). this is a great site, as you can see by my # of posts.

Looks like I was the only one who couldn't figure out how to get to the forum all weekend.
On the bright side I did alot of work on my Sherman. I spent all day on Sunday doing PE that I told myself that I wasn't going to do. I'm also leaving the commanders hatch open, so I had to do somthing that might resemble an interior.

I downloaded Archer template to fill the sponsons but had trouble getting them to work right, so I scraped them and did my own thing.

Robert don't feel to bad I still have my indy tracks to do ( OH NO, there's so many little pieces )

I looked at indy tracks but when I saw how many pieces were involved to make 1 link, I cringed!!!

Chris I hope you got the back wall to your interior square or your going to have problems getting all those round in there properly. I found this out the hard way. It wasn't off much but the rounds at the top of the stack didn't fit right which wasn't a real problem, but parts B32 & B33 wont fit right either. I had to do some sanding to fix that.

QUOTE: Originally posted by wipw I have run into two snags, both in step 2 (moving right along!!). Where does part #H17 go? Looking at the instruction sheet, does it go just to the left of the little platform looking thing, or on top of it?? (Remember, directions are reversed as the hull is upside down on the plan.) second, How does part A13 fit? It seems to be blocked from fitting correctly from the bracket that part H13 is glued into. I'm about ready to shave this part down to the bracket down to a point where A13 will fit as I think it should. Thanks, everyone. Hope someone has solved this and can help.

Hey Bill,
Not sure if anyone is building the new Firefly or not so I took mine down and had a look at the parts in question.
H-17 goes below the "little platform thingy". You'll see a small square on the right hand access door, the part butts up to this square. Pay close attention to the alignment shown in the picture.
A-13 seems to fit very well on mine with no interference from the brackets.

Just wait until you get to step 10 .... indy tracks !!!!! [:0]

Tim - you may have download upgraded software for your camera.

Trevor - someone else that feels my pain. I'm actually looking froward to working on the DML set, they are worlds ahead of these S-Models ones.

Thanks, Robert. It was a toss up for me which side of the square part H17 went on. Now I know. There is a definite fit problem with A13 on mine. It will not fit with that bracket there. I'll keep trying to figure something out.

Thanks

Bill

Just started with the turret last night but wasn't able to do much. I learned that there are parts that should be painted first (at least a coat) prior to fixing and I don't have the paint yet.

Sherm: The manual requires the base color to be mixed from three different paint colors but when I looked at the sample model on the box, it looks like Tamiya Desert Yellow. What do you think? I don't want to mix three paints because while the color maybe achieved the consistency of acrylic paint suffers (tend to become powdery). I am asking this because our LHS displays and M-51 but the color is similar to what the British used in their WWII armor.

QUOTE: Originally posted by shermanfreak Tim - you may have download upgraded software for your camera.

I've tried, no luck. Person I bought from said it wouldn't work with Window's XP, as I had W '98 wasn't any big deal. But now I've got XP, big deal.