The end is near.  The Chaffee was gloss coated, decaled and had a dark olive green "panel" and streak wash applied.  It's hard to see with all that gloss!  The decals were not nice - thick and fairly resistance to softeners.  The rear star has some damage when it was trying to conform to some of the raised detail but I'll deal with that during the final weathering.

All that remains is a dull coat and final weathering.  It's so close to being done.  I'm not sure I'll be able to finish it before heading off for a 2 week vacation in Boston/CT in a few days.  So it may be awhile before the final pics are posted.

Thanks for all the views and comments.

Looks like you're wrestling this one into compliance, Mike! Paint and construction all are looking great.

I agree with you too about that Black-White style. Seems like a lot of work to me. I go for the shading of base coat every time too. :)

Gamera

Small nitpick, is the interior of the hatch supposed to be interior white? I though they were painted the same colour as the outer hull so as not to stand out for snipers. Someone else would know better than I though.

That sounds reasonable Gamera.  It's hard to find pictures of it.  Most models do show it olive drab.  There is one picture of a Chaffee near the bottom of the page and it is in white but it is a Greek tank (http://www.tanks-encyclopedia.com/ww2/US/M24_Chaffee.php ).  

Does anyone know?  If not, I'll take your advice and make it olive drab.

She looks good in OD green!!!

Small nitpick, is the interior of the hatch supposed to be interior white? I though they were painted the same colour as the outer hull so as not to stand out for snipers. Someone else would know better than I though.

That interior work and base coat outside looks good.

Tanker - Builder

Excuse Me ;

 You said the back rack was off . Maybe it was the result of an in the field repair ? Looking good anyway . T.B.

 

Weathering and pesky field repairs can always help.

She is starting to actually look like a Chaffee! A nice coat of olive drab base with some lighter and darker shades added.  It's hard to see in the photos, but trust me, it looks pretty good.  I'm not a fan of the black/white base coat with olive drab over it although people do get amazing results with it.  I think I have more control by applying darker and lighter shades to the olive drab.

Now for some final painting and weathering.  She is almost done.

Looks awesome Alan! 

Love how the interior came out. 

Excuse Me ;

 You said the back rack was off . Maybe it was the result of an in the field repair ? Looking good anyway . T.B.

I’ve made a lot of progress since my last update.

The side skirts have been applied and they actually fit well.  The tools on the other hand are probably wrongly placed. The instructions were very unclear and there were no pictures of the final assembly.  I think the shovel needs to be on top of all the other tools but this crew decided otherwise! I’m not sure what I am going to do for tie downs. I’m not using the PE but I might use thin strips of masking tape or just leave them.

Some other bits needed to be placed after the fenders and side skirts went on.

The upper half of the turret was assembled. There were 2 main issues here.  The large hatch did not fit. I could have assembled it opened and bypass the fit problem (and I should have) but at this point I wanted it closed.  I needed to slowly cut out the plastic between the hinges and test fit.  It finally came together.  The ammo box was another issue. What engineer thinks of making a small scale ammo box with SIX individual poorly molded sections and then wrap it in PE. Like that is going to fit ok?  I did attempt it and, well, it wasn’t pretty.  Fortunately I had a spare from another kit and it fit well.

The lower half of the turret went together fairly well. The main problem was with the gear/wheel assembly placement.  There is no way it could be placed according to the instructions. I looked at some pictures online and placed it where i thought it should go.  I had to modify it a bit later on since the top of the turret wouldn’t fit with it as placed here.

With that done, it was time for some more primer. I used Stynylrez Black for the outside and Stynylrez grey for the inside. (I need to buy some white.)

Now it was time to paint the inside of the turret white and weather it up. Online pictures were all over the place - white everywhere, black or white gun, grey floors, white floors, grey. I decided to try using some Tamiya Smoke over the gun to give it a “dirty/used” look. I also added some black dirt washes. You aren’t going to see much with the one open hatch but I liked the way it came out.

With the upper and lower turret halves assembled it was time for a final primer pass.

She is already for painting now and for all the struggles, she’s looking pretty good at this point.

As always, thanks for the views and comments.

I certainly agree with you about the instructions. They use all the fancy CAD generated drawings, but that doesn't help when the rest of the instructions are poorly done.

What you did, building the #23 subassembly on the gun itself, is exactly how I did it too. I think it's really the only way to locate the parts correctly.

GlennH

Those tweezers have a lot of character and look like they seen many builds.

 

LOL. Yup, they have seen better days but nothing that some sandpaper, to keep them sharp, can't fix. I should break down and buy some new ones.

Alan

I’ve made a little bit more progress.  I needed to put on a coat of primer before attaching the fender/skirts since I wouldn’t be able to get at the tracks otherwise.  It really doesn’t look all that bad with a nice black primer coat!

M1GarandFan

As for the turret: The gun breech and shields don't have a lot of definite glue points either just like the fenders. Lots of tiny, delicate parts for the outside surface of the turret. I lost at least one part that's supposed to be there and I lost part F15 for the .50 Cal mount. I never could figure out where part E38 went on the hatch edge of the turret. 

Yes, you are correct. The turret and gun assembly is a mess of unclear instructions.  Take the sub-assembly #23. How do you really attach those parts? Looking ahead doesn’t give a clear indication since the left side is never shown.  If you do this as a sub-assembly - good luck getting everything aligned. The solution is to ignore this step and actually assemble it with the main gun. (Good advice for most of the sub-assembly instructions so far.)

Doing so allows you to see how the parts are positioned and gives you addition support and attachment points that the sub-assembly lacked.  There are lots of small parts but it is looking good.  I still need to do a bit of cleanup and re-alignment but so far I’m happy with it.

´

Note:

If you are going through the cost of printing a nice instruction booklet, at least spend some time actually making good instructions.  Show the parts assembled and from various angles. I really have no idea how to attach the tools, the instructions are so vague but they did go into a lot of detail on the photo etch parts the hold the tools on, not so much as to how to actually place them and no pictures/drawing showing them placed. Grrrhhhh….

She looks awesome so far. 

Yeah, I wouldn't worry too much about the shields- looking though Jim Mesko's 'Armor in Korea' and didn't see them fitted on most M24s, M26s, or M46s past the very early stages of the war.  

And I bought the Korean War tiger face version- as if building the thing wasn't enough work do I want to do all that masking too??? 

Hi AlanF, Good problem solving and thanks for your tips and step-by-step pictures.

I feel your pain! I didn't worry about putting the sand shields on either. As you said, most photos show them removed.

As for the turret: The gun breech and shields don't have a lot of definite glue points either just like the fenders. Lots of tiny, delicate parts for the outside surface of the turret. I lost at least one part that's supposed to be there and I lost part F15 for the .50 Cal mount. I never could figure out where part E38 went on the hatch edge of the turret.

Keep at it. I'm sure you can get it done. I'm actually pretty happy with the way mine turned out after paint and decals.

Sorry about the lack of updates over the last couple of weeks.  I had to take a bit of a break from this kit. Every time you think it maybe be going good - nope.  Nothing is easy in this kit. Take, for example, the tracks. They cleaned up nicely, went together with a nice snap, and it appeared they would be stable and workable.  Nope. The system used is fairly flimsy and unlinks with only slight pressure making putting them on a nightmare. So, they had to be glued together which kind of defeats the purpose of linked tracks. At this point rubber band tracks would be preferred.

Don’t even get me going on the fenders and side skirts. It is simply one thin edge of plastic against another - no alignment or glue points. Sigh. What engineer thought this was a good idea?

Progress so far:

The hull, tracks and fenders have been put together.  At this point I wasn’t going to put on the side skirts as most of the pictures I’ve seen lacked them, plus I wanted to show off the tracks which I thought would be nice.

I also removed the photo etch bucket in the back and repositioned it.  It was uneven and driving me crazy.  In the process the delicate photo etch got a little bent - war damage I’m saying.

At this point, it was apparent the tracks were a nightmare and had to be glued. It’s still a tricky job.

Not the best of jobs.  They are a bit wavy, but hopefully it will be masked by the fenders.

I made the decision to use the side skirts to mask the upper tracks. They were time consuming to put together since it was literally a tiny edge of plastic against the other.

To make that join more robust, I used sprue dissolved in Tamiya Extra-Thin to add some plastic for stability.

That’s it for now.  On to the turret.  Can it get any worst?

Thanks for all the encouragement.

Despite your problems she's looking good Alan.

And yeah I've thought about picking up the newer AFV Club kit, but I did buy the Bronco one so I HAVE to build it someday.

the doog

Your troubles with this kit remind me of a project which gets farmed out to a bunch of suits while the actual engineers are left out of the decision-making processes! It seems like a lot of non-modelers sat around saying something like "Well based upon what we read on forum X, this would be a cool feature to use. It would be a great marketing trick to break down this piece into five subassemblies..." Good on ya for your persistence. I"m just curious what you're going to tackle next as a tonic for the frustration that this kit has put you through?!

It does seem that way. Plus some of the PE is broken down in such a way that doesn't make sense. Four separate pieces for the headlamp guard! I don't see any way to really assemble that nicely without solder. (Then again, some people do wonders with PE. I'm just not one of them.) Same breakdown with the plastic and no way to assembly that without doing it on the tank but the instructions show you doing it by itself - really! Good luck with that. 

I have a nice Tamiya M4A3E8 Sherman Easy Eight looking at me right now. That should be a relaxing build.

Your troubles with this kit remind me of a project which gets farmed out to a bunch of suits while the actual engineers are left out of the decision-making processes! It seems like a lot of non-modelers sat around saying something like "Well based upon what we read on forum X, this would be a cool feature to use. It would be a great marketing trick to break down this piece into five subassemblies..."

Good on ya for your persistence. I"m just curious what you're going to tackle next as a tonic for the frustration that this kit has put you through?!

I might have to take back what I said earlier . . . the Italeri 1/35 Chaffee might be a more user-friendly kit to build.

Bill

Well, I made some progress this week. The upper hull is done complete with all the little bits. What is strange is that there was no PE for the big grate but there was for the little ones. As can be seen, filler was needed. I used a combination of Tamiya Extra thin with plastic sprue dissolved in it and some putty.  I still need to do some sanding and take of some super glue and finger prints.  

This was a real pain to put together. My suggestion is to NOT follow the directions and to place all the main pieces on the upper hull and then all the small bits or you are going to lose a lot of them. Also because of the instructions not showing the proper angle for the grab holds on the hatches, it looks like they may need to re replaced since they may interfere with the turret. Sigh.

I didn’t put on a lot of the small PE bits. I just don’t have the patience or the hands to do it.  I’m not happy with the PE but it may end up being fine with a coat of primer and some weathering, which covers a multitude of sins.  The back rack is off. I’m debating ripping out one side and trying again.  There were no fold marks so it was a bit of guessing.

Now for the good news. The tracks are wonderful. Yes, they are a bit of a pain to clean-up but they fit like a glove and they will be workable, if I want.

As always, thanks for all the kind remarks and suggestions.

I really do understand your frustrations with the Chaffee. Several times, I considered putting my kit in the trash also, but kept at it anyway. Those separate panels for the rear deck used up several hours of my time as I filed and sanded them to fit. You've already done better than I did with with some of those PE pieces, so kudos to you there. Once I got it painted ( to cover a myriad of mistakes) it looked much better. Hang in there!

Sorry, I didn't get much done on the Chaffee last week.  My free time was spent with taxes - ick. Since that unpleasant task is over, I hope to make some progress this week.

Again, thanks for all the comments and suggestions. I plan to push through to the end; although there have been times I felt like the great trash can monster was calling.

That's a shame, honestly. I hate models that are engineered like that. I agree that it's all a "parts count" marketing scheme. What a shame. Well, from your review of the build here, I know I won't be getting one. Give me the old Italeri kit and some aftermarket tracks, and I'll be good to go.

One of my pet peaves on instructions. They show a part with an arrow leading to who knows where or who knows how it is to be placed or the direction it is to be placed in. Without detailed books or tech manuals sometimes you just have to guess.

AlanF

I think it will be one of those kits that after you finish, you will want to buy another to do it right now that you know all the pitfalls.

Hell,they're all like that.

Looks good Alan, again my hat's off to you for actually building this. I've got serveral Bronco kits but now that I think about it haven't built any of them.