Thanks guys! I really appreciated it! And never feel guilty. 

I woke up pre-visualizing breaking that glue joint and repositioning the ring. I was able to get the #11 almost all the way around without difficulty. The only place that required any coerxing was the training gear which had glued itself to both the lower and upper rings. I broke it loose without damaging anything. The long PE piece came off during this event, but I got it back on without complication. 

I glued the training gear back together and onto the lower ring, and then I positioned the ring on the lower turret and pivoted it until the alignment was correct, regardless of where that notch was. It turns out that the hand grenade case that hangs on the back of the ring is dead center at the rear of the turret. I marked with Sharpie in three places to keep the registration and then re-glued it with tube cement.

Here's how it all aligned now.

With the lower ring correctly assembled, which I would suggest you do before gluing. The notch isn't big and it's very easy to have it glue with the notch not engaged properly. Trying it on is a good idea.

After separating them again (they weren't glued yet) I installed another seat assembly. I painted the seats off the model. I also added some decals to the radio rack. I prep any decal areas with some Tamiya Gloss. 

The turret basket, like the rest of this model is highly detailed with small appliances that contain many parts. The gunner's control stand is one of those assemblies with 7 parts.

Another assembly was the ready ammo box and the gunner's seat.

A lot of stuff goes on the turret basket floor. I put an arrow to the small part that makes the gun go BOOM!

I may be wrong. I will have to do more research on this and re-watch "Fury" for the 3rd time.

I airbrushed the entire basket white, let it dry and before ending shot it with the high gloss in prep for the weathering and detail painting. There are some brass PE pieces to make the cartridge ends of that ammo look much better. The basket hangs from the turret ring with those two pieces of channel and the rails behind the control stand. These will be delicate. I did reinforce them with med CA and my pin then to the ring.

While the clear was drying I started work on the commanders cupola. Six vision blocks go into the lower ring and this gets glued into the outer ring. My new parts apron caught four out of 6 parts that headed to the floor today. Of the two that got away, one was found (a vision block-whew!) and a blocking cover for an turret antenna that doesn't go on this version. I will add the second antenna even though it's wrong... or I could easily scratch-build the cover I think as I write this.

Got all six in place without getting any glue on the optical surfaces.

This ring glues up into the outer cupola. After gluing I masked all the optics with Microscale Liquid Mask. It was too difficult to use making tape.

Onward and upward. Getting that turret ring fixed was a big deal. Getting it apart, repositioning it and gluing it correctly worked out as good as I could have expected. "Never give up, never surrender!" When the turret hatches are on, you'll even see less of the turret interior making it even more imperative to keep the turret entirely removable.

Editors Note: The firing triggers are the box in front of the pedal. The right button fires the main gun and the left the 30 cal. coax. The pistol grip on the stand is the traverse control. I'll pick out these buttons with red paint. The pistol grip appears to be black as do some of the other power equipment. 

That looks fantastic Builder, I'd swear I were looking at the real thing. Good to see you made good use of your holiday. I got a lot done over the three day weekend too, a British tank crew and a F-51D. Best of luck getting the turret ring loose to re-cement.

Harold: Cool, glad to hear you had a great vacation. Looking forward to taking one myself. 

Builder 2010

Happy Labor Day!

I airbrushed the radio stand white and then brush-painted the radio O.D. I then picked out all the details and added some edge wear.

I feel a little guilty reading about all your hard work while sitting around watching the ocean and drinking a glass of red wine. Maybe tomorrow I'll get something done?

Harold

Happy Labor Day!

I labored in the shop. I got the upper turret finished with the installation of the big gun and the elevation drive. I then started building up the lower turret and, as you'll see, ran into a problem, which I left unsolved at the end of the session.

Before installing the gun I did the weathering. I used thinned Tamiya Panel Accent Blank (with low-odor mineral spirits) and then wiped off a lot of the excess with Q-tips like I did in the hull. I added some silver paint to show wear on the recoil guards rods. I picked out the details such as the optical sight and other little bits. I painted the exterior end of the gun sight with Molotow Chrome over-coated with Tamiya Clear Green and ending with some Bondic UV-cured clear resin. You won't see much of this through the outer mantlet.

There was one more assembly that got glued into the upper turret: the elevating gear assembly. The bracket was installed earlier,  but now that the gun is installed the elevation hardware needed to go in. Tricky little deal and a great detail. This needs to be painted!

I wanted to get an idea of how much you'll see of this beautiful gun detail if the turret was installed, and it's not much. It makes it even more critical to NOT have the turret permenantly attached. BTW: the gun elevates beautifully!

I airbrushed the radio stand white and then brush-painted the radio O.D. I then picked out all the details and added some edge wear. The grease guns were subsequently painted flat black. These too will be hard to be visualized. Those brackets are very frail and I used some CA to further strengthen the gun/bracket joint.

The radio bench glued to the inner turret with just those two supports. Again, a fragile assembly. You don't want to drop this puppy!

Speaking of dropping, my newly modified work space worked like a charm. I dropped two parts and they neatly fell into the apron which I'm holding to my body with some clothes pins to further reduce the open areas for missile launch.

If my memory serves me, Mark Twain, had a passage in Huck Finn where he's dressed as a girl. He's helping a lady with some sewing and something dropped and he clomped his legs together to catch it. She immediately figured out his ruse since any lady of the day would simply let her dress' lap catch anything that fell. Only a guy would depend on his clomping reflexes to catch stuff. That is, unless you drop an Xacto knife, then you need to resist that reflex with all your might.

I glued the gear ring onto the turret bottom as per instructions. There is one very small alignment lug that is used to register this ring to the turret. I did my best to get it to key correctly. I then applied solvent cement around the perimeter to afix it.

There's a lot of stuff that gets attached to this ring. The most critical is the traverse gearing. This little assembly had 7 PARTS! It goes into a specific spot on the ring. In addition there were four other parts that went in.

The commander and loader's seats go in at this time. You could pose them up or down. I chose to have them deployed. I then attempted to fit the upper and lower turrets together. That's when the trouble reared its head. The traverse gear should fall behind the elevating gear IF the turret halves were properly aligned, but mine was impacting directly onto the elevating mechanism. In order for the gear to settle in properly, it had to be assembled as shown in these images.

The arrow shows how the two gear assemblies have to bypass one another.

But this is the way, the parts are aligned to get them to do that.

I pulled off the offending appliances to see if I glued them into the wrong slots. Nope! They're where they're supposed to be. All that's left is the ring itself is out of registration. It's almost an 1/8th inch out of alignment. I ran out of time today. Tomorrow, I will pry off the ring without destroying anything...hopefully... and re-glue it to the turret bottom in such a way to ensure that the gear is in the right location. As I said, the registation lug was very small. Considering how important this fit was, that lug shouldn't have been ambiguous in any way. That plastic wire coming from that electrical box has almost broken three times. It will break! And I will replace it with metal. That's not a prediction. That's a promise. Frankly, if were to do this again, I would leave off the PE gear shields. It adds very little in the realism realm and makes it very difficult to get good glue joints with all the parts hanging on that ring.

That is a terrific spray booth. It's the one appliance that I DON'T have in the shop and I need it. Not too bad when spraying acrylics, but I can't realy paint solvent-based in the house. The AC picks up the odor in the basement and quickly sends it upstairs.

Here's my latest design. It's a custom holder that I'm going to 3D print to hold MicroScale products (Microset and Microsol). These two are in those tall, light-weight plastic bottles that spill if you look at them the wrong way. I swear they sell product, not because people use it up putting on decals, but by spilling half of it. This is just the right size to get onto my printer. 

To be able to print it without a lot of supports in the tubes I chose to do it in two parts. I will glue them together after printing. I designed in a generous groove for gluing. I will either use CA or actually use the same resin as the part and cure it in the post cure UV box. In UV the gray resin is almost transparent so the light should (could) penetrate into the joint.

If anyone's interested, I can send the STL files to you via Dropbox. STLs tend to be big files.

Builder2010, I look forward to reading your posts and seeing how your mind works through all the challenges. You appear to be making good progress with a very difficult and highly technical build.

Below is a link to a picture of my workbench enclosure and lighting system. The only problem with this setup is I need to clear everything off in order to paint.

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/49916591412_a8c9296d93_b.jpg

My wife and I left the heatwave behind yesterday on Friday. It has been in the mid 90's which is unusual for the Pacific Northwest in September. We arrived at our place on the Pacific coast about 100 miles from home where the temperature had dropped to 66 degrees with over cast sky. Later the clouds cleared and the temperature went up, but the humidity also went up to 76 degrees about 8:00 PM. These kind of weather fluctuations are not normal for this part of the country. I expected a lot of traffic with people heading to the coast for the holiday weekend, but was surprised to find nothing out of the ordinary.

Have a good holiday.

Harold

Thanks! It really was a unique experience. I was also taught how to climb a telephone pole using pole spikes. Not easy! As I said, these guys did everything. Besides being terrific mechanics and sheet metal workers, they also climbed up into the mast superstructures of warships to install antennas that were being tested. 

I got the recoil guard completed by fabricating the other broken rail, getting them all CA'd into position, and then joining the other styrene half to make the complete unit. I had to trim and finagle the fit becasue the added thickness of the Phos-bronze impinged on the joint.

I marked the extra metal that was protruding through the eyes with a Sharpie and then cut it off so the fit correctly. I did this off the model since there wasn't clearance for the cutters to do their job. Even if there was, I was afraid the shock would have fractured those, now-thinner-walled eyes.

There were some minor gaps that I filled with med. CA and accelerator, and then used Tamiya filler for the last bit of discontinuity. After sanding it smooth I airbrushed it white.

I dodged a bullet on this one. When those two rails broke I was dubious about getting this fixed correctly. All's well that ends well.

I installed the guard on the gun using thin CA to hold the metal rails and solvent glue for the plastic end. I was very lucky that the lugs held up even after enlarging the holes to accept the wire. If they had failed I would have rebuilt them with Bondic. Thankfully, that wasn't necessary.

After this was installed I attached the completed coax gun. The scratch-built pad was extending out from the side making it impossible to install into the mantlet trunion bearings, so I carefully ground it off with the Dremel and then filed it. I sprayed the entire assembly with Testor's Wet-Look Gloss in prep for detail painting and some minor weathering with accent liquids.

While the gloss was drying on the bottom side I started on the turret bottom. Like the upper half, this is a complete highly detailed assembly starting with the "sheet metal" (PE) ring gear guard. I don't know of any model that would have included this component. It was four parts of PE that needed to be specifically positioned in the ring's i.d. Here was the instructions depicting this.

It all starts with properly positionong the real ring so it coordinates with the drawing. I started by putting on the small pieces Y-2 and Y-56, to establish a good starting point. I then followed up with Y-1 and Y-55. I used thick CA. They curved nicely, and surprisingly, this step went really well. I was not anticipating that. On the long pieces I tacked one end with the CA and then worked my way around carefully putting some CA under the band as I went along. Here is the finished assembly. The two long pieces ended in a perfectly aligned butt joint meaning that I positioned them correctly. There were tiny locating pins (one per PE part) that supposedly guided the installation. I had to slice the last one off so they would settle down properly.

Next up was the large radio set. This was another multi-part job. Everything went along swimmingly until one of the tiny L-shaped grease gun-support-arms, twanged off of my tweezers. I thought I saw it go off to the right into my newly-protected area. So I searched and searched, but no joy. I finally scratch-built the part out of two pieces of styrene. I drilled a hole in the base piece so the small vertical piece had something upon which to glue. You're looking at the radio's bottom. Those two vertical brackets behind these supports are the only gluing surface to hold the radio to the turret. A little too scale for my liking. The radio gets painted O.D., but the supports, etc are white.

This whole effort took about 20 minutes. And then I was cleaning up the work space before shutting down for the weekend and then I see this; not to the right, but directly straight ahead. It may have hit the right-side backstop and ricocheted to this place. Who knows. All I know is, it was a dollar short and a day late.

The part twanged away when I was attempting to remove that very tiny sprue nub. That's a #11 blade tip in the image. This part is really small and I shouldn't have given a hoot about that nub. AMS rearing its ugly head again!

Have a nice weekend. Weather here in Louisville is spectacular for the Kentucky Derby, which for the first time, is being run on Labor Day Weekend and not the first Saturday in May. No audience, but that won't stop the betting. I had just written a political statement about potential clashes between protestors and armed militia, but erased it to keep my thread apolitical. 

Everyone have a safe, fun, socially distant, Labor Day celebration. The virus is not over! Don't let this holiday be a repeat of July 4th weekend.

My grandson's attending University of Illinois. The school is on lockdown after the students decided to not pay attention to the distancing rules and they now have 770 positive cases. My grandson's fraternity house suite mate just tested positive. My grandson tested negative. It's concerning. Young adults are notoriously careless about their personal safety thinking they are somehow immortal. They're not. Campuses all over the country are showing big spikes. They can do their classes virtually, but that doesn't stop the socializing. Heck... it was my favorite part of going to Michigan State (That and my R&B band). One college town has a 45% positivity rating. THAT'S THE ENTIRE TOWN! This virus is very, very contagious! Don't fool around.

Great job there on the gun and turret interior!!! 

And cool story about the M113s, that musta been a blast! 

Let it never be said that I don't follow the advice of the folks who read all my stuff. Before doing anything today I made up my mind to do something about the crawling around looking for tiny parts. While not a full enclosure, I've greatly cut down on the exit routes. I first added another piece of Masonite onto the right edge and then added significantly higher cardboard barriers. The parts can still escape vertically. If I enclose that I'll need to add more lighting. I have some LEDs that I could press into service. I'll have to decorate that cardboard with something... perhaps box art?

This view shows the attachment method. Again, I used SPAX star-drive screws with dress washers to hold the Masonite. White Duct Tape holds the cardboard which sits down flush with the work table on the inside making hiding places scarce. I also sealed the corner with duct tape on the inside to further elminate hiding places.

Then I took it further as Harold suggested. I installed a generous parts catcher that is stapled to the work surface underside and is ample enough to cover my entire lap. It already paid back the effort. When ladies used to wear full dresses they had automatic parts catchers in their laps.

This was created from some surgical field covering that my orthopedic surgeon son in law gave me years ago. Armed with this new environment I got back work.

I painted the gun receiver and recoil slide and the white on the coax gun. For the gun reciever, I airbrushed it flat white. For the slide and breach I airbrushed my "steel" mixture of flat aluminum and flat black. 

After painting the breach and slide, I treated the equilibrator slides to chrome adhesive foil and the gun slide to brushed aluminum Bare Metal Foil. The chrome foil was not a Bare Metal product. This really makes it pop!

Here's what the slide looks like inserted in the receiver body. Paint rarely simulates metal like real metal. I went over all the details that will need further painting with some Dullcoat to seal it and prevent the white undercoat from dissolving into the color. I also did this for the Coax since the gun is flat black and the ammo box is O.D. The gunner's telescope and other sighting aides are dark gray or black too.

This image attempts to show the insides of the breach area. There's really no way to view this when the tank is build I'm thinking, but it was fun to do. 

The breach interior was painted chrome silver and the breach block a combinaton of steel and silver depending if it was a wear surface or not.

I started to assemble the recoil shield assembly. It's a multi-part structure. Then trouble came. One of the very thin (0.026") styrene legs broke without any provocation. I immediately went about making a phos-bronze facsimilie. I had either 0.022 or 0.032 not the exact size so I went with the heavier. Fielder's choice...

After bending based up the measure of the plastic part, which I temporarily glued together so I could accurately note where the bends were, I filed the contact surface flat to increase the bonding surface and glue it to the plastic backing with med CA. I also had to drill out the mounting lug on the receiver to accept the larger diameter wire.

Later in the evening I went downstairs to do something unrelated to the model. I was cleaning something in the ultrasonic. While this was going on I went about cleaning up the other half of the guard and the other plastic leg broke off. DOH! These both broke in pretty much the same spot and I'm suspecting a molding flaw. In both cases, I did not stress the part. So tomorrow, I will make the other half too. Knowing that both were going to break, I would have made the entire assembly out of metal and soldered it together.

Luckily, I'll long since lost my anxiety about scratch-building anything so this too will work out okay. It's all part of the hobby as my wife always reminds me when I complain about somehting not working out in the shop. She defines "hobby" as a pursuit where you do what you choose to do. She defines "work" as a pursuit where someone else is telling you what to do. That someone else could be a boss, a customer or client. It's a pretty good definition.

Those look pretty good. Did a search for them and they cost around $40.00. They have the steering levers and seats already attached which is a small problem. The heads are the hardest thing to model in small figures. Since I have the MiniArt figures, I may be able to use their head and some body parts and sculpt the rest. We'll see. 

The dish towel idea is good. On my main work bench, I build a pull out tray with a curve cut out to go around my belly. I cover this tray with a white T-shirt. It worked pretty well when doing all the PE work on the Missouri and Essex. I should probably go back to working on it. Right now it's the overflow area for bottles of solvent, all the drills and on and on. I also like enclosing the whole space. Perhaps I can do it with cardboard with a clear acrylic roof to let more light in.

Very limited work time... had to do a ceiling touch up painting job after I went to the hardware store to have a paint chip matched. I got that front support remade for the 30 cal. coax. My first attempt looked like this.

This attempt had some holes to fit over the oval pins on the gun's supports. When I tried it in the space, it tried to push the gun further into the mantlet than it is supposed to go. That piece was 0.015" thick. I substituted another piece what was 0.040". This piece will work, but I had to let it dry overnight so it was a very good, strong joint. It will be stressed a bit. The thicker styrene makes up for the softer consistency of the Evergreen styrene.

I removed the pins and sanded the supports flat so I didn't have to worry about it.

This needs to be painted before assembling it the main gun part. I will be painting the gun assembly tomorrow or Friday.

Builder 2010

I now have a MiniArt WW2 US Army Tank Crew to go along with this model. Trouble is, they're all in poses outside of the tank. I wanted a driver and asst. driver for inside. I may have to do some kit bashing to get them to work. I looked at the Tamiya set, but all of the insde folks were half-bodies meant for tanks without interiors.

 

I don't know anything about Nemrod products. I did find one of these kits on eBay for $117.00. It must be a very rare find to charge that much money.

Harold

Builder2010, I have enjoyed watching you work through all the details in this kit and many times wanted to say 'I did that too' referring to tiny tiny parts that fly out of your tweezers or however they get launched into space.

After last Christmas I got really frustrated with dropping parts on a grey carpet floor and looking for them. I finally decided there has got to be a better way of controlling what's on my work bench.

I read an article online that another model builder had similar issues and he made two very simple suggestions that changed my life and saved me a lot of time on my hands and knees. First I taped a large white dish towel to the edge of my work bench top, so when I sit down the table cloth is over my lap like a skirt. It catches 90% of parts I drop or that fly out of my tweezers. The second thing I did is create an enclosed work area, that is to say I use my paint both as an assembly area when I'm not painting. This stops parts from going the other way and the LED lighting in the paint booth is much better on my eyes. As a last resort I get a lint roller and down on my hands and knees I go... I often find other parts I didn't even know I lost.

It's not fun getting old.

I agree with John (M1GarandFan) by the time you finish this project you will know every part of a Sherman tank.

Harold

Thanks guys and for following along. Today I worked from after 1:00 to about 4:45. Of that three hours and 45 minutes, I'll bet I spent at least one hour of it on my hands and knees looking for lost parts. And that wasn't all. I needed to move the table (a drawing board screwed to an IKEA stool I made in Germany when living there) and knocked off a bottle of Tamiya Clear Smoke paint. Usually they bounce. This one fractured in half spilling about half of the paint onto the floor. My shop floor has been spilled on so many times it's looking like a Jackson Pollack painting. I emptied one of my smaller bottles used for the airbrush and cleaned it in the ultrasonic cleaner so I could salvage the remaining paint. The bottle came out spotless. Then I dropped it while wiping out the insides with a rag and it broke into smitereens. Then I found an old Tamiya Thinner bottle. I did the same drill again and this time didn't break anything else.

Speaking about full-size armor. From the Summer between freshman and sophmore years until my first year teaching I had the pleasure to work as a mechanical technician at American Electronic Labs (AEL). They manufactured military electronic countermeasure gear. I started as a rank amatuer and eventually was making experienced wages. It was great experience for me. One of the coolest things was the APC project. They received 15 brand new M-113 APCs into which they were going to create mobil jamming vehicles. It was a $4.5mm (1964 dollars) project and took three years to complete. The tanks were built by FMC. They were fully equipped regular M-113s. They even had the 50 cal in a crate inside. But this was not what AEL needed. They had to be completely stripped down to their bare aluminum. Yes! M-113s were made of welded 2" aluminum. So all the seats, hardware, everything had to be removed. This also meant air-chiseling all the little attachment brackets that line the walls for soldiers' gear.

It was a hot summer and the boss gave me the air chisel and told me to start breaking the welds to remove them. When the chisel hit the weld the entire vehicle rang like a bell and I was inside! It was intolerable. I told the boss this was not a job I was willing to do. He said okay and got a bunch of poor souls on manpower roles to do the work via per diem. We did provide jet muffs for them so they wouldn't go deaf. The boss was one of the best supervisors I ever worked for, and the team were some of the most clever and resourceful mechanical craftsman I've ever known. They could do absolutely anything.

But the best part of the gig was running the tanks. These tanks did not have any preservative in them so they needed to be "exercised" on a regular basis. AEL built a test track in the back lot and we all took turns driving them. They were very easy to handle and the steering levers is very intuitive. I got to do it once during my tenure.

The project was completed after my fourth summer. When I returned in summer 1968, the APCs were back. What happened? It turned out that they were so comprehensive and complex that they couldn't train operators in the 10 week cycle the military had. So they gave them back. We stripped out all the gear and AEL was using them in subsets mounted in standard equipment enclosures that would be mounted on trucks. 

Okay, enough story telling. I got the upper turret painted and assembled and made a big dent in the gun. The gun body has 24 parts itself, not counting the 30 cal coax gun. There is a connecting link that was the elevating linkage, that if you include it, the gun will not elevate. I left it out since I want it to be movable. There are poly caps in the gun trunion to permit rotation so why not take advantage of it. 

I based painted the white on the upper turret parts before assmbling them. It made detail painting much easier.

I picked out all the little boxes and things. There are three canteens and a binocular box that I paint kahki. The canteen caps are semi-gloss black. I picked out the electrical wiring with better luck than I did on the hull. 

I was surpised that the commander's fixed periscope was not a clear part like the driver and asst driver's. I picked out the lenses of the overhead light fixtures with the Molotow Chrome Pen. 

I glued the side panels in with tube cement, again since it gives longer working time for large surfaces. I did a lot of back painting on all these little bits so everything came out clean. 

Onto the main gun. This is an enormously complex assembly. Many are delicate and require a lot of location testing to ensure their in the right spot. The recoil mechanism does work! Part G35 is this link I mentioned in the prolog. It connects to that clevis on the roof, but doing so would lock the gun since the rest of the linkage is non-working. I was looking forward to the gun build since I've always had a fascination with artillery pieces. 

When in Junior High School, the amazing Franklin Institute in Philly had a fully working model of, what looked like, a 5" deck gun from the WW1 era. It even had a step-thread break modeled. WW2 High Angle 5" guns had sliding wedge breach blocks not step thread. That model impressed me so that my friend and I found plans for it in the Institute's library. We had delusions of grandeur. We were going to build it as shop project. Of course we couldn't do it and the project never got out of the planning stage, but my interest remained. Only recently I found just how tricky it is to machine a step-thread breach. It's done on a special lathe that can engage the cutter for the short distances of each thread on each step. It's not something a kid's going to do in a junior high metal shop.

Here's a perfect example of a step-thread breach. This is the center 16" gun of number 2 turret of the USS New Jersey Iowa-Class BB. Very impressive indeed! The threads themselves do not seal against the blast pressure. That the job of the "Mushroom", the bulge in the breach plug center. The threads apply the tremendous pressure to hold the mushroom in place. As an aside (this post is full of asides...) if any of you ever saw Steven Segal's "Under Siege", the guns in that turret weren't real. Each Iowa gun was in its own "room". You can see the walls flanking the breach block. Each compartment is isolated from the other for obvious reasons. In the movie, the gun room was wide open. You can't make good movies in the rear Iowa turrets.

Tank guns are not step-thread breaches. They are sliding block affairs and the breach block iteself is in two parts for the model. If any other model would use one part for something, Ryefield is going to use three. This is the gun top. In the foreground is the optical sighting system. 76W Sherman's had a stabilized gun system and were the only one during the War.

Here's the bottom view.

And here's a view of the breach itself.

The Manlet went on next with its polycaps. The 30 cal coax gun is also built at this point. Again, it's a delicate, very detailed assembly. When I took this picture I hadn't glued on a diminuitive plate that connects the two prongs of the gun's mount to the mantlet cover. I had it in place, went to adjust it and launched it out of the tweezers. This was a high-velocity launch off to the right and I spent 20 minutes looking for it. Ended up making one which I didn't finish by the end of the session. I found a lot of parts (treads) that were lost days ago. They came out of the dimensional rift when this small part entered.

Hopefully, this styrene will be strong enough to do the job. The Ryefield styrene is pretty hard an tough. The Evergreen styrene is not. With all the fine parts I really haven't broken many. I've dropped and searched for many more than I've broken.

I now have a MiniArt WW2 US Army Tank Crew to go along with this model. Trouble is, they're all in poses outside of the tank. I wanted a driver and asst. driver for inside. I may have to do some kit bashing to get them to work. I looked at the Tamiya set, but all of the insde folks were half-bodies meant for tanks without interiors.

Tomorrow the guns get painted and then mounted into the upper turret.

Been following this build along with all the others and I can identify with some of the problems you've noted. I admire your perseverance and I'm sure it will be an outstanding build when done.

It seems to me that when you're done and find a time machine, you'll be able to go to work on the assembly line in 1943 and build M4's since you will have all the experience necessary.

That's a good technique. I have lots of things that spin things including a Taig Micro-lathe. I will do that on my next tank... Possibly the Meng Bradley with TUSK and full interior. I'm really getting into this interior stuff.

Tracks are officially on. The spindle and eccentric adjuster are more fragile than I would like. It precludes heaving usage as a "toy" and relegates this to a static model. I did get the idlers in place and reasonably adjusted. Being thin and styrene, they just don't have the strength to handle too much manipulation. If they broke (and one almost did), I would machine a pair out of brass. Like I said, I have a Taig lathe and the correct holding devices that I could do it. Notice also I got the PE Headlight Brush Shields bent and in place. Not as easy as I would have wanted, but it's done and the upper hull can be painted inside and out. I will add the tools after the hull is painted so I can detail them all around.

For the upper hull to be actually positioned properly, that row of bolts on the gear case should overlap the row of holes on the hule glacis. They are not, and it's going to take a lot of forcing to get it together, which I ain't gonna do because I will break something. I'm not planning on gluing the upper hull down anyway. I'm not particularly happy glue PE edge-wise to the hull. The actually contact surface is negliable and should be more. I would have been nicer if slots would have been provided for the PE to enter. I bent the PE radius around a 1/4" drill. Close, but not perfect.

I started on the turret. Like the hull, every little tiny bit is there. The left and right inner walls are separate from the turret so they could properly mold the mounting holes on everything.

The reason for the limited progress today was due to not getting started until after 3:00. I was at the LHS (too long... I got the dickens for being indoors with others too long.) I will be glad when the virus is under control, like all of you.

Great to hear the hull is finished! 

And good luck with the tracks, they look good. 

Excellent work. I read your comment about the road wheels and this may help 

http://cs.finescale.com/fsm/tools_techniques_and_reference_materials/f/13/t/186174.aspx

Thanks! Today was a milestone day. The hull is done and I WAS able to get the tracks over the return rollers by flexing the sponson just enough to get it in. There really was no choice. There is not enough working room when the track is installed to connect it together using the complex arrangement it requires.

Before the floor pan could go in I had to install the ammo into the wet magazine. Because this was already painted, the gluing was more troublesome than it should be. For the brass color I airbrushed flat aluminum yesterday and overcoated it with Tamiya clear yellow today. It does a good job simulating metal to do it this way.

While most of them are just stub ends, the middle rows are full projectiles which they give you elaborate painting instructions and decals, and then you bury them into the magazine and never see all that work, so I didn't do it. You can see that I picked out the details needing O.D. painting. I painted those PE spring clips semi-gloss black just so they'd look different. I have no idea what color they really were.

I airbrushed the floor plan white and then went to pick out the panel lines. I did this after gluing the open hatches that would expose the magazine. I made a mistake of putting on the diluted panel accent (diluted with low-odor mineral spirits) which I thought would not dissolve the white since it's solvent-based. It did not, but the flat paint absorbs and spreads the accent where you don't want it. I removed it and then gloss coated the whole deal and went back and did the accent again. Then I hand brushed Tamiya clear flat to dull it done, but it was still too glossy so I shot it with Dullcoat. With the addition of the floor, the hull IS DONE!. This shows all the stuff on the right side.

And here's the view of the left side. I repainted the forward left section since there were some little parts that I didn't paint while, the first box of storage units looked terrible and the sponson itself was almost unpainted. I just masked around the area and kept the airbrush at a narrow stream. I have two airbrushes. I have my veteran (40 years old) Badger 150 which Badger reconditioned for free several years ago. And a fine line Badger 250 top feed for detail work. I seem to have lost the shift pattern decal... hmmm. I guess I won't be able to drive it now since I don't know where its gears are.

I had recently received the Kalmbach Armor Detailing book and learned that you can use pencil lead to create a worn surface for the inside running surface that contacts all the wheels. I first used A-K Interactive Real Metal paste to produce worn metallic surfaces on the center guides and the connecting links that make contact with the sprocket teeth. This is a wax-based paste that doesn't dissolve the paint beneath and can be polished. If you're familiar with Rub-n-Buff, this is very similar. It took a few minutes to apply the pencil. I then flipped the track over and added a bunch of brown weathering powder. I'm not sure just what effect it gave... I then highligted the grouser teeth with the same A-K product. I used a makeup sponge to just catch the tops of the tread. I like this effect a lot.

Here's one view.

An another;

I then fastened the ends together using pre-painted tread parts. This went well since I have literally hundreds of trials learning how to do it. I was able to carefully apply pressure to the sponsor just enough so the track passed the double return rollers and it was installed. I placed the idler wheels in the track, but ran out of time before putting in the idler shaft and the eccentric adjustment part to properly tension the track. That will wait for Monday.

Here's a nice front-end shot. This tank is mildly weathered so the track seems right to me. I'm not putting this on a diorama, but I may get some crew figures. I made some custom decals for a friend and he's getting MiniArt and Tamiya US WW2 tank crews for me.

The tracks are perfectly flexible and miraculously, the tank can actually move. We'll see how this works when the idler is on and there's more tension. So far so good.

Once the idler is on, I two paths to travel. I have to finish the exterior hull with the painting and adding some more details. And then there's the highly complex turret. I've looked at it regarding cutaway ideas, but still not sure how this will work.

Oh that sounds cool! 

And again, great work there with the interior details. 

I won't have to cut away the hull since when the lid is off it's completely open. It's the turret that needs to be exposed. The turret has a top and bottom half. It also has interior walls. If I glue the two halves together including all those internal walls, I can then cut through both. There will be a gap between the inside and outside wall that should be filled to simulate the thickness of the turret armor. I would probably make the cut from the loaders side since there's more stuff on the walls on the commander side that would be sacrificed to make the opening. The other choice would be to just use the upper and lower parts separate, but you have to look up inside the upper half to see all the cool stuff and you'd be looking at the gun from the bottom, not the side.

All I got done on the tracks today was the Dullcoat layer, but I did do some stuff. I painted all those compartments that I glued together yesterday and built some more. I painted and installed the fire extinguisher that sits in front of the asst. driver. I applied some neat little decals and decaled the instrument panel. I also did some finicky little PE...is all PE finicky and little...just say'n.

There is one particularly complext compartment that has all kinds of stuff going on. It has a rack with what looks like machine gun ammo boxes. These boxes are a two-piece molding, but the spring clips that keep them in place when the tank is bouncing around are PE! There are 7 of them. They are folded 90° and glue to the back of the upper box. Again, those are really fine-pointed tweezers in that picture.

I used thick CA for gluing PE. I've discussed this before so I won't waste time here. To put these pieces on, I first positioned the part next to where it will finally reside, add a dot of CA and then slide the PE sideways until it seats properly. I went back over them with some thin CA to further secure these delicate pieces.

After gluing them in place I put a razor blade across of them and bent the forward lip up as it would be if it is a spring clamp. Notice also the folded PE shelf holding up that electrical looking device at the back.

If this wasn't enough there is more PE. This unit also holds PE brackets that support replacement black out headlamps. The lamps on the tank's front are clear lenses. The black out lenses were also carried on board. These and that relay device are painted O.D. along with all those ammo boxes.

Here are those cute little interior decals. I can drive this beast since the shift pattern is now clearly displayed on the generator shield. The others are name plate decals. You can see the fire extinguisher too. There's another relay device on the sponson that also gets painted O.D. which is why it's not white.

Lastly here's the instrument panel. Almost screwed this up just before I was quitting for the day. I decided to add another coat of MicroSol. And of course my brush caught a edge and turned the end under. I was able to pick it out sort of. This image was taken before that happened. I had gloss coated the panel before decaling. I will add some Bondic gloss to the guage faces. The kit's decals seem to be pretty good. They're not too thick and came off the backing quickly. More than I can say for the decals in the Airfix Typhoon. Those took 3 minutes or longer to break loose of the backing.

I think I may be able to get the tracks onto the return rollers without removing any guide lugs. I did a little experiment and think I can flex the sponsor lip just enough to get the track to go over the front roller. We'll see. Track and other detail work tomorrow.

Whew, that's a relief to hear the tracks went that well.

I like the idea of doing a cut-away. Not sure how I'd do it, looking forward to seeing what you come up with.

Believe or not, the tracks are finished and two days before I said they would. I really did get into a groove and perfected all the little actions that streamlined the process. By not connecting the sub-groups until the end served two purposes: it gave them a chance to fully set before messing with them, and it was easy to count the number needed to complete. As it were, there were enough extra parts to complete both tracks AND have some pieces left over including all the pieces I lost and that extra chunk that I couldn't use. I believe the track is actually sized for the Jumbo Sherman which was a longer vehicle than this version. It worked out that 10 sets made the length. Even though 10 X 6 is only 66, there is one additional link between each set, so the total is actually 76.

In this image, all the segments are complete and I've cut and cleaned the tread parts needed to join the 10, 6-link sections which include the pins and center guides for the connnecting tread pieces, equalling. I cut 10 left and right outer treads and 20 inner treads. I actually only needed nine. The 10th will be used to loop the tracks.

So here are both tracks at 76 links per. Since there's one more link that joins them, it's actually 77. The instructions said make the length 76 links. I hope that they were talking about the track in the flat. Otherwise, I'll have to add two links. I have materials to do this. I bought the track kit, but thankfully don't need it. It was $20.00 and that's a lot of dough to spend if I only needed a handful of parts. It was a provisional buy and I'm glad I did it.

For the base coat, I airbrushed the track Tamiya Dark Iron. It's a very slightly metallic color and looks like a deep brown rust. I will add some more color in further operations. When this totally dry, I'm going to Dullcoat it to serve as a barrier for further treatment.

While this was drying I got to work on the next steps: assembling more details for the top of the sponsons. The tank has all kinds of storage compartments. One, which you can see, has three jerry cans for fuel. This is all for the right side except for that odd-looking thing that goes on the bulkhead in front of the left fuel tank. These get painted which initially and have some decals.

I also built the auxiliary power unit. There was a part that went on the front that got into the Rift so I faked it with a piece of styrene. This get's painted O.D.

Tomorrow is an exercise day so I'll have a shortened session. I will continue work on the tracks and then back to the interior details. I'm thinking of actually cutting away part of the turret to show the interior. I'm still thinking...

Oh gee friggin' whiz...

Good luck with getting the tracks on there, I have no idea what to do. Looking forward to seeing how you solve this..

You ain't seen nothing yet. I finished track one today and started track 2. Several things occurred. I found one tread that was somehow reversed. I attempted, briefly, to break it and replace the shoes correctly, but quickly realized that I'm make that errant tread is not easily seen. 

Next, I produced all the links needed for track one. It needs 76 links.

Unfortunately, I overcounted by 7 links. So I made the track with the correct number. Then there's this: The instructions clearly show you create a full loop and lock it in place by adding the idler roller to pull the track in place AND use the eccentric to tighten the track properly, much like the real one.

Unfortunately, THIS DOESN'T WORK! The track won't fit over the return rollers. You can't get the darn thing in! You will break this fragile track if you try and force it. The only way to get the track on is to have it NOT CONNECTED. This is troublesome becasue of how tricky it is to install the top and bottom tread halves even when they're in the jig. Doing so when the tread is on the tank will not be fun.

Lastly, those 7 extra links can't be used on track 2 because they are backwards. The track is to be installed with the simulated hollow connector pins facing outwards, and the tread pattern needs to be consistent of both sides. I thought about breaking all the glue joints and reversing the treads, but quickly found out that the glue joints only let go when you don't want them to. If you want them to, you have to destroy the parts in the process.

I've gotten much faster building the track. I think I did 6 or 7 sets today. And I'm going to change my plan to not assembly any of the track to avoid the miscount from the first track. I'm going to produce the series of 6 links and when I get close to 76, I know exacly where I'm am. It's easier to count by 6s, than individual links.

Thanks! Yes... I suppose it does. Today I really got down to business on making the tracks. First I completely cleaned and reorganized the work area. I had a pile of miscellaneous crap on the left side, and more at the back and on the right as well. It made it hard to find little bits when they launched. I also put up a cardboard wall on the right size as a backstop to "catch" hyper-velocity little parts. I put quotes around "catch" because it's working more like a richochet board that reflects the projectiles to other unknown places. I hear them impact the cardboard, but then it's anybody's guess as to where they actually land.

I noticed in my picture of the lastest interior work that the angular support on the driver's side was no longer there. I didn't realize when it broke. I did find it on the floor. To repair it I reinforced the joint with a piece of 0.032" phos-bronze wire and some CA. The fracture zone was too small to just reglue it. Then all hell broke loose when I was working on the hull to fit that part. The front left bogie came off the tank! The little plastic part that glues to the bogie strut and the bogie then fell apart since this little piece is the key to keep it all together. To make matters worse, one of the pins that serves as the pivot point for the right swing arm was broken off in the swing arm. 

It took almost an hour to repair it all. I had to drill and pin the right arm pivot and then drill and pin the retaining plate itself since its glue joint was getting too munged up to be effective. The shock pivot on the left side (one of the kit hinges) kept separating. Each time that happened the volute spring would fall out. This happened over and over. I finally glued the volute to its resting places. This stabilized the assembly. It reduce mobility, but at this point mobility was the least of my worries. I was beginning to doubt if I could get it back together at all. Once it was stable, I could get the pinning done, got it all back together and touch up painted.

Then I got back to the tracks. I've got it down to a more fluid thoughtful process. I found that pre-staging everything made it go much faster. In fact, the fine cleaning of all the little bits took much longer than the assembly.

I found that supporting the sprue that has all the pivot rods kept it more level and made it easier to glue the inner tread pads, although it was holding it a little elevated. I eventurally went back to just letting it lie there while gluing in the first couple of inner tread pads. Once a few were in place, it stabilized. In this image you can see that the pivots are sitting a little proud of the right side tread pads (on the bottom).

I found that staging the inner pads so they all face sideways I was able to grab them in the right spot with the tweezers and get them in position quickly. The amount of liquid cement I'm using is very litte and it evaporates very quickly. If I fumble with the parts, but the time I get them in place there's not enough to hold the part. You have to be quick and precise. Often those two things are mutually exclusive.

Here's the caps lined up ready to glue in place. Remember: the glue can ONLY go on that little ridge with the open divot in it. If it runs down the side of the ridge it will get into the pivots and freeze the tread at that link.

I took another one of the jigs (there are four, one for each of the tread sprues) and removed the end lugs. Those lugs line up the upper part of the jig. This let me use it as an alignment jig for joining the 6-link track segments.

Joining the segments is easy with this method. I ended up fastening the jig to the table with double-sided tape so it wouldn't move around. You have to make sure you're fastening each segment in the proper orientation to the rest of the track.

I've completed 44 links so far. Each track requires 79 links. So I'm halfway to the first track. I think I'll be done the tracks by next Friday. They are getting faster. I did four this afternoon and that included fixing the that pesky bogie. The track is nicely flexible, but it's not very strong. In fact, I really wouldn't want to put any stress on it. I've already had some links break loose when the inner pad glue joint wasn't secure.

Everyone have a nice, safe weekend. See y'all on Monday.

Gamera

That gives me a headache just to look at it...

 

Harold

Hello Builder
Thank you very much for sharing your progress and the pros and cons on this build.

Have to admitt:
Bought the Typhoon before you started yours but you made me pick it up from the SOD.
Same with this build - My Dragon M4 is back on the table after +10 years in the twilight zone.

XLNT and most inspiring!
Keep them coming and late Good Wishes on your 75th!

Very Best Regards
Svenne