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Out of the Box Sherman

Construction
Assembly starts with the lower hull. This piece had no motorization holes and that saved me one step that must be taken in many old Tamiya kits (at least their armor kits). The fit of the 3-piece transmission cover to the lower hull is positive, but leaves small gaps at the side. Superglue to the attack! The two runs of bolts that fit in front of the transmission cover also needed some coercing to glue down. Turning to the rear panel, everything fits well. As a matter of fact, except for the transmission cover, assembling the rest of the kit was a breeze.

The next step was to assemble the running gear. Here I had to make a decision. Would I have my model be nice and clean, or would I have the lower hull sides covered in mud. I chose the later because it facilitates and speeds up assembly. That also meant that I would have to put together a simple base for the model to show it traveling on muddy ground. The bogie assembly looks very nice and glue very solidly to the lower hull.

Once the bogies are glued to the lower hull attention is turned to the upper hull. Here Tamiya have you glue a 4-piece engine cover, and the fit is very good. The hatch openings for the tank driver and machine gun operator are not big enough to allow you to put the figures in after the kit is assembled. Instead Tamiya have you glue them from inside the hull. Since I wanted to skip unnecessary masking I decided to leave all figures off (and besides, my figure painting techniques need some work).

The kit includes appliqué armor plates and side skirts. While Shermans were more often seen without skirts I think they add character to the tank. The vinyl tracks fit well but float on top of the bogies. No real problem here since the vinyl Tamiya used can be glued to plastic with CA. Just hold the track down on the bogies with a knife for a few seconds and shoot some accelerator.