Jay: If they are truly clear, then you can get some transparent red paint to paint them with. I recommend the Tamiya acrylics. Just make sure that the clear parts don't have any finger oils on them by giving them a nice scrub with a little bit of water and dishwashing detergent and allowing to thoroughly air dry before painting.

As for installing them, I would be tempted to paint them first, then install them and mask with some liquid mask or blue tac when you paint the Sherman. However if you do want to paint them after, you could do so by hand with a fine brush, but you would still have to mask them during painting of the Sherman.

I was wondering if you could do me a quick favor and post a close up picture of the top of your Sherman's hull. Mine looks kind of funky with the way they did the weld beads.

thanks alot and sure thing *bringing out the camera* will be right back.

ok, here it is and on the top hull you can see my tail light awaiting it's doom haha

Thanks Jay, yours has some nice weld beads on it as I suspected. Mine is.. interesting...

Good job on getting those brass handles shaped and fitted. How is your turret coming along?

Your welcome and thanks for the compliments on my tank and yes the handles did come out pretty good as I went and bought myself some needle nosed pliers w/o the teeth I was shocked I only messed up one handle. Your model is interesting I wouldn't mind seeing that. Lol I'm almost afraid to look but let me check it out. You should post a picture of it and btw what model did you finally end up with? Let me know and thanks for everything.

Hi Jay ...I think those Dragon clear rear lights are really kinda gimmicky ..for has to be painted red you might just as well just paint them OD first and add a drop of red afterwords ...Here's how to paint the rear lights ...



Rick
ps In 1/35th red at the left hand top part and the rest can be black and it'll look fine..

Jay: The flamethrower kit I was looking to build looks like it's going to be more trouble than I'm going to be able to take on at the moment. Regarding the weld lines, I'm not sure what Dragon was doing, but the weld beads are represented off register, and there are the old "trenches" that were present on the older Sherman kits. I'll post a picture to let you all see what I'm talking about.

I think I am just going to hunker down with a Tasca kit for the time being to allow me to focus on my painting techniques as well as my other campaigns.

Richard: Thanks for the diagram. I was looking for something similar but couldn't find it. I was wondering if the taillights were painted silver before OD would it help to bring out the transparent red any better?

Hey, thank you both. I don't think my tail lights look like this but I'll probably get a close up picture once I've painted it and you guys can let me know if I messed up or not. Well good luck on your builds I won't be around this weekend from Friday, so I'll get back to you guys on Sunday night or Monday. On anything covered from Friday through to Sunday night.

@ Cal - the dio and the figure leaning on the fence look great - nice work !!

@ Tony - the color of your M7 looks 'right on', the weathering will really finish it off. Thanks for all of the great posts so far. Keep it up please

The DS track rework went really well, I'm debating about taking one link out of mine also Now that you've also painted the tracks the beast is really starting to come together and look like a 'real' SPG !

@ Graham - fast work on those bogies and the rest of the project !! The Camo will be interesting when you've dusted it up As mentioned it's great to see something finished in a Non OD scheme

@ Brad - thanks for posting those WIP pics for the team (you have a lot going on !!!!!), they are very helpful references ! Shermies everywhere !!!!

@ Keith - love that beast - wiring, sandbags, and those damn rocket tubes

@ Mike - thanks for posting the pics and adding images to the gallery ! Congratulations on your first ever Campaign. Your shermie is first class The dust is spot on IMO. You have definately earned the Ribbon !!

@ Wayne - nice dusting and the coloring looks very nice. The Camo really sets that beast apart, and the detail you've worked on makes your project really different - thanks for all of your posts !!

@ Martin - another awesome project from you - as Tony says it'll be a killer when finshed

@ Richard - nice reference pics for Jay - thanks for posting !!

@ Jay - keep up the good work, your skills are coming along very quickly, keep asking lots of questions of the crew

Cheers

Paul

Hello everyone. I've been lurking around the site for a while, but just registered and this will be my first campaign. Relative to what I have seen here, I'm pretty unskilled, but hoping to make a decent go of it. I've already learned a ton just reading what you guys have posted.

Here's my kit:


This will be my first Sherman. I'm primarily hoping to refine my painting and weathering techniques this time around, and will be building straight out of the box. I'm very interested in constructive criticism, but historical accuracy won't be too great a concern for me on this one. Please don't let that stop anyone from pointing out the flaws in the kit - I'd be just as happy to hear them myself - I just probably won't correct them this time unless they are easy fixes.

Looking forward to learning from and chatting with you all.

W

I decided to give Keith some company with another Calliope. Not a bad kit eccept for the tracks that could be used on the real vehicle some photos of the Italeri M4A3 Calliope that I had picked up at my LHS for $16.00USD.







Ok Keith, your build has been my inspiration since I have no data on this version to go by.

Bob

Hi Bob ..wow that was fast .. Looks like this kit goes together quite well..
Just one thing though...M4A3 (w) don't have the welded extra armor on the hull sides ..It was no longer needed once the ammo was stored in the wet storage.. You might still be able to fix that ..sorry for being the bearer of of bad news ..The rest looks great..

Rick

Just a little update... Finally got a couple of base coats on my M4A1... I always start off with a base coat of Nato Black which is a good color for the road wheels and makes a good preshade color ...



I then put a very patchy coat of OD which will show up on the fial paint job as paint chips ...



Yeah I know this is going to be a light stone and green finish ,I'll get to that sooner or later,but for now this is all I got done ...More tomorrow I hope..

Rick

Richard, I'm digging that OD color.

@ Richard: the kit was not hard and I had plenty of time with 4 day weekends for my accounting homework. I will just leave the extra steel where it is, some times the crews needed more visual protection to feel good I will now try to give mine a coat of OD hopefully as good as yours, love the effect you have going there.

Bob

Hi Axel,

I build this kit a couple of months ago and I used an excellent tweeks list made by Tim Streeter. The list can be found on his very nice and IMHO informative website: http://www.usarmymodels.com

Greetings,

Max

Looks good Rick :-)--I bet I can learn something here.

Tony the Mutt

I will definitely take a look at the tweaks and the site. Thank you for the info.

Hi Guys ...All glossed up and ready for salt....(yeah salt) The gloss is to protect the acrylic base coat ...last time I did this the salt left white marks on the paint ..I'am hoping this will fix that problem...





that's it for now..

Looking good their Richard, what kit did you use?

It's Tasca's Sherman II DV kit..

Did I see some earlier posts in in which folks used plain old liquid cement to provide surface texture? (I'd go back and look, but there are so many posts, its like looking for a needle in a haystack)

If I did, can anyone describe the technique?

Axel

Here is my build where I used the liquid glue technique.

http://armorama.kitmaker.net/forums/163768&page=1

Brilliant! Thank you.

Okay guys ...Don't use the salt technique with acrylics....it just doesn't work well ...I saved the day from disastor,but sure did scare the crap out of me!
The salt left great big splotches on my yellow coat .So I let it dry ,wiped off all the salt and resprayed adding a bit more white to my mix to get some fading..
I'll be able to add the rest of the splotches into the weathering .. So here is the next step in the paint job...






Rick