¹⁄35

Tasca Sherman III

finishing up! Final assembly included tacking the tracks down to the tops of the return rollers, idlers, and sprockets with a little liquid cement. (Thank goodness Tasca tracks can be glued!) I pushed some toothpicks in under the sponsons to wedge the track down until the glue had set overnight. Then I painted the inside of the headlight silver before adding a clear lens with a little Gator’s Grip glue around the rim. Normally I’d use good old PVA for this, but wanted to try out this “new” glue to see what it was like. I also added a Sten gun on the turret (from the old Italeri accessories set) and an “empty” periscope holder to the TC’s hatch. To do this I simply chopped the angled lens parts from one of the kit periscopes – the fact that it isn’t a hollow tin sheath cannot be seen from outside.

That left two key elements to match my prototype pics – graffiti and flowers. The graffiti was a challenge to replicate, so I started with a blown-up image and tried to work out what each line said. (Apologies if I copied anything offensive in Dutch!) Then, I worked on each separate area with artist’s pencils to get that mix of fresh and older marks layered up. I really ought to seal it with a matt coat…

The flowers required creativity. They are tulips (no surprise in the Netherlands!), so the form is easy enough – two sets of three petals to form the head, and two long leaves on the stem. I cut the petals as three-lobed “propellers” from yellow card, trying to make the inner set slightly smaller than the outer ones. A pencil, a knife, and an awl to punch a central hole were the only tools. I took some 0.019” brass wire, dipped one end in superglue to form a thickened “stopper”, and slid the petals on. After folding them up I added some Gator’s Grip glue, let them set a few minutes, squeezed them tight into a ball, and added more glue – the petals try to open up so several reshapings are needed before the glue sets. Then, I cut the stems to about a scale two feet, added two leaves from slivers of white paper (with more Gator’s Grip), and when dry I painted the stems a nice green (Humbrol 101). I know there is a firm selling paper tulip kits, but this was easy enough for even me…

Conclusion

So there we have it – a complete build of Tasca’s Sherman III. Sure, by choosing to model a photo I had to make some substitutions, but Tasca’s on-line parts department made that easy. For those wanting a more out-of-box build I did stumble across a picture of two British tanks loading up for D-Day, and they were the spitting image of the kit contents. And even with my rather odd choice of prototype I managed most of the alterations with the spares in the box – not bad! Some day I’ll get another to build truly OOTB.