¹⁄35

An LCM3 Adventure

Questionable detail to correct

The LCM3 pulley system is a little unusual if you’ve never studied the vehicle before, and is one area where there is some manufacturing variability. The Italeri pulley system has two pulleys integrated into the vertical support on the right side and three on the left, while the Trumpeter one has two pulleys mounted on mounts which project off of the main supports.

Surprisingly both are correct… sort of. The Italeri kit as it stands is actually entirely correct for several boats I’ve seen. The trumpeter one is correct except on the left side there should be a third pulley projecting. Since the boats loaded on Dragon Wagons in Maastricht all have the Trumpeter version, I had to modify the Italeri parts. I scratch built the mounts out of evergreen sheet styrene and turned a single pulley out of evergreen rod using my Dremel tool as a lathe. Once I was satisfied with the part I made a silicon mold and resin cast the other 5 of them.

When done the pulley system at the left front of the boat looked like this: Next up was the propeller shafts and supports. This is one area where those Dragon Wagon books I mentioned in the first post came in enormously handy. They are the only clear images I’ve found of the underside of an LCM3.

Unfortunately this is one area where Italeri got it horribly wrong.

• The kit has two sets of strut supports per rudder, which is wrong, there should only be one. The two they provide have legs that are also spread way too wide
• The kit has these rudder mounts rounded, where they are actually flat on the bottom
• The kit has the rudder blades too thick, and the wrong shape, missing the part of the blade which extends on the other side of the pivot point
• The kit has the proper three-bladed propeller, but the blades on them are way too small width-wise

How did they get all this wrong? I actually realized how while looking up images of LCM3s. The propeller/rudder combination they used for the LCM3 is actually that of a late model LCM6!

Sadly I forgot to take any in-progress images of these corrections before priming the lower hull, but this is what it should look like in the end:

The weld seams are Archer Transfers resin weld beads.