¹⁄35

An LCM3 Adventure

The anchor on the back deck is stolen from an old Tamiya PBR kit, and matches the anchor style used on the LCM3s.

As mentioned previously the propellers of the LCM3 are another area both Italeri and Trumpeter got wrong, just in different ways. The trumpeter props are 4 bladed where as the real LCM3s had 3 bladed props.

Italeri got the 3 blades right, but the size of the blades, in particular their width, is way too small.

To be honest at first I thought I’d just ignore it and live with it, but one day while surfing around some online hobby stores I discovered that a company called G-factor makes 1/35th Elco PT Boat Propellers. While I wasn’t sure of their size, they looked pretty much identical to the LCM3 props in the online images so I took a risk and ordered them.

Most reviews I’ve read of G-factor products aren’t exactly glowing, as they usually make copies of 1/350 brass ship propellers and don’t seem do the research to actually correct any errors already in the kit. However given that I was already planning on using these for something they weren’t intended for, I wasn’t terribly concerned.

When they arrived I discovered they had some rather rough molding but after a bit of cleanup I got two of them ready. I was ecstatic to discover they fit perfectly!

A little bit of Vallejo satin tones down the brightness of the brass and voila! Done!