Here's a link to a great article by Paul Budzik posted over on ML by Paul himself http://paulbudzik.com/tools-techniques/Sherman%20Construction/sherman-construction.html

Thanks Pat, I'm not building one, but an interesting page to save incase I ever do.

Thanks Pat,

Interesting and useful article.

Al

Great article. Wish I had known about it sooner, as I ran into all the issues on my kit. Will bookmark it for next time!

Jamie

very interesting article, but if you dont have any nice tools like he has, then it makes me want to stay away. i know that i dont have the tools to do what he did.

my builds consist of a hobby knife, sprue cutter, sandpaper, and some glue, and paint of course. if i had to do the mods he did just to get things to fit, the kit would have ended up in the trash

i guess thats why my builds arent as nice as many here

Hey youpey (Mike),
I read the article and I see what you mean about the authors tools. BUT- I wouldn't think that the only way to build a Dragon Sherman- or even to do what the author did- is to go out and buy a lathe!

What the author did anyone could do with a decent razor saw from ZONA and a pinvise and drill index. All of which you could probably buy for $50.

Some guys put their money into enormous stashes of kits and some spend money on fewer kits and more tools. It all depends on how you decide to enjoy the hobby.

Great article- I love that kind of step-by-step.
Steve

Nice find Pat, thanks for the link.

That was a useful article.Though,I am surprised,for all the work he has done on the running gear,he did not mention / add the mounting bolt heads on the bogie track skids.

It is a great help that I wish I had known about earlier as well. I don't have the fancy tools either. A Dremel tool in a vice and a careful hand can be used to shape the wheels. I have used a round file and knife blade to carefully ream out the hubs. I like the block for setting the mounting brackets for the bogies straight. A few more articles like this and I'll be able to put a Sherman together right.

Great this is the site I was looking for, I'm building a Dragon model now (M4A1 Early Version) and this will be very helpful.

Thanks for the heads up on this site.

I though the same thing about the tools he was using, but don't worry they are not necessary. I didn't do any of those things to the two Dragon Shermans I've built and you can judge for yourself on the results.


https://armorama.kitmaker.net//features/1513

I think he has gone just a little bit over the top (understatement). All he had to do if he was worried about a floppy structure was to wait until he glued the top of the hull to the bottom and then all would have been fine. Same with the bogies alignment.. All you do is wait till you have it all together and before the glue sets put it on its wheels. The weight of the model and a few prods with a tool of some sort will make sure all the wheels are level and touching the ground.

He may be a great modeller, but the same results can easily be obtained with much less effort.

Each to his own I suppose.

Hmmm.. I was reading somewhere else about Dragon supposedly not supplying the lower part for one of the turrets. It turns out you use the same lower turret for both of the turrets. Looks like he has got himself a bit confused by the Dragon instructions..

I did use his .10 plastic on the front glue up does work.

But the other stuff I will let alone a good builder but to much of the fun gone figuring out the mistakes.

My front on the Normandy kit is still maybe a 1/2 " low still I can live with it.

But that 50 cal barrel bent I can not.
Came that way.

A good Kit

Interesting article. Again, he has used the most sophisticated construction solutions because he has expensive equipment in his shop. Many of the fixes shown can be done with ordinary hand tools.
The clearance problem he has found with the Dragon DS tracks occurs because he has not glued the top run of the track down onto the return rollers, so they are hovering in mid air, defying gravity. This may be due to the poor depiction of the final drive in earlier Dragon Sherman kits, which was undersized and positioned too high, placing the drive sprocket too high as well. More recent kits are corrected. If you have an older kit, make sure the top of the drive sprocket is in line with the tops of the return rollers before you cement it in place.

Pat,
Thnx for the posting. I happen to be working on (2) such Shermans @ the pesent time.

I particularly like the spacer/guide for aligning the bogie mounting plates (I would make it out of brass) and the brass guide for drilling return roller bracket bolt holes. The lathe work and hull bracing strike me as overkill, but I'm sure many things I do would strike others as overkill, so to each his own! The finished product sure looks good.

I would warn the budding Sherman modeler that this article does not present an exhaustive list of DML kit corrections. I see no mention of often undersized final drive covers, missing welds, hood issues, antenna issues, M4A2 engine door issues, and so forth. But every bit of knowledge helps. This article could form the basis of a larger discussion on tricks for modeling more accurate Sherman tanks.

-Doug

Thanks for the article Pat, it is very impressive while being somewhat intimidating if not down right scary. We hold off building some of the older kits in the hope that we will get something better, well newer is sometimes not better just different. It just goes to show how much reference material is out there and how many good modellers there are that not only find and use the info but are willing to share it as well. Great article great site..
Thanks
Mike

Each to his own. Some people are detail fanatics, some like te building process, some the painting, some the weathering and some the decalling.

Me, I mostly build OOB and compared to many people don't do ANY research at all into many kits I build. The pleasure for me is the building of the kit and having the finished product sitting in my display case. I am not worried if it is 1mm too long here or there, unless the problem is very noticeable to me I won't worry about it.

I might get the nth degree of accuracy, but I would not enjoy my modelling f it took me months and months to complete one model.

Remember, model what you want, when you want, how you want..

A very interesting article. I haven't read all of it yet, just skimmed it, but what I've read so far has merit. A couple of items he brought up I totally agree with, DML's instructions and the way they include so many extra parts. After building only one of their Shermans, the Operation Cobra M4A1 76mm, I found myself getting very frustrated. There are at least two cases where two different sprues have the same letter. The amount of time needed to hunt through the multiple sprues to find each part, especially when one step in the instructions would include parts from several sprues, really made my wish for the simplicity of Tamiya construction. Don't get me wrong, I liked building the kit and I will certainly build many more DML Shermans, I just kind of feel that DML isn't quite all it's cracked up to be.

Warren is right, some are detail fanatics and there is nothing wrong with that at all. What is shown is an eye opener to what CAN be done, but please use it as a guideline ... not as a must do list.

I think each one of us have our own areas we like to focus on and the better the tools, just makes it easier, but not a must have. I just bought a drill press last year thinking I would use it all the time and it just doesn't work out that way. A pinvise is faster and more convenient.

I'm 90% finished with the Late PTO version and had no real problems, but that's a good general article, that's for sure!

i tend to buy mostly dragon sherman kits and use their extra parts to dress up the tamiya and italeri shermans in my stash, same with my figures.david your dio looks excellent i really like the run for your life idea. the little bits you put in your dio give it a great perspective. as for the dragon shermans i think the only thing that beats em is tasca, if dragon slightly lowered the parts count and rewrote the instructions and re engineered fit problems then it would be great.i just compared the dragon early m4a1 to the m4 sherman normandy kit, and right away i see a huge difference.rodger take a tamiya sherman and a dragon sherman and compare them. tamiya's had open sponson, open wheel backsides, missing weld lines and nasty weld trenches, some detail is missing as well, i like tamiya shermans for ease of assembly but i just feel something is missing compared to dragon's