Hi Ed ...Wow ! very impressive work you've done so far ...The only thing I'm wondering about is why didn't you use the bottom parts of the M3 suspension? You have to drill the holes in the bolts like I did on my bogies and there are two holes in each suspension arm that need to be filled as these seem to appear only on the later M4 suspension..well at least I haven't seen any pictures of them..
Great job on the lower hull and my hat is off to you adding all those rivets ..(even where they won't be seen) Two thumbs up!!

Got a little work done this afternoon. I can't believe how horrible the pictures are, but I guess this is just to show that I've been working!





Questions: Do y'all usually attach everything (tools, lights, tow cable) and then paint them after, or paint then attach?

Sherman interiors were a light gray color, correct?

Also, feel free to let me know when you see glaring errors! I'm still new to this stuff, so I don't really know what's wrong and right!

That's all for now. More as soon as I can.

Justin - Thanks, and don't worry, there's nothing cheating about doing things straight forward for your second armor build. As for your questions, I usually attach pretty much all the fittings and paint the kit as a whole and then go back and pick out the individual parts. The one exception is if the lights are provided as clear parts, as they can be a pain to mask and paint. Also, sherman interiors were usually white, but the inside of the hatches were the same color as the outside of the vehicle. Hope things improve for your daughter ASAP.

Richard - Thanks as well. I didn't have the lower parts of the M3 suspension to work with, and to be blunt I missed the differences in the suspension arms because my attention was so fixed on trying to figure out the rivet pattern on the hull, so thanks for pointing that out so I can fix it. Heck, it's not like I'm trying to make things easy for myself in the first place.

Awesome work Ed ! Just fantastic attention to detail - well done.

I love the work you've done with those rivets

Justin, sorry to hear the news about your little girl, I hope she gets better very soon.

Nice start to that Shermie. I always paint the tools on the model using a 000 brush and Vellejo Acrylics

As Ed says, white interiors and hatch inners OD.

Cheers

Paul

Hi All;

A quick update my Bolster, not what Wikipedia defines as a long narrow pillow or cushion filled with cotton, down, or fibre, or what the Oxford dictionary also calls a chisel for cutting bricks. But a Sherman Bolster, a type fascine carrier used by the 8th Army during the Italian campaign. And who said this hobby was not educational?

The first problem I encountered was how to attach the framework assembly, that carries the fascine, to the turret and with only three photos to go with it is a bit of a challenge The first prototype was a failure. But thanks to ALANL's review of the Resicast M4A4 Interior set, I soon had things falling into place.


That's the first try at the turret basket to the right of the vehicle. But it does make for a handy stand to place turrets on when working on them.





Next stage will be to take a bit of a break, and do the hull details before tackling the front of the hull

cheers
David

Justin, Just catching up with the postings. Hope your daughter is better or gets that way very soon!

Nice work everyone!! I may be able to get some more done this weekend, if I don't get distracted by other stuff

Michael

Hey Justin, good start on your 105. Another thing to add is the supports for the rear deck engine doors which are not included or indicated. Pick that centre line of the door grilles running laterally. Continue this line down to the edges of the hull each side. Now where this line crosses the line of the rear deck lifting eyes you have in place, there should be a rectangular protrusion. I'll try and find a photo as even I can't understand what I've just typed

Dave, an ambitious poject and one I'll be following closely as it is quite unique! Looking forward to the mounting of the fascine...

Here is my effort. The DML M4A3(76)W premium edition 6325.

I started with some solvent cement dabbed around the front cast section of the hull which incorporates the front hatches.



The kit still includes the undersized final drive housings as from previous kits, so I swapped out with some spares from a handy sprue in the spares box.



Consequently there is some cutting and fitting to be done to make the whole thing fit glove-like and be more accurate.

This shot shows the overhang of the transmission cover that will need removing...



Like this...



and then viola! (A large violin)



The large and small locator tabs on the rear of the final drive housing need to be removed as the whole position shifts slightly forward to sit flush with the front edge of the transmission housing.

I moved on to the turret where the join between the two halves has been puttied and smoothed to represent a rough casting scar line.



The tools I am using will be from Formations, the type without the tiedowns cast in.



They include some brass wire to replicate the handles of the crank and track bar. Yes, I know the crank will not be used here, but I was in the swing of things and there's no doubt it will be used for other projects...

Brad

Justin, I feel with you there! I had the same thing 2 months ago when my daughter was 6 months old. As it turned out it took 2 weeks in the end. Hope it's nothing serious!

Ed, that M7 is coming along great! You must be going nuts with all these rivets...

Good work everyone! Nice to see some Shermies! As for my build, I got the upper and lower hulls straightened out and fitted together. A little putty to fill the gaps and I'll be sanding it tomorrow. More pics this weekend hopefully.

Cheers!
Stefan

Brad, is this what you are describing?





Chris

Thanks Stefan, and everyone! My daughter is at home, a day before we expected her to be. She had an adverse reaction to her 6 month immunizations, and had us a little scared. No fun at all! The good news is she's home, and everything is getting back to normal. I even get a day off!

Brad I see what you're talking about. I found a "corrections" page for the Tamiya Sherman and have been knocking a few of them down this afternoon. Among a lot of other things, those supports are on the list as are sand guard attachments. I'm trying to find some good shots of those at the moment. I did close up the hull by adding some sponsons from some styrene sheet. I'll get a little more work done today, I think.

Do y'all think that it's necessary to roughen up most of the sections on the Tamiya Sherman? I know that only some of the sections were cast-- these would be the rough spots, right? Is there a website with a lot of Sherman info on it? If I'm gonna be building one, I might as well learn a bit more about them (and armor in general!)

Thanks again for the well-wishes, guys.

No not at all, there are no real roughspots on Shermans as there are on war time T-34s. US production values were very high. I think the texture on most model Sherman turrets is overdone. What we see on museum vehicles is not cast texture but 65 years of overpainting and flaking. I usually just add a light texture to the turret by stippling on some liquid cement.

Theres a lot of Sherman info on the Sherman Register
Also Dave O meara did a great article on the Tamiya M4A3 here on Armorama
There are two great books by Steve Zaloga in the Osprey Modelling guide range: "Modelling the Us Army M4 (75mm) Sherman Medium Tank" and "Modelling the Us Army M4 (76mm) Sherman Medium Tank"

@ David - awesome work there mate. The Scratch building looks first class, and form the pics I've seen your Bolster is true to the real thing.

@ Brad - great attention to detail as usual ! I have some Formations tools to use also (three sets I think). How do you rate them ?

@ Pat - thank for the links Pat. USArmyModels.Com also has some pretty need info:

USArmyModels Artiles

Tamiya 35122 improvements @ USArmyModels

Tamiya Reviews @ USArmyModels

The links above are pretty good but checking out the other info on the site is VERY worthwhile.

It is really a great site


Cheers

Paul

Wow ..Great to see more and more shermans coming to life!
Justin ..I`m glad to hear that your daughter is starting to feel better..
Great start on you M4A3. If I might make one suggestion that is really a quick and easy fix ,it would be to change out all those blobs Tamiya made to represent handles for new ones made from wire..There are four on the engine covers ,two on the rear hull deck and tose on the hatches..This isn't hard to do and will really show in the end..

David ...Great start and your scratch building is spot on..
One thing you might address before you get too far along are the sunken weld beads .
Keep up the great work and I'm very interested in the conversion as I never heard of this one before ..
Brad ...I knew it wouldn't be long before you got started ..Good stuff ..I stole two covers from an old Italeri sherman to beef up the front of my M4 that needs a sharp nose .. Don't forget to add the bolts on the hull sides where the transmission cover is attached ..
keep it coming !

Rick

Battlewagon M4A3E8 ETO: Part 3-HVSS Suspension Assemblies

Greeting to everyone,
It has just been awesome to see all the work being accomplished for this campaign.

During the last week or so I have made some progress and have assembled the HVSS suspension components and preped most of the tracks. Mostly built the subassemblies OOTB with only a few detail additions. The biggest are the angled sheet metal attached to the center of each suspension, still have no idea what the function of these are. Next up will be the mounting of the suspension to the lower hull and start laying the tracks….oh the fun!!



Thats it for now, everyone keep up the outstanding work and remember to have FUN!!!

Yeah-- that does seem like a pretty easy fix. I've thought about just thinning them down some, but we'll see. I think that I may just cut the curved parts off, drill some holes, and insert some wire. Like you said-- easy fix!

There are a lot of other parts on this kit that are overly thick and heavy, especially the guards for the lights and the horn(?) Some of it I'm just not gonna worry about, but those handles are simple!

Eric-- and I thought I had a lot of parts to prepare! Wow!

I am looking for a set of aftermarket tracks, and there are so many types of tracks for the Sherman. Is there a specific model or type that I need for an M4A3?

Hi Justin ...The kit tracks are just fine for an M4A3 but if you really want to change them Dragon DS track sets make a few different types that look great. For a sherman you really don't need the link by link tracks as there isn't supposed to be any sag ...Don't give yourself any more trouble than you need to..Save your money or spend it on a small PE for the light guards..

Really great builds so far, guys! I'm definitely going to learn a lot during this campaign.

I'm just about ready to start painting my M4. I still need to attach the tow cable and clean up the little bit of stowage that I'll be attaching later. Obviously, I'm not going for accuracy with this build since there are several items from photos of Cannon Ball that I won't be adding. Since this is my first 1/72 kit, I'm just trying to see how well I can adjust to a different scale. The kit went together very well. Although, I did leave off the air filters, b/c the fit of the rear wading trunk is just a bit too tight with them attached. I've decided to paint the suspension separately so it will all be added later.

Hey Rick
Yeah I gotcha on the 8 bolts on each side... Just hadn't had them done when photographing the rest here!
Michael, the most obvious thing on the kit to me is the gap between the applique armour plate and the glacis over the bow .30cal mount. This plate looks a bit off, and should not have so big a gap, which should them be filled in with a run of weld beads
Brad

Hi Guys,

Great stuff.

Can I still include this in the campaign?



Thanks

Al

Ok, I'm #100 signed up!

I'm planning on doing the Tamiya 1/48 Firefly with a RB barrel and Toro Decals to model a Polish tank out of Italy, one from the Skoprpion unit. My local club, the BPMS is doing a "Things That Sting" contest and this will work for both. Haven't built one of the Tamiya 48th scale kits, but thought this would be a good opportunity to try one out.

I'm also going to try to do either a Tarawa or El Alamein Sherman from DML as well.

Hi Jimmy and welcome ...should be interesting!

Didn't get much done this week but here's where I'm at now ...
I added chains to all the gas caps ..


and did the mantlet ..the barrel didn't take too much work to get rid of the seam ( I hate wasting money on metal barrels when it only takes a few minutes to clean it up)



the barrel and the mantlet are not glued and you can see the great fit of the Tasca kit..
I've also done up the lower hull which is a no-brainer (so much so ,That I forgot to take pictures) ..The only thing that wasn't perfect were the air filters that need a little putty on the joint ..
Also being contrary to Brad I've cleaned up the Formation tools but with the straps(hey I'm lazy ! )I'll get pictures of them sometime this week ..
Well that's it for this week.

Rick

Hi Rick,

Nice work Sir,

Al

Welcome, Jimmy!

Rick- where'd you get those little chains? I gotta have some!

oops forgot to mention they are Aber PE chains ..You just got to twist them a bit to give them more demention..