Tom the turret with mantlet attached is about 3/16" longer than the drawing. I can easily sand back the nose of the turret to get that into shape. I'm thinking of leaviing the range finders in place and building out the "deck" a head of the hatches to close that wide gap (betwwen the hatch plate and the RF's) by about .163". The antenna pots are a little too close to the hatch plate at the rear, but I'm not going to attempt to correct.

The sides need to be re-worked to a tear drop shape just as the flat begins towards the near the rear.

I don't have the right clamps to hold this in my mill, so I'll just hand job the rear plate cut and add sheet styrene to the front as explained above. This should probably happen first.

Pics comng soon!

Ryan

Hello Guys,

Tonights update.......Leopo-plasty! (Recontouring maximus)

"I'm sorry Mr Batch 3 Leopard we must operate"

OK enough of that, on to the pics. In the first few shots, Bondo has been applied to the inside the turret to allow me to sand right through plastic to attempt to fix the shape of the unit.

The other (2) shots show how the left side has been re-worked (after the Bondo had curred etc.) to match the tear drop shape of the real turret. The flat sided right side is clearly wrong.




After the right side was worked, over we are left with this result (below). Note the rough sanding/ Dremel work has been done at this stage....fine file work, etc. is still left to do. I'm very pleased with the result!





I still need to chop of some of the snout, but looking good. The Mantlet dust cover will hide a few sins.

Thanks for looking.
Ryan

Great work so far! You still planning to grind the top flat?

Tom

No Tom, at this point I'll just try and hand plane the rear and add the fillet to the front of that plate.

I would really like to use the mill to do it, but my cross slide is a bit too short for the turret. Sherline has larger slide I can retrofit, but I'm not ready to buy the set yet.

Thanks for checking in.
Ryan

that shape looks much better! I guess you didnt end up punching through the plastic as muc has we thought..Must be some pretty thick plastic on that turret!

Andy

Thanks Andy,

Not sure I if i need to remove more mtl yet, need to get a coat of primer on it then decide. I got plenty of bondo in though!

Ryan