Hi everyone,

While looking for another little project to do I had the idea of finally building something that isn't German! I had always had an interest in the Sherman Firefly but had never got round to building one. On searching for 1/72 Fireflies I came across Dragon's IC and VC kits.

After many searches on google I had plenty of info on the VC kit but barely any on the IC. So on that basis I thought get the IC and do a build Log. So here it is. I will be documenting each step of the build and pointing out the good and bad to hopefully help anyone interested in this kit.

Nice box art



In the box you get 5 spures of plastic, 1 spure of photo etch, seperate upper and lower hulls, DS100 tracks, decals and the instructions. All the parts look perfectly moulded with no flash. The PE fret has a fair few parts for the kit this small and looks like it might be a challenge. A note on the decals. For some reason Dragon has provided all 3 markings options for Polish tanks only. A big disappointment for me as I want to model a British Firefly. Bison decals to the rescue!

The first step is to build up the suspension. Each of the 6 units are made up of 4 parts. There is some excellent detail here including cast texture and even casting numbers



The wheels are moulded as one piece and are located on a pin on the rear half of the unit. The bumpstops are also mounted to this pin. Once these are on the front half is attached.



This reveals a fit problem. You will need to trim the mounting pin otherwise the two halfs of the unit will not sit flush. Some work is also needed to get everything to align. Once together there is a noticable gap on the forward facing edge of each unit which is quite visible and needs to be filled. You can see the filler in this photo



Next the drive sprocket, made of 2 parts was assembled. The 1 part idler has a large mould seem which needs to be removed.



Next was the rear plate which is made up of 7 parts. The plate sits nicely to the hull with the idler mounts, smoke candles (i think) and side plates fitting well. At the front the transmission casing is in on piece with a seperate part for the bolting plate. The suspension, drive sprockets and idlers were added. I encountered an issue with the idler wheels. They have no mounting hole to attach them to the idler mounts. You have to just glue it on, lining it up by eye. If you drill a hole the idler wheel will not line up with the rest of the suspension. I also added the hull top now.





The hull top is very well detailed with some nice weld beads. My only gripe is the moulded on tools but I think they will look ok once painted.





Well thats all for now. Hope you guys find it informative. Any comments/questions welcome

So, we have another Braille BLOG gracing this forum. It's nice to see so much activity in this scale.

Matt, you appear to be doing a great job at putting this beast together. I've done two Shermans with the VVSS suspension and I fear that they exhibit the same issues with the two halves of each joining as you have noted. The rear idler is another problem area and you must be careful when you put the tracks on. I had mine on the M4A3 wading Sherman break off on me twice. If you check out my build log of the kit you can see a possible solution to the weak joint that I used.

Two other Shermans that I built have a problem with a part a13 for the front of the turret. It does not fit and I ended up leaving it off both. It looks like a rectangular strip of bolts that is meant for the base of the mantlet. It might be part a62 in this kit. Thanks for sharing your build with us.

Cheers,
Jan

A very clean build, so far. Dragon does some very good 1/72 kits, as does Revell. I have built some in 1/72 from both companies. I think you are going to really enjoy this build and I can't wait to see more.

Hi Matt,

Good work on this , thank you for the info.

Although I love Dragon kits and regard them as the best mass produced plastic kits, I find it dissapointing that the have the tools molded on the chassis on most models.

Since they even provide you with small PE frets couldn't they make separate tools? (platonic question)

P.A.

Hi Matt

good to see another build in progress

theres a lot of Sherman fans out there, I think your build log will get plenty of views

cheers
Neil

Hi guys,

Thanks for your kind comments

Jan, thats some great info there, thankyou. I will keep a look out for those parts when I get to them. I will have to have a look at your build log, you seem to have lots of experience with these tiny Shermans.

Alexander, I secound that. It is rather strange that the tools are moulded on yet much smaller details are not. I suppose we can't have everything

Well the build continued today. I started off by attaching the 6 addition armour plates to the hull. For all you will have to line them up by eye as there are no locating pins. I also test fitted the tracks. Looks like my super glue job will be enough to hold the idler wheel in place.





I may have to have a go at some weld beads around the armour plates for a better look. Fitting the tracks revealed another fit issue. The drive sprockets are too wide for the tracks and it looks odd. I am goint to have to do some cutting to get the tracks to sit right.

I was about to start adding the details to the hull but then I had a thought. Adding lots of delicate parts to the hull will make painting the wheels more difficult later on as lots of handling will be required. With this in mind I decided to paint the lower hull, tracks and wheels now. It was really just the get the basic painting done. All the paints I use will be Vallejo unless other wise stated.

I masked off the upper hull and sprayed it in Russian uniform green (the closest colour I have) and then painted the wheels with black. They were then drybrushed with Revell dark gray enamel. The tracks were sparyed tank brown as a base. All the weathering/detail painting etc will be done later. The main aim was to get the wheels done.







Just a question for you guys. Are the return rollers rubber or steel?

Cheers
Matt

Hey Matt,

Gald to help in any way I can. H-) generally and for the most part, Sherman return rollers are metal and the main body colour. I am happy that the tracks are a proper length as it is almost hit or miss with these Shermans. DS tracks can be stretched but it must be done with care.

With Dragon VVSS tanks, I always leave the sprocket free wheeling while threading the tracks onto the suspension. There always seems to be a "sweetspot" where the wrap around it just right. FWIW, I always paint the lower hull and suspension early.

BTW, once you are done, you might consider submitting this built as a build review or even a build feature to this site.

Cheers,
Jan

Hello

Nice Kit.
So far so good.
Looking forward to see more. I like it.

Cheers Daniel

Hi Matt, nice work so far. Will be watching your build with interest as I have one of these as well as the Vc in the stash.
Don't know if you came across this website in your travels but it is very useful for anyone building 1:72 shermans! The link is for the Ic and has some useful info on the kit, particularly regarding the decals supplied. http://www.172shermans.com/kitreviews/Dragon/Firefly1C_prev.htm
Looking forward to seeing more progress.
Cheers,
Tim

Hi All,

Jan, looks like a made a lucky guess with them being steel is I have already painted them gunmetal on the contact areas. As for submitting this as a build log, well we will see how the build goes first!

Daniel, Tim, thanks for your coments And Tim, thanks for pointing me to that site. Very useful indeed.

Only a small update today. Just got the weld seams done on the additional armour plates. This is my first attempt at weld seams in any scale so they aren't perfect but I think they look ok (they aren't as messy as they look!)





What do you guys think?

Matt

Looking nice Matt. I will watch this thread for more progress.

Matt, looking good so far! These little DML Shermans really have top notch detail.

I was wondering about the gap between the bow machine gun cover and the hull. Will this be filled by another part? If not, this should be flush to the bow machine gun bulge on the hull.

Cheers!
Stefan

HI Stefan,

Good spot! looks like the kit part is not long enough. I guess I will have to add some plastic card and filler to sort that out. I hope to get some more done tomorrow so I will put that at the top of the list

Cheers
Matt

Hi All,

Well I got some more done yesterday. Most of the lower hull is complete. As Stefan pointed out, the armour plate over the hull mg port is not long enough, I fixed this by cutting a small piece of plastic card and inserting it in the gap. A little sanding and filler finished the job. Also to note, on the rear of the hull there are what appear to be 3 locating seems for parts no ment for this version. You will need to scrape these off and sand smooth.

I carried on with the detailing of the hull which went quite smoothly. I did have a couple of trouble areas though which were my fault. Firstly the carpet monster ate one of the rear lights. I will put some stowage over the light guard to hide the missing light. Secondly, I had a disaster with the PE periscope guards and light guards. I just found them too small to handle and ended up gluing them to myself!

The light guards aren't a problem as plastic parts are provided. Only 2 plastic versions of the periscope guards are provided which are way out of scale thickness. I will attempt to scratch build the periscope guards out of wire in my next session.









Just a quick question. Anyone know where I could get some good AM stowage as I really want to load this one up with kit.

Cheers
Matt

Very nice and steady progress, Matt. I'm sorry to hear about the carpet monster absconding with the tail light. On the Dragon Shermans they are fairly simple affairs and you might be able to scratch one up with pieces from the sprue. As for the periscope guards, I've done the PE ones once and they are a nightmare. So much so that on the next Sherman I built I used the plastic ones. I wish that with some of these very small parts that the manufacturers would provide us with a spare or two.

Cheers,
Jan

Jan, spot on, they are a nightmare. I destroyed 3 of them before I gave up. I would use the plastic ones but only 2 are provide so it would look a little strange!

I decided to hold off on periscope guards for now and continued the build with the turret. It mostly went together well although there are a couple of issues. Firstly as Jan mentioned earlier part A26 dose not fit. It is not actually required as it won't be seen so I just didn't use it. Fitting the mantel to the turret required a little sanding to get it to fit. The only other thing is the two eyelets on the sides of the turret. There are no mounting holes so you need to line these up yourself. The only other thing worth mentioning is that the muzzel brake has a fair amount of flash. A couple of small drill bits sorted that out.









So now I just need to add some of the PE details and build those periscope guards

I also want to add some scrim net to the barrel and the hull. Any suggestions on the best material to use for this?

Cheers
Matt

Matt,

Your Blog is great and you are progressing well. It's also great to see all the help that people in this forum provide. It's enough to maybe get me to pick up one of these Shermans and give it a try. Maybe!

Regards
AJ

@Matt182 - Matt,

Your doing a great job on your build. Well documented with plenty of photographs. I soldered together a light guard out of .015" diameter brass wire on a braille T-54 build and it took me a few tries before I was happy with it. Take your time, it will be worth the wait I'm sure.

I'm not sure if you are asking for camouflage netting? Here is a link to a recent post. Hope this helps.

-Eddy

AJ, Eddy, thanks for your comments

My aim for this build was to be as imformative as possible which judging by the responses I've achieved that.

AJ, I agree about the forum. Its a great community and everyone is always willing to help. Its the people that really make this site and the information available here is just excellent. Although this kit has a couple of downfalls it is rather good overall and I would recommend it.

Eddy, fair play soldering in this scale! I will try super glue when I build them. I think it will take a few tries but hopefully it will work out. Thanks for that link, very helpful.

Cheers
Matt

Hi Matt

the little improvements you are doing to this model look to be well worth the time & effort.

I can't add anything in the way of advice or comment, I don't have any experience or knowledge on building shermans. Last one I built was the airfix one when I was a boy.

but keep posting the progress, its great to see your work

cheers
Neil

Hi

Nice work.
Hope we can see new pics in the next days.

Cheers Daniel

Nice work Matt.Looking forward to seeing some paint on it!
Cheers,
Tim