Anyone make resin periscope guards for the M4?

I'm super detailing Tamiya's M4 Early. Closed sponsons, resin parts, indy tracks, PE sets, and lots of misc. stuff. Been working for about 2 months on it now and last night was going to put the PE periscope guards over the hatch periscopes.

I'm using the Eduard set and those guards are the most frustrating things I have ever tried to put together! It took me three hours to do three guards. Now every thing else on the Eduard set has been fine, but these are crazy. Eduard gives you 5 guards to do the 5 periscope covers, no extras. Last night one just disintegrated in my hands! Luckily, I have another set of Tanks Workshop guards to use as a back-up.

I wish there were resin guards I could use, even if they are overscale. The guards on the hatches are no big beal because they will be open and mostly hidden. The ones I'm worried about are on top of the turret. No way to hide any mistakes there.

Here's a tip, never super detail. Always build OOB!

Steve

Steve - I haven't heard of resin periscope guards before - but you'd be better off using the plastic ones in that instance.

On my M4 (Remanufactured) below, I went with the even-fiddlier Aber brass parts. These actually were easy to do (with a Hold&Fold and some pre-thinking) in retrospect. Eduard's did frustrate me a little, but I liked the Aber ones. I'm enjoying working on my Tamiya M4 too...





Gunnie

Gunnie, I'm going to do my M4 in a worn Winter camo scheme like some vehicles used in Belgium per my reference photos. Lots were used in almost fixed firing positions, so I'm doing a little vignette.

Your guards look nice. Hopefully, when I do the Tank Workshop ones on the top of the turret, those will be a little better then the Eduard ones. Just loking at them, they seem to have a bigger foot print and seem a little thicker.

The rest of the Eduard set has been great. the headlight and tail light guards are real nice. The only thing I haven't used are the periscopes because I have resin replacements that look even better than the etch.

I do have a couple DML Shermans around that might have some gurads. Maybe I'll try to thin a couple down if I get too frustrated...

Steve

PS - Did you use a different suspension or the kit supplied one?

Which brand of resin replacement periscopes did you select? I'm always looking for better detail parts...

Gunnie

Gunnie, I'm using some Verlinden periscopes from their M4 set. It's a pretty big set that includes stowage, a sand-baggd front, logs for supplemental side armor, a hedge cutter, pioneer tools, a .50, and some other stuff I can't recall right now.

I was well into the project before I got the update set, so all I have used so far are the periscopes and the resin barrels for the .50's in the mantlet and ball mount.

The periscopes are decent with some nice detail. I think they are in an 'up' position. The set came with 3 of them. Enough for all of the open hatches.

I will probably use some of the stowage as there are some nice bags, map case, and rifle case. Might use the sand bags, etc in a future project. Think the set was in the $20's.

Steve

Just checked. It's a new Verlinden set called the Sherman Stowage Set. I think the product # is 1808 and Squadron has it for $15.

Verlinden also has a seperate set that just has periscopes.

Steve

Thanks Steve - something different to spend my wife's money on #:-)

Gunnie