That's great news of your progress.

Don't worry too much about the "silvering" at the moment. Before you do the drybrushing, you'll want to dull coat or flat coat the vehicle. This provides a better surface for the DBing. Most times, the flat coat will do away with the silvering.

Just about finished, need to put an antenna on the turret. The 50 cal has been dismounted and stored inside the turret (actually it is somewhere in the carpet). Overall, I feel pretty good about this model and I have learned some new techniques building it. I do feel that I am back into building which was my major goal with this project. I will probably do some further weathering with pastels before calling it a day.

Bonnie looks great! You've done an excellent job! I look forward to seeing more of your work now that you are back into building.

Update on my progress--I am just about done. I have to finish painting the tracks and then attach them. After that, I will apply a wash or two and then do some weathering with pastels and that will be it.

She looks very nice Tankera! I really like the OD color you chose, who's brand?

Thanks for the kind words about this model. The basic paints used are enamals and are all Model Master. The washes were oils.

Well, the day has finally arrived (and before the end of the year too!! :-) ). Here she is. This is my first Sherman, but certainly not my last!

Well, this is the first kit that I have built in many years and I feel pretty good about it. As usual I can think of several things that I could have done better or differently. However, overall I feel pretty good about the Sherman. Adam, yours looks good as well. Now, to start on the M-48A3.

Although I am extremely Anti-Sherman, these two all looked great.

Adam, I noticed the bare metal looked at the root of the gun, is this common on a Sherman, or it's because on this particular vehicle, the paint was sracthed away because of the recoil? looked real nice!

Dave,

The bare metal look is from the recoil. I'm not real fond of how this turned out because it doesn't look right to me. I would like soem opinions from some of you Shermanaholics as to what is wrong about this or am I just being paranoid.

Adam, you're being paranoid. The barrel is fine by me. It looks great! Very nicely done throughout. I like the "extras" you added too.

Tankera, you're looks great too. I like the weathering you did - fades, stains, nics. Very nice.

Adam, overall your tank looks great. I think the wear on the barrel is too stark though. I've seen a few naked gun tubes and the color is usually a very dull dark steel. Maybe give it a dark wash, like it was covered with grease to reduce friction. It is an impressive Sherman though, nice work!

Nice work Adam and Tankera1. This has turned out rather interesting... to see the different finishing on the same model. How many more are still to come? Is there a final date for finishing this ´build. I have not started painting yet and now with some starting to come in finished........ maybe thats the kick in the ¤&$ I needed.
Tankera1: Your tank is very nicely weathered........ hopefully my own will end up something like this, but the track connectors are very bright. Would these not have rusted on a wethered tank. I have only built one Sherman before and painted these rusted, but would this be normal also...... to have them so clean on a wethered tank? Im not knit-picking, just wondering for my own information!!
I go back to work on the 7th of Jan and hopefully I can borrow the digital camera and take some decent photos then.
Good luck guys

My primary aim with this project was to get back into modeling, this has been accomplished. However, were I to do this again, I would use a new gun tube for sure and I would also work on the cupola view ports as well. Now, to those end connectors. I really am not sure, I was in the regular army and in the NG always on tanks. I never ever saw end connectors that were rusted. I am thinking that it was because the tanks were maintained so well. I don't really know if they would have rusted the way the are often portrayed or not. Most likely they should be toned down somewhat. I probably should have weathered the end connectors at the same time I weathered the tank, some washes would do the trick.

Thanks for the compliments guys!

Rob--Thanks for the tip, I will probably go back and try to tone it down a bit like you suggested (hopefully without messing anything else around it up ).

Tankera1--I really like the weathering you did on yours. Could you explain what you did to get the streaks of dirt on the sides of the tank? I have tried to create this effect on my models and have been unsuccessful so far. I assume that you did this with a wash, but for some reason mine don't turn out this way. What's your secret? Also, I really like the color you used for the wooden handles on the tools. What did you use for those?

Adam,
The streaks on the side of the hull and turret are done using pastels. There was only one wash done on the model. I used oil colors doing the wash (black, raw umber, and burnt sienna. Highlighting was done via drybrushing using the original olive drab mixed with some white oil color. I was a bit hamfisted with the drybrushing though. The handles for the tools were painted using the burnt sienna. Just a touch and then spread thin, seems to work pretty well. Bare and or worn metal was depicted using a soft artist type pencil. Thanks for the compliments and let me say that I do admire your work, your sherman is very well done in my opinion.

Here are a couple of new pictures of my Sherman after I have done a bit more work (I am fully finished now). I didn't like the kit tracks a bit and since I completed the model with the kit tracks as per the group build rules I decided that for my shelf I wanted different tracks on it. A kind soul out there sent me a set of the Tamiya M4 tracks free of charge and these are the ones that I put on the model. I also toned down the tools and the worn portion of the gun barrel and tried to do a bit more weathering with pastel chalks thanks to Tankera1's comments.

Adamus,

I saw your pics in the track-link, I have to say, this is one very very nice M4. I love it!!! Great work!

I started building the Italeri M4A1 (76 mm gun) one week ago. I found the same type of problems that you found so I dicided to replace the road wheels, the idler wheel, drive sprocket and the main body of the boogies (parts N° 4A - 5A - 1A - 7A - 8A - 9A - 13A - 21A in Italeri Kit) with the ones of the Firefly VC Dragon Kit that were not used when i build it last year. They really look much better and doesn´t need too much work. The only parts of the Italeri Kit that i´m using for the boogies are N° 2A - 6A.

Adam,
I think the gun tube looks much more realistic with the bare metal portion toned down. The new track is a real improvement over what we had in the kit as well. Your vechicle is looking very good.

Tankera1--Thanks for your compliments over the past couple of posts. I figured since I had followed the "rules" of the group build regarding the use of kit tracks that I could then do what I wanted afterwards. I can't find any pictures of an M4A1 (76) W with the rubber block tracks that the kit provides, but 95% of the photos I have show them with the rubber chevron type so that is why I replaced them.

Rob--Do you think that the gun barrel looks better now? I applied a wash with black oil paint, rubbed graphite on it, and then used black pastel chalk to tone it down further. I don't know if the pictures show it well enough, but in person it looks more oily and grimy rather than silvery. Thanks for your constructive criticism and helpful hints.

All in all, this has been a very educational and fun experience. It has also given me an appreciation for the Sherman and a burning desire to build more of them (it burns so much that I bought 2 more Italeri M4A1 kits, 2 Tamiya M4A3 kits [one of which I am converting to a Soviet lend lease M4A2 with a Tank Workshop M4A2 hull], a DML Vc Firefly, and a DML M4A3E8). I hope to get involved in a future group build. Now we just need to see some other finished products like Gunnie's, Kencelot's, PlasticBattle's, etc.

Adam,
I seem to remember from days past that reviews of the Italeria M4-A1 stated that the kit had the wrong type tracks for the time period.

I have S. Zaloga's Sherman at War (pt2), and there are several pics of M4 and M4A3's with rubber block tracks as late as Jan 45. As far as the A1 goes, I dunno.

As far as tracks and Shermans go, I'm sure that any combination is possible at some time or another. Just when someone comes up with a rule-of-thumb for Shermans, someone else finds a photo that proves that rule-of-thumb wrong. I have a feeling though that the vast majority of M4A1 (76) Shermans would not have had rubber block style tracks. If this were the earlier 75mm armed version sure, but the 76mm version didn't arrive in Europe until January 1944 and by that time we had realized that the rubber block tracks sucked in the snow because they had absolutely no traction. I would guess that the VAST majority of 76mm armed Shermans had either rubber or metal chevron style tracks for that reason.


Hey Kenc and Gunnie!!! What happened to you guys. No offense is meant to anyone by this next comment because everyone's work was nice, but Kenc and Gunnie's were the Shermans that I wanted to see the most because I admire their work so much and neither or them ever posted completed pics. Did either of you two finish the kit? Come one guys. Don't leave us hanging.

Yes, mine has been finished for over a month now. I need a camera!!!

That sucks Kenc!!!! I want to see it.