I picked up the Italeri Sherman M4A1, the one with the cast hull, this weekend at a very low price. My question is , when I begin building it, should I add texture to the hull and turret wit liquid cement or leave ot as is? Looks pretty smooth as it is... Or should I use a dremel to roughen it up?

Any other suggestions would also be helpful :-)

Selrach, check out the older posts, the guys did a group build on the italeri M4A1. They posted a lot of pics and talked alot about the texture on the hull.

Selrach, like Bison44 suggested, go here: Italeri M4A1 76mm Group Build

I believe most of us involved in the build added "cast" texture to the model in one way or another.

Cool :-)

Thanks for the url, I'll be sure to read it
Probably put this together in a couple of months, after the DSB Dio contest is done. Looking forward to completing it.

Hello, Selrach. I'd the same problem with wy Italeri M-32 recovery Sherman. I used a very fine file to roughen things up, if it's turning out to be too rough, use some fine-grained sandpaper.
I tried this technique on an old model before I took my chances on the M-32.

Hope Icould have been of any help, John

The Italeri hull texture is much too smooth, so some texturing is in order. My method is to use a broad brush to coat the thing with Testor's liquid glue and as it attacks the surface use the same brush to stipple the surface. Works great; only work on one section at a time to keep fingerprints off. A cast hull or turret should have some surface roughness to it, substantially more even in scale than rolled plate armor. Good luck!

Greg