Introduction

The Tamiya Sherman Firefly IC is a nice kit. It goes together with very few problems and is fairly well detailed. But there is usually room for improvement in most off the shelf kits. Aber has provided just the set to address this issue.

Review

The set consists of one fret of photo-etched parts and a 5" piece of small (0.03 mm) wire for handles. You will need some smaller (0.02 mm) to make springs. Included in the set are 4 complete periscopes, front fenders, track stowage racks, side skirt mounting strips, screens and tool mounts (just to name a few). Some of the parts seem to be a bit over-engineered though. For example, the front light guards are three pieces each when they could just as easily been one piece.

The instruction sheet is fairly clear and easy to follow, with the possible exception of the periscope mounting. There is no real information on removing the molded in periscopes, apparently it is just assumed that you know how to do it. I had some trouble reading the numbers on the fret, but that is probably due to the fact that my eyes are not what they used to be. The package also thoughtfully includes instructions on stretching sprue(STB), rolling (ROL), bending(BEN), making press lines(PRS), etc.

Conclusion

My overall impression is that this set would make a good model into an excellent model.