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Early M-51 Sherman.


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11 hours ago, flashlight said:

Hey John, sorry to hear about your problems. Get well soon, so that you'll be back at the workbench soon! All the best!

 

Have a nice day

Nick

'Morning Nick, and many thanks. I suppose it's just part of getting old.

 

John.

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Hi John Sorry to hear your health news but I hope you are well.

I have a Israeli M51 in my pipeline so I'll follow you with great attention.

IMHO good technical references are in Tom Gannon book

 

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All the best.

Ciao

Filippo

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3 hours ago, Phil1960 said:

Hi John Sorry to hear your health news but I hope you are well.

I have a Israeli M51 in my pipeline so I'll follow you with great attention.

IMHO good technical references are in Tom Gannon book

 

Hi Filippo, and thank you for the comments. Yes, just taking it easy at the moment. I agree with you about the Tom Gannon book. I have the first edition of this and use it a lot.

 

John.

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I haven’t been sitting on my bahookie doing nothing, so next up, I wanted to get all of the running gear completed and painted before moving onto the upper hull. Once it is assembled, painted and weathered, I will mask it all off when it comes to painting the rest of the tank. It’s quite a laborious task with HVSS as there are 24 road wheels, 4 idler wheels, 14 return rollers of two different sizes, and the drive sprockets. Plus of course the T-80 tracks. I will be using the kits tracks as I’ve found them to be fairly good in two previous builds. So far, I haven’t had any trouble with them, and IMO they look good.

I gave all of the items a coat of Halfords grey primer, followed by a coat of Alclad’s IDF Sand Grey. I did the lower hull and the underneath of the sponsons at the same time. This is just a personal thing, but I wasn’t impressed with the covering power of the Alclad paint. It seems to me that it would require you to build up several coats, which would take nigh on the whole bottle to finish one model. Also, it had a very greenish tinge to it which didn’t look right to me. So I dug out my bottle of Vallejo IDF Sand Grey and repainted the lot.

Once I was satisfied with the finish, I painted the tyres on all of the wheels, all 42 of them, with Vallejo Black Grey. That took me about four hours spread over two days. Next, the road wheels were treated to a wash of Mig’s Brown wash, and after ten minutes I removed most of it with a dampened brush. Then a quick dry brushing over the wheels with some sand grey to bring out the high points such as the bolt heads and wheel rims.

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BTW. I’ve left some of the seam that runs around the road wheel tyres, as this is how they were, especially the new, spares. Probably, it wore off with use.

I gave the sides of the hull a wash with some Florry’s Mud Wash, and once it was dry, scrubbed some of it off with an old brush. I then added Mig’s European Earth and some Carr’s Brown pigments to give a dry, dusty appearance.

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Back soon (hopefully) with the completed lower hull. Thanks for looking.

 

John.

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12 hours ago, Carius said:

Great progress my friend :popcorn:

 

10 hours ago, Jasper dog said:

Looking good John, enjoying the build detail.

 

6 hours ago, Vaastav said:

Great detail John. Looks excellent.

Clive, Darryl, Vaastav, thanks for the comments. Much appreciated.

 

John.

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Two views of the lower hull with the running gear in place, except the idlers. I left these off to make it easier to fit the tracks, which I had glued together into a loop.

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All the running gear assembled with the T-80 tracks in place. I’d sprayed the tracks with Halfords grey auto primer and then gave them a wash with Migs Track Wash. This gives a nice blackish brown colour and once dry, I rubbed a soft pencil over the rubber pads, and ran a silver water colour pencil over the links and guides, and also did the same to the steel chevrons.

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So now it’s time to move on to the upper hull.

Thanks for looking.

 

John.

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14 hours ago, fatfingers said:

Aye up John.

 

Good to see your back on with this. That running gear is looking great.

 

Regards,

 

Steve

 

13 hours ago, flashlight said:

Great work, John! The tracks look very good.

 

Have a nice day

Nick

 

12 hours ago, Agriamodeling said:

Very promising project, especially like the added details! I am following with interest.

 

cheers,

 

Tamás

 

11 hours ago, Jasper dog said:

Tracks look really good John, you do realise I'll shamelessly pinch your technique! :whistle:

 

Nice work.

Darryl 

Thanks everyone for the comments, and Darryl........feel free.:D

 

John.

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Before tackling the upper hull, there were a couple of missing items from the transmission cover, namely the clamp for the tow rope, and the bracket for securing the role of barbed wire sometimes carried. I was using an etched brass sheet from Eduard which contained the former, but the latter had to be bent to shape from some scrap etched brass. It surprises me that Tamiya have included the bracket on the front glacis that the role of barbed wire hooks on, but not the bracket on the transmission housing the clamps it in place.

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First job to tackle on the upper hull were the hatch covers. I’m not a great fan of etched brass for the periscope brush guards, as they are very thin, two dimensional and fragile. The kit versions are a little too thick, although I’ve used them in the past, but what I did have were a set of 3D printed brush guards. Again, they are fragile and require careful handling. The kit periscopes need to be drilled out, and once this was done, the resulting hole was backed with card and then the new periscope and brush guard glued in place. At the same time, I removed the moulded on grab handles and replaced them with some .33mm nickel wire.

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Headlights in place after flattening the moulded lens, ready to take the Little Cars lens after painting, along with the etched brush guards.

I tried using the etched guard and rounded shield for the horn, but being ham fisted, I gave up. Instead I tried whittling down the kits offering with a sharp blade. Not perfect, I know, but I’m reasonably happy with the result. I did use the etched hood over the top though.

I replaced the triangular fillets on the track guards with some thinner strip.

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Seeing as I was reasonably happy with the result, I decided to try the same with the kits headlamp brush. Again, fairly happy with the outcome. I just changed the rear supporting legs for some made from 10x30 strip. I also drilled out the end of the bow MG.

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As always, thanks for looking.

 

John.

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