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M4A3 HVSS 105 - The Culebra Beach Wreck


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7 hours ago, Peter2 said:

Last year on an impulse I bought a Light Green Vallejo Model Colour Acrylic Paint 70942 / 075. It is very bright, though not being very opaque probably needs some kind of an undercoat or a primer, and then a couple of coats of this Light Green. It might enhance the encrusted green seaweed / algae effect.

 Thanks for that suggestion Peter, I did a quick google search on 70942 light green, and then noticed that they also have a Fluorescent green listed as well. :)

 

 https://www.emodels.co.uk//vlj210-737-jpg.html?gclid=Cj0KCQiA95aRBhCsARIsAC2xvfxyQOwU5Gik-7_ewIBZ2nqOg5Fn8fg5mms8Qe4UkTAb6s6yETYW094aApY0EALw_wcB

 

 Matt

 

 

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49 minutes ago, Geo1966 said:

Really interesting project Matt.

 

Ammo do a Slimy grime light and dark in their nature affects which might be useful?

 Thank you George, yes that might be very useful indeed :)

 

4 minutes ago, Jack Klugman said:

Very nice build, I have seen images of this tank before and always assumed that it was on some Pacific Island and was abandoned after its invasion. I wonder what the history of this tank is and how it ended up there. 

  Thank you, and I should really put some history of this tank wreck in the first post (I'll go back and do that at some point) As far as I can tell from reading little bits n bobs online, this tank wreck is on a beach on Culebra Island, Puerta Rico, which is in the Caribbean, so it's a Caribbean tank wreck, the US had a base there back in the 70's, sort of like a testing range/firing range, and when the Americans abandoned the place, they left behind some ex Marine M4A3 Sherman's, there's at least 2 or 3, I think, but not sure on that, that's about as much as I know so far, but I'm still digging for info ;) 

 

 Matt

 

 

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12 hours ago, Cerberus said:

 Yeah, otherwise the pva might just peel off the smooth plastic like a skin, that's another good thing about the ca/powder method, It's very permanent ;)

I would roughen up the surface first with a sanding stick, that would give the paint or PVA a good grip to the plastic, starting off with the fine sand added and see how it looks, you can always add more or larger "particles" to make it as rough as you want.  This is sounding like a great idea, I've got an old Academy M4 E8 105mm in my Sherman spares box crate.  :hmmm:

You may have inadvertently started a whole new modelling theme.  :winkgrin:

Edited by Retired Bob
various missing letters and words.
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6 hours ago, Retired Bob said:

I would roughen up the surface first with a sanding stick, that would give the paint or PVA a good grip to the plastic, starting off with the fine sand added and see how it looks, you can always add more or larger "particles" to make it as rough as you want. 

 I totally agree yes, I'm going to start with very fine sand, which I might filter down further if I can find a way to filter it, I have just primed the turret with a stippled Surfacer 500 to act as key for PVA glue, I just need to test how well PVA sticks to it (might need a little sanding as you say) then I will build up roughness from there.

 

 

6 hours ago, Retired Bob said:

You may have inadvertently started a whole new modelling theme.  :winkgrin:

 Well, so far It's a lot of fun doing a rusty wreck, mostly destruction work with rotary burs, so not many tools needed ;) and there is so much freedom to do whatever you want, It really is a fun way to build, I will hunt down more Sherman rusty wreck pictures and post them in the build log for ideas and inspiration, and I can heartily recommend a rusty wreck build for just having some chill out modelling fun 👍

 

 Matt

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On 08/03/2022 at 20:52, Bertie Psmith said:

Sounds like a good group build idea.

 

 Well, there are tank wrecks all over the world (I could waste ten years doing a blog just on T-54/55 wrecks, lol) There are plane wrecks, mostly in the deserts, maybe? And there are shipwrecks (obviously) all over the place, so that's three of the main modelling genres covered, could be a very inclusive group build ;)

 

 Here's a picture of one of the other Culebra tank wrecks, this one is covered in graffiti virtually all of the time, and never looks as nice, they tend to go a bit nuts on this one, plus it's location is not as photogenic as the one on the beach, but it's in better condition ;)

 

Culebra%20Sherman.jpg

 

 I'm experimenting with lots of stuff at the moment, so not getting much actual work done, though the turret is finished in terms of construction (well, It needs a basic gun breech putting inside I think, more on that later) and I have just found some old Dragon wheels in a old Tamiya kit box, they have separately moulded tyres, which has sent me off on a tangent, lol :hmmm:

 

 Matt

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26 minutes ago, Cerberus said:

Well, there are tank wrecks all over the world (I could waste ten years doing a blog just on T-54/55 wrecks, lol) There are plane wrecks, mostly in the deserts, maybe? And there are shipwrecks (obviously) all over the place, so that's three of the main modelling genres covered, could be a very inclusive group build ;)

Don't forget about ship breakers ? 
 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_breaking

 

but a cheap odd scale ship model snd cut it up and rust it. 

Edited by Corsairfoxfouruncle
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1 hour ago, Corsairfoxfouruncle said:

Don't forget about ship breakers ? 

 Yeah, the big ship breaking yards where they cut up ships for scrap, that could make a good diorama, plus I forgot about barn finds, old cars and trucks laying abandoned in barns and fields, barn find model making can produce some spectacular vignettes to be honest, and can be very cheap to do, rusty wreck model making is fairly inexpensive, there is rarely any need for aftermarket stuff, and you can do the job with cheap kits :)

 

 Plus, a group build like that would bring the whole site together in one place, it would be very inclusive, and it would be good to see what some of the Aviation guys on here could do with a plane wreck, maybe in a desert setting, or sitting in some long grass, out in the middle of nowhere, long forgotten, that kinda thing ;)

 

 Matt

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31 minutes ago, Cerberus said:

it would be good to see what some of the Aviation guys on here could do with a plane wreck, maybe in a desert setting, or sitting in some long grass, out in the middle of nowhere, long forgotten, that kinda thing ;)

Well to be honest Ive always wanted to do a half cocooned bird thats all faded and been partially parted out at AMARC in Arizona. Tons of cheap aircraft kits to use. If someone had a damaged B-36-47-52 it would look good being guillotined by the 10 ton blade.  

Edited by Corsairfoxfouruncle
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Civilian scrapyards and farm barns for the car modellers. Aircraft used for firefighter practice in the corner of airfields. Every machine dies and rots sooner or later. 
 

I’ll propose a GB later today and see what sort of response it gets. 

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8 hours ago, Cerberus said:

 Yeah, the big ship breaking yards where they cut up ships for scrap, that could make a good diorama, plus I forgot about barn finds, old cars and trucks laying abandoned in barns and fields, barn find model making can produce some spectacular vignettes to be honest, and can be very cheap to do, rusty wreck model making is fairly inexpensive, there is rarely any need for aftermarket stuff, and you can do the job with cheap kits :)

 

 Plus, a group build like that would bring the whole site together in one place, it would be very inclusive, and it would be good to see what some of the Aviation guys on here could do with a plane wreck, maybe in a desert setting, or sitting in some long grass, out in the middle of nowhere, long forgotten, that kinda thing ;)

 

 Matt

 

I've made the proposal and mentioned everyone here that showed an interest already. I struggled to include figure modelling but I think I found at least one way.

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 Thank you and welcome aboard @vaoinas 

 

6 hours ago, Bertie Psmith said:

I've made the proposal

 I have put a link to the proposal in my first post, I've lost count the number of edits on that post... 🤣 

 

 Matt

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Scare Your Sons, Scare Your Daughters

 

 Picture below, and this is enough to scare the hell out of anyone, It certainly scared me anyway, I'm on a very steep learning curve at the moment, steep as a cliff, I'm not used to doing work like this, where the goal is to make something look nasty and horrible, all rusted and corroded, but It's a lot of fun, more fun (for me at least) than doing things the other way, mainly because It's faster, you don't have to sit at a bench for hours on end trying to make a kit part look nice, but anyway, this is the turret covered with just stippled Mr Surfacer 500, as a starting point, with more layers of sand and grit to come.

 

AVvXsEgWFg4oLOFZ_l-_-Q-DCNQW1thtbJgpsEUo

(You could probably do a rusty wreck with just built up stippled layers of Mr Surfacer I think ;))

 

 Picture below, after finding some old Dragon wheels with separately moulded tyres in an old kit box (Tamiya box, go figure) And looking at pictures like this one, I decided to do some work on the wheels to see if I could create some badly corroded and damaged wheels with large chunks of the tyres missing, that kinda thing, having the tyres moulded separately makes things a lot easier to do some crazy damage type stuff.

 

AVvXsEjID_sl7RxuNZ1MSju4CVxk4XGXKfUP9TOC

 

 I'm very glad I kept these parts from the old Dragon M4A3 HVSS 105 kit, at the time I thought it was a damn silly way to do things, there really didn't seem any point to having separate tyres, unless you are just trying to raise the parts count for a big number on the box that is, but now I'm very glad that they did, I also found the rear idlers, so they can be butchered down to almost nothing at some point, the remains of the front sprockets will be from a Tamiya kit.

 

AVvXsEh3uEdaQYWfB4iYAbUQT2YNq_DHT0jiJ05p

 

 Picture below, with a little messing around with some teeny tiny grinding burs and some snips we get some badly damaged and corroded wheels, with big chunks of the rubber tyre missing and starting to peel off, which is how some of the wheels on the real thing are, and some of the wheels on this beach wreck do still have tyres that are in fairly good condition, so I will have to remember to do a few good ones that are not badly damaged, and then work out how to fit them to Tamiya HVSS, because these Dragon don't fit very well.

 

AVvXsEicWR-sk8P9Xq2dQuKPqDIodMtiHg5auVZ4

 

 I'm still working on the turret, the plan is to cover it with very fine sand, in a random fashion, and then maybe add some more chunky bits, kinda build up the roughness in layers, as Retired Bob suggested, and It has to be said that a build like this is a lot of fun, I'm starting to think that this is the future of all my model making endeavours, maybe, It's faster, more chilled, less expensive, no accuracy worries, what's not to like? :thumbsup:

 

 Matt 

 

 

Edited by Cerberus
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 More experimentation -

 

 This stuff, found in the shed, Evo-Stik wood glue seems to stick like the proverbial... to a blanket when put on top of Mr Surfacer, and probably any other kind of primer/surfacer for that matter, It's easy to spread very thinly with your finger, and it doesn't dry too fast even though it says 'Extra Fast' on the bottle, It gives you enough time to get some fine sand/grit sprinkled on, amazing what you can find out in the shed sometimes... :D  

 

AVvXsEgRE2sXeJAlFuUgjN2aXQUDPraWbovuCBWc

 

AVvXsEjA-TBMY1bHEyG5604dA4y3DRalsxhGb8vk

 

 And for those times in life when you suspect that your very fine sand might not be quite fine enough, then you can break out the old mortar n pestle that's been hanging around in the kitchen for 20 odd years, and never been used,.. well it has now (another first) and I can't quite tell whether it's grinding down the sand, or just wearing out the mortar n pestle, probably a bit of both to be honest... 🤣 

 

 Still, needs must... ;)

 

 Matt

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2 minutes ago, Cerberus said:

 More experimentation -

 

 This stuff, Evo-Stik wood glue seems to stick like the proverbial... to a blanket when put on top of Mr Surfacer, and probably any other kind of primer/surfacer for that matter, It's easy to spread very thinly with your finger, and it doesn't dry too fast even though it says 'Extra Fast' on the bottle, It gives you enough time to get some fine sand/grit sprinkled on, amazing what you can find out in the shed sometimes... :D  

 

AVvXsEgRE2sXeJAlFuUgjN2aXQUDPraWbovuCBWc

 

AVvXsEjA-TBMY1bHEyG5604dA4y3DRalsxhGb8vk

 

 And for those times in life when you suspect that your very fine sand might not be quite fine enough, then you can break out the old mortar n pestle that's been hanging around in the kitchen for 20 odd years, and never been used,.. well it has now (another first) and I can't quite tell whether it's grinding down the sand, or just wearing out the mortar n pestle, probably a bit of both to be honest... 🤣 

 

 Still, needs must... ;)

 

 Matt


The owl looks on horrified by what you are doing to his ceramic cousins. 

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17 minutes ago, Bertie Psmith said:

The owl looks on horrified by what you are doing to his ceramic cousins. 

 He does yes, and Mr Owl has every right to look horrified, I think the sand is just trashing the mortar n pestle 🤣

 

 The things we do for model making, other half is gonna kill me when she sees this... 🤣

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21 minutes ago, Cerberus said:

 And for those times in life when you suspect that your very fine sand might not be quite fine enough, then you can break out the old mortar n pestle that's been hanging around in the kitchen for 20 odd years, and never been used,.. well it has now (another first) and I can't quite tell whether it's grinding down the sand, or just wearing out the mortar n pestle, probably a bit of both to be honest... 🤣 

I spend the day painting the ceiling and coving, plus some other diy jobs and things are moving on here, I have some "decorative" sand that SWMBO bought to make displays in a glass bowl with sea shells and other crap arty things years ago, it might be useful after all. :nod:

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1 hour ago, Cerberus said:

 He does yes, and Mr Owl has every right to look horrified, I think the sand is just trashing the mortar n pestle 🤣

 

 The things we do for model making, other half is gonna kill me when she sees this... 🤣

let her buy a more expensive one she will be happy to replace it. 

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 I'm on hols for a few days, so no more model making/updates until next week, have a good weekend folks, the sun has decided to show his face again, at long last :)

 

 M4A3%20Culebra%20Beach%20Sherman.jpg

 

 Matt

 

 ;)

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