Any recommended M46 kits in 1/35?

[NickInTheValley]

As the title... looking for an M46 Patton kit, specifically in the Korean war. I see a recent kit from Takom but it's out of stock most places I can find. (I'm USA based)

Oh also looking for the M4 Sherman flame tank used in Korea as well.

Thanks!
Nick

 

[Jakko]

Dragon has an M46 (and M26), but they’re thirty-year-old kits, though I thought it was fairly good when I built the M26 (almost that long ago). Hobby Boss also has a series of M26/M46 tanks, but I’ve never built them so I can’t say anything useful about them.

For the Sherman flame tanks you only really have one option straight from the box, AFAIK: Dragon. And that kit is rare as hen’s teeth, as I recall. You can, of course, also convert a kit of an M4A3 (105 mm) by adding HVSS and the flame gear.

 

[NickInTheValley]

Dragon has an M46 (and M26), but they’re thirty-year-old kits, though I thought it was fairly good when I built the M26 (almost that long ago). Hobby Boss also has a series of M26/M46 tanks, but I’ve never built them so I can’t say anything useful about them.

For the Sherman flame tanks you only really have one option straight from the box, AFAIK: Dragon. And that kit is rare as hen’s teeth, as I recall. You can, of course, also convert a kit of an M4A3 (105 mm) by adding HVSS and the flame gear.

Thanks Jakko. I wish someone made a conversion turret for the flame tank if no one wants to produce a full model.
On the Patton, have you seen Takom's new kits for it? What's your opinion of Takom?

 

[Jakko]

Going by Scalemates, it doesn’t look like anybody makes a conversion set — the only ones I can find there are various incarnations of the Dragon kit (and, for some reason, a mention of it in their Sherman IC kit, which I kind of doubt has the parts for the flamethrower included). I see someone in Canada has one for sale for $65 so maybe that’s an option for you?

I haven’t seen the Takom kits, but my general opinion of Takom is that it’s a pretty good brand — though you will need to keep your wits about you and never build it in the order the instructions tell you to. Takom seems to like having you build subassemblies whose orientation depends on other parts you haven’t built yet, as if they will fit together seamlessly later on. Yeah, right … On their computer, of course they do. In the real world, no chance.

BTW, I was slightly off about Hobby Boss: they only have M26s, not any M46s. Of course, you can convert one into the other, but as you would need to swap engine decks you might as well build the M46 kit you would get that from

 

[NickInTheValley]

I found not one but two flame tanks. My son and I will be building those together.
Tangential question; are the AFC track kits for shermans worthwhile?

 

[Jakko]

The AFV Club track sets for HVSS Shermans? Leave those very much in the shop — the holes in the end connectors are slightly too big for the pins, so the connectors slide off if you so much as turn the track over. Sometimes even when you’re handling it without even turning it over. In addition, there’s an ejector pin marking in the centre of each block, but you can’t really file it off because if you do, the pins in the middle kink and break. Easily the worst AFV Club track set I’ve ever tried building. (All of this also goes for AFV Club’s M26/46/47 track, BTW, as that’s the exact same other than the guide horn parts.)

The AFV Club VVSS Sherman tracks are better, especially the T51 (flat rubber blocks), on which the end connectors stay on as they should. Oddly, in the T48 (rubber chevrons) the pins are slightly narrower so the end connectors sometimes come off, but nowhere near as badly as for the HVSS tracks.

I’ve also built Dragon HVSS tracks, which I didn’t find great because they’re non-workable, and the set from RFM. That one is quite good but is a lot of work; see this thread for a full review and tips on building them.

If you’re after T66 tracks (the waffle-pattern ones that were used at first in the Second World War, but hardly in Korea), then I found Trumpeter’s set to be very good.