Medium Tank M3 from MiniArt — not a Sherman for once!

[Jakko]

The major parts put together temporarily, just to give an idea of what the model will look like when finished:



Here’s the interior, not complete yet but getting there:



The radio and 37 mm ammunition rack to the left of the driver:



I painted the projectiles of all the rounds blue, to indicate target practice ammunition, because this will be a model of a very early tank somewhere in the USA, not in combat in North Africa. For the brass parts, I used Games Workshop Redemptor Armour, which is a brass colour that covers well; when dry, I added a coat of GW Chestnut Ink, which is red-brown, and the drybrushed with a gold colour from Army Painter. I quite like the resulting effect, not too bright and shiny but still a good metal colour.

MiniArt would have you paint the radio black, but the real thing was olive drab with black panels and white surrounds to them, plus natural metal knobs, jacks, etc. I did this by first painting the radio OD, then making the panels black and adding the white once that was dry. Finally, I touched up the OD where white had gone onto it — this is far easier than trying to paint the white neatly in only the areas it is supposed to go.

In place in the hull:



After taking the photos, I glued the 37 mm gun into the turret and added its elevation mechanism and stabiliser, still unpainted:



You need to pay a lot of attention to where and how the parts for the stabiliser fit, because it’s not very clear from the instructions or by looking at the parts themselves.

 

[JayCee]

Very nice Jakko. The paint really makes it pop.
John.

 

[Isitme]

Jakko,
That is looking very neat, I do like the fact that you have taken the time to paint the heads of the ammunition rounds.
Mike.

 

[Jim R]

Hi Jakko
Excellent. You have done a lot of sterling work on this and the results speak for themselves. You're right about the brass - that is a very realistic finish.
Jim

 

[Jakko]

Thanks, guys Painting the projectiles is something I couldn’t not do — this is the kind of detail that’s very easy to get right with just a little research, and in this case it adds a little colour to the interior. (Not that you’ll be able to see much of it, when the model is fully built, though.)

 

[JR]

Lots of nice details inside there Jakko , like the gun tucked away on the side of the driver.

 

[Jakko]

That gun is the reason for the odd appearance of this tank: it was the easiest solution to the problem of fielding a tank with a 75 mm gun in 1941 rather than in ’42 or even later. From a modeller’s perspective, though, that thing takes away pretty much every view you could have through the right-side door of all those details you’ve been putting into the interior

 

[Tim Marlow]

I think John means the rifle on the left hand side wall Jakko!

 

[Jakko]

Oh! :foreheadslap: Duh … I didn’t think of that one at all when I read his comment

It’s an M1928A1 Thompson, with four drum magazines below it on the side wall. There will be a second one on the right rear of the fighting compartment, on the vertical plate that isn’t there yet above the stash of magazines that is.

 

[JR]

I think John means the rifle on the left hand side wall Jakko!

I did Tim, maybe I should have said Thompson .

 

[Tim Marlow]

For me to say Thompson it would require me to have recognised it LOL....

 

[scottie3158]

Jakko,
All looking very nice mate.

 

[Jakko]

Thanks

 

[Ian M]

Looking good Jakko.

 

[Jakko]

Thanks!

 

[outrunner]

A lot of very neat work in there, I like it.

Andy.

 

[Jakko]

Are you sure you’re looking at the same thread I am?

 

[Jakko]

Hull with the front plate glued in place:



This was tricky, as you need to line up the machine guns and attach their mounting to both the front plate and a support at the rear of it. The two guns sit on a squarish plate that has a long extension running forward, which attaches to the front plate. I installed it the way MiniArt would have you do it, by putting the guns onto the mounting, glueing that to the front and the putting the lot onto the model. This is not very easy, because the rear end will drop down and needs to be carefully lifted up and its support slotted into it, all the time trying to prevent the mounting from coming out of its position and the support from bending or breaking.

It would probably be easier to leave the guns off the mounting, fit the latter to the front plate and install the plate and mounting. Only then, when this is dry, add the machine guns. This will give you more room to work, in the very tight confines of the hull front where you’ll find it hard to get tweezers in, let alone your fingers.

Now to the rear corners of the superstructure. There are two vertical plates that form the corners, and two plates that form the sloping sides of the rear deck:



Notice the screw heads on the plates. I was expecting MiniArt to have omitted these, leaving me to carve slots into bolt heads to replicate the screws that should be there. Luckily, no need. However, MiniArt did make one small mistake: there are screw heads on the left-hand deck plate, when on the real tank, these were rivets. The reason is that the right rear corner plate was removable, to allow the 75 mm gun to be removed from the tank (and re-installed, of course). There was no need for this with the left-hand corner, though, so that plate was just riveted all around.

So, out came one of my new(ish) rivet punches to make some domed rivets from 0.25 mm plastic card, that I glued over the screw heads:

 

[Jakko]

I can’t keep putting off the engine cabling any longer, because the engine needs to go in before I can add the remaining hull plates. After studying photos, I reached the conclusion that the main cables to be added are from the distributor to the cylinders. The distributor sits at the top of the engine, more or less (?) on the inlet pipe to the topmost cylinder, and the cables run to some or all of the inlet pipes, which they enter just before the pipe reaches its cylinder. I have no idea what all this is for or does — they don’t appear to go to the spark plugs, because those are on the front of the engine, behind the fan, and this is all on the back of it. What’s more, there are nine cylinders but the distributor only has eight sides, and in most photos I can only make out six or seven cables coming out of it … Anyway, all I need to do is build something that looks like it

MiniArt doesn’t include a distributor, but it does have a part that looks very similar, Fb33 which it says you need to stick low on the back of the engine. Photos of real M3 medium tank engines don’t show it, though, so I left it off (I wonder if it’s a Sherman-only item?) and repurposed it as the distributor. To do that, I drilled through its centre and glue it to a length of 0.5 mm copper wire, then drilled smaller holes into seven of its eight sides. I also drilled holes in the sides of the inlet pipes, plus a hole in the top pipe to mount the distributor on, using a bit of excess copper wire I’ll leave on the part:



To do this, I had to remove the exhaust manifolds again, and in doing so, the engine mount came loose as well.

You can also see in the photo that I fitted the engine accessories and painted part of the engine blue. This because the restored engine has this bit blue, and black-and-white photos often show this same part to be lighter in colour than the main body of the engine and its accessories.

 

[Jakko]

After figuring out what all these pipes are for (fuel primer lines, presumably for starting), I added the thin lines to the model from 0.25 mm copper wire:



Hard to see there, because the wire is black, so with a coat of aluminium and one of Tamiya Smoke:



The main line leading to the distributor doesn’t actually go anywhere on the model, except out of sight below the engine, because I haven’t been able to figure out what it actually connects to, or even whereabouts.

Now it needs the exhausts refitted and a few more cables installed behind the mounting bracket. Once that is done, it can go into the engine compartment:



The dark stains are the same black wash I used for the rest of the interior, just thicker, and some black ink (from an old Games Workshop jar) to make the really strong stains. I’m quite pleased with how it came out.