Grant CDL in 1:35

[Jakko]

I had started building the 75 mm M2 gun when I realised Takom wants you to put an external shield on that was fairly common on American tanks but that I don’t think I’ve ever seen on British ones. Similarly, they tell you to add the counterweights at the muzzle, and though those do appear on Grants, they are much rarer than plain barrels (the counterweights were for when the stabiliser was installed: without them, it would raise the barrel to maximum because the stabiliser was designed for the longer M3 gun). I had caught on to the fact that I probably shouldn’t fit the counterweights, so used muzzle E5 rather than E6 (which has notches for the counterweights) but only later noticed the shield part.

Luckily, part D4 is a rotor for use with a plain barrel without the external shield, so I dove into my spares box for a MiniArt barrel (left over from my previous M3 builds), which I had to lengthen by 3 mm using 4.8 mm tube to get it to fit correctly:



… and then I discovered the E sprue also has the correct barrel I’ll keep this one, though, as it has the rifling that Takom’s doesn’t.

The air intake on the engine deck is an open hole:



You could paint it black underneath, but I had another MiniArt part intended to solve just this problem, so all I did was box it in with some plastic card:



In place below the air intake:



It’s still loose here, as I want to paint it first.

 

[Jakko]

After adding the hull roof and various of the not-that-small details, I also built the turret:



I should really have glued the roof to the side plates when I put those on — there is nothing that needs to go inside for which you are best off keeping the roof separate (just don’t forget to drill the holes Takom tells you to first ) and adding the roof together with the sides helps everything to fit properly. I have a couple of small gaps that don’t worry me, but fit would have been better if I had put the roof on right away.

The gun mount is glued in place, the one that goes side-to-side, anyway. I skipped adding the levers that would move the sight (on the roof above it) along with the gun, and just glued the sight down too.

The turret fits well and looks good, though I lost one of the clamps that go on the front and rear roof edges when it pinged out of my tweezers There should be three on each side, but right now I have only two on the front.

 

[Neil Merryweather]

that is one FUGLY beast!

 

[scottie3158]

It certainly doesn't have a low profile it must have stuck out like a sore thumb on the horizon. But nice work.

 

[Tim Marlow]

Excellent research and building, but I do agree with Neil, she’s an ugly mother! Something of the Dalek about her as well……

 

[Jakko]

that is one FUGLY beast!

Yeah, it’s not exactly the prettiest tank you’ve ever seen … The sloping turret roof actually makes it look worse, IMHO, than it would had it had a flat roof. But that’s not very visible in the photo above, so maybe count our blessings?

It certainly doesn't have a low profile it must have stuck out like a sore thumb on the horizon. But nice work.

The normal Grant was already 3.12 metres tall, and this one’s turret is about twice the height of the regular one …

Something of the Dalek about her as well……

Especially with that dummy gun barrel. The early Grant CDLs and the American T10 variant didn’t have that, which TBH makes them look slightly less bad, if you ask me.

 

[Jakko]

At the rear, the engine deck wouldn’t fit:



I solved this by filing its rear edge until it did:



However, after this I built the two stowage bins that sit on the rear corners, and they indicate that the actual problem is the rear plate being too far forward. The bins have brackets moulded on to them, some of which are supposed to touch the rear plate, but don’t — by about the same distance as the engine deck was too long. You can also tell by the bevelled edge to the deck’s side, which is nicely above the corresponding bevel on the vertical pieces.

So, the better solution would have been to glue some strip between the side and rear plates, thick enough that the engine deck can just drop in place without filing. Next time (though I kind of doubt it, because I think I prefer MiniArt’s more complex M3 kits over Takom’s simpler ones ).

 

[Jim R]

Sounds as if it has thrown up a few issues. All sorted though. The engine deck air intake is very poor. Your fix is a great improvement over an empty hole.

 

[Jakko]

The empty hole isn’t quite as bad as it looks here, because a fairly fine bit of etching will go over it. This is MiniArt’s engine deck to illustrate the mesh grating:

And this thread shows it in place on the model, giving a reasonable idea of how much you can actually see through it. If I hadn’t had the MiniArt engine part, I would just have painted the hull interior black as far as can be seen through the grating, or maybe built a little plastic box and painted that black. It would still look good that way, I think — but if you have the engine part spare, why not use it?

 

[Jakko]

It’s always fun to get new information that shows you’ve been building things for nothing It turns out that most, if not all, Grant CDLs were fitted with an armoured cover over the air intake on the engine deck, which is a fitting developed in the UK and apparently intended for fitting on Grants and Lees in general, but not fitted to (m)any in the end. I had spotted it in some CDL photographs and the Grant Mk. I stowage diagram, but wasn’t sure I wanted to build it, as I lacked information. However, I had asked a question about the Grant CDL stowage bins (half of which are also missing in the Takom kit) over on Missing-Lynx, and this resulted in me being sent a series of new (as in: taken within the last few weeks) photos of the one in India, showing the armoured cover from various angles:


(Photo by Jim Goetz, via Leife Hulbert)

Of course, that means the MiniArt engine I had by now painted, is no longer necessary. It wasn’t a wasted effort, though, as I still have the M31 tank recovery vehicle to build at some point, and it has the same engine deck, so I just put the engine into its box.

Armed with the photos, I sat down at my computer with my model’s hull and a ruler, measuring up both the model with said ruler and the photos of the real tank in Adobe Photoshop, so I could work out dimensions and create drawings of the armoured cover in Adobe Illustrator:



Only then could I start building the cover in earnest …



I decided to laminate it from plastic card, as the openings are on the underside and hardly visible, and IMHO, building it from plates like the real thing is fiddly and liable to go askew. So I cut the plates you can see in the photo above — the numbers are their thicknesses in millimetres, with two 1.5 mm ones for the top because, as you can see in the drawing, that should be 3 mm thick but I have no 3 mm card. They’re all slightly oversize, because after assembling them into the right shape:



and waiting for the glue to dry, I could file the whole thing to its proper shape and dimensions:



After the cover was the right size, I filled its sides with putty and sanded that flat, to try and ensure none of the laminations would be visible.

Note that the side towards the tank superstructure is not square, because the engine deck slopes down a little while the superstructure rear plate is vertical.

I then put a plate into the grill opening in the engine deck:



The two plates along the rear edge are also moulded there by Takom, but I had to cut them away to make room for this plate, as they overhang into the grill opening. I also cut away the rivets on the superstructure that would be covered by the intake, because of course, it being solid they would be in the way. On the real tank, this side of the intake cover seems to have been open: there are no welds along the front edges, and by having it open, the rivets wouldn’t be in the way. Plus, of course, there is no need for a plate there in the first place.

Then just glue the cover in place:



And add the remaining details:

 

[scottie3158]

Jakko,

Nice bit of the old scratch there mate.

 

[Jim R]

That's a very neat result Jakko. Laminating the card to get the needed thickness is a good idea. Over size and then sanding back is a tip worth noting. I fear I would have cut to size, sanded to neaten, ended up with something too small, sworn, binned it and started again!!

 

[Jakko]

With laminating, you always end up with plastic that doesn’t quite fit together flush — see the “before” photo If you make it slightly larger still, you can even saw it to size, but I didn’t here.

 

[JR]

Great information as expected from you, and some neat drawings.

 

[Mini Me]

Keep it coming Jakko.........shaping up nicely.

 

[Jakko]

Thanks I now need to work out the sizes of the missing stowage boxes. Luckily I have a good photo of a Grant CDL from the right to work from.

 

[Mini Me]

Yes, if it weren't for photo refs. I couldn't get anything built....most of the time it's all I have to go on. I'm sure you'll make a fine job of it.

 

[Jakko]

My problem with photo references is almost the opposite I want to build something simply and relatively quickly, and then I find photos showing things that clearly need adding or correcting …

 

[Mini Me]

Very True.........when you are done adding all those little bits and bobs you have a truly unique as well as accurate model of the real deal......at least that's what I strive for. The best part for me though, is when some rivet counter comes up and says that isn't accurate because all they looked at was the box art and the instruction sheet!

 

[Jakko]

I like building models to replicate photos as closely as possible, but I also like building things straight from the box, and everything in between. What always irks me a little, though, is when a kit looks like it’s basically good, but then you find that it’s got some very obvious omissions or mistakes — like this one. I freely admit that photos of Grant CDLs* are hard to come by, but even on the best-known ones that you come across everywhere in relation to the real thing, you can see bins and the air intake cover that aren’t in the kit at all.

* Side note: research turned up that it seems most Grant CDLs were actually built on Lee hulls The USA supplied a whole bunch of suplus M3 medium tank, which is to say the version the British called the Lee, specifically for conversion to CDL. But afterward, they were known as Grant CDLs for some reason.