You haven’t seen the taillights, then
When I put them on, I found they didn’t want to fit as I thought they should. I looked more closely, and it turns out I was trying to put them on upside-down compared to how the instructions and locating pins want them …
But every time I looked at them, I felt there was something not quite right. Eventually I got a book out, and lo and behold: Takom has you install them upside-down compared to the real tank
A quick two cuts with a knife and I could stick them back on the right way up:
That is to say, the way I wanted to have them when I wasn’t paying attention to the instructions but to how I
thought they should go
Grants and Lees, including apparently many CDLs, were sometimes refitted with a bullet splash ring around the turret. The British had wanted the Americans to add this to the tank, but they had declined, so eventually they added their own. It’s really just a simple partial ring, made from a number of segments, welded to the hull roof around the turret ring:
In 1:35, it looks to be about 1.5 mm high and 0.75 mm thick, but as I didn’t have any strip like that, I had to cut some from 0.75 mm plastic card. I then just bent it round most of the way by pulling it around the edge of my workbench, put it on the model so I could mark where to cut it to length, and glued it on. Once the glue was dry, I cut it into segments with a chisel-bladed hobby knife — far easier than making the segments first and trying to line them all up.
The turret is also mostly finished now:
I think I already mentioned that one of the roof fixtures jumped from my tweezers, never to be seen again, so I made a replacement. I also filed the bolt heads from all the others, because they each had a mould part line and a sprue attachment point directly on them, so I replaced them with new bolts made with my hex punch-and-die set. This also ensured all six are the same size.
The aerial bases come from the spares box. Takom just gives you the rod for the one in the centre, but not the protective ring around it; I replaced the rod by a different, thinner one that fits inside the ring I also found in the spares box. I had to semi-guess at the location for the conical one, but there is a little round lid on the roof that seems to have no other purpose, so I cut it away and glued the aerial base over it.
Finally, the rack on the left side has two bits of plastic strip in it, because Takom gives etch for that but it’s quicker and simpler to cut two pieces of plastic strip, than to clean up the etched parts
You also get two etched parts that the instructions tell you to fit vertically between the turret and the rack, which I’ve left off entirely. From the parts, you would never guess that in the real world, those were webbing straps … I get the impression nobody designing the kit realised that
Not sure yet if I’ll put anything in the rack, and whether I’ll add the straps, though.