Trying the turret floor in the hull gave an unexpected surprise:
It’s too wide to fit between the hull sides! My first thought was that I should have measured the hull width, rather than basing myself on a lengthwise cross-section drawing of an M4A4. Then I realised that, because the turret basket sides are almost vertical, and the turret ring diameter is much larger than the hull width, something else was wrong. Some searching turned up the photos on
this page where someone has restored a real Sherman V, and in the last few you can see that the basket does indeed overlap the sponsons. Conclusion: the drawing I used, that shows the outer floor ring
lower than the sponson floor, is wrong. Phew
I also removed the support I had made in the hull, as it’s pointless in the light of this discovery.
With that page at hand, I could begin to work out how and where the struts between floor and turret ring go. I could count the bolts holding the basket to the ring in one photo and found there to be 32, so I could then use those to work out the positions of the struts and the openings in the basket. To draw those onto the floor I built, I needed to make an aid:
This is just a circle the same diameter as the floor, with 32 lines radiating from the centre. I made it in Adobe Illustrator (
other vector graphics programs are available ) by drawing a circle the right size and then adding a horizontal line with its mid-point in the centre of the circle, after which I copied the line and rotated it by 360° ÷ 32, then copying the two and rotating them by 360° ÷ 16, etc. until I had all the lines. After that it was a matter of putting the floor onto the printed-out drawing and marking off where the lines (=bolts) were. Finally, then, I could mark the locations of the struts and the beginnings and ends of the screens around the turret basket.
I made the struts from 18 mm lengths of 0.5 × 1 mm strip and glued them to the edges of the floor:
Then I put the lower part of the turret upside-down on my workbench (the rear end overhanging the edge so the rest was flat) and glued the struts to the turret part. It required a few adjustments to get it all lined up correctly, but when it was, I could add some thickness to the struts from slightly narrower, but square strip (I think I may need to make the “back” part a little wider with some more strip, though) and also adding pieces of that running down to the centre section of the floor:
To finish the basket, I need some perforated plate that I ordered but haven’t received yet. Before then I’d better add some of the detail inside that will be difficult to reach when the outside is on, but I think I’ll have to be careful not to break anything …