Jakko’s 1:35 Sherman Crab Mk. I — seeing double?

[grumpa]

Love it Jakko! Awesome interior work, Am beginning a Tamiya "Dragon Wagon" which has quite a bit of interior work and much detail.
Your work is an inspiration to me as is many folks on this site who devote themselves to extreme detail.

Hope I can get a foot into the door of the "Rivet Counter" club, my first attempt must be taken with a grain of salt of course,
I'll try to do my best.

Cheers! Jim

 

[Jakko]

Cracking work as usual.

Thanks

Weld seams look nice. Difficult to tell if they will need toning down with the putty being white it stands out a lot.

I think I’d better paint a stretch of them to check, so I won’t find out after spraying the whole model that they look rubbish

The rubbish in the last photo is a disgrace.

Local youths hang out around the tank, so with the hole where the periscope used to be it’s pretty much inevitable that this kind of thing happens (there used to be a steel plate welded in it, but somehow, that’s gone missing years ago). TBH, at least the rubbish is out of sight — it’s the appearance of the rest of the tank that I feel is the bigger disgrace.

Love it Jakko! Awesome interior work,

Thanks

Am beginning a Tamiya "Dragon Wagon" which has quite a bit of interior work and much detail.

That is a very nice kit, I remember from building it when it was new (ca. 1998). A fair amount of the interior will be on display if you leave the shutters and doors open, but at least you’ve got a good basis to just add more detailing to, rather than just two seats like I had

Your work is an inspiration to me as is many folks on this site who devote themselves to extreme detail.

I’m nowhere in the league of many other people on here who do much better work than I can manage, really.

Hope I can get a foot into the door of the "Rivet Counter" club, my first attempt must be taken with a grain of salt of course,
I'll try to do my best.

As long as you’re happy with it, that’s what counts, if you ask me

 

[Jakko]

Back to the other one, to show what all those brackets on the hull are actually for:



This is the basic construction that holds up the mine flail equipment, from the Resicast conversion set. The diagonal strips I put on the sides of the Dragon model are the remains of the diagonal bars you can see here, though they still needs some of the braces etc. that are represented by most of the other bits I put onto the Dragon kit. I had to straighten the crossbar with a hair dryer, though, as it came bent.

I also added most of the details to the hull front, mainly the spare track racks. These are visible in the photo of the real tank I posted at the very start of this thread, but since their location varied on British Shermans, it was difficult to establish where they should go. The photos of the tank as it stands today are no help, because there are no remains of them on the front plate. However, I also have a series of photos from before the 1994 restoration, and one of those shows:—



Clearly the scars from where the track racks were cut off the tank. I didn’t fit the headlamps nor their guards, because they’re not visible in the 1940s photo. The lamps would be of no use anyway, as they sit behind all the flail equipment. Why the guards were then removed, though, I don’t know.

The basic, pivoting frame that supports the flail arms is this bit:



This is also entirely Resicast, including the white plastic rod (not tube, but 5 mm solid rod for some reason) that was supplied in the set. I had to saw them to length, which I find a bit odd — it would be very simple for Resicast to supply them at the right length, as they have to saw them anyway. Still, this bit goes together well. It only has one not very small issue:



The photo shows the extent to which the frame can pivot down to the horizontal — well, not quite, and that’s the problem, since the flail arms need to sit horizontally. It looks like I’ll need to remove some bolt heads from the rings into which one of the round crossbars sits, on the side plates.

 

[Jakko]

Here’s some good advice: don’t drop your model …



I was trying to get the pivoting assembly to fit correctly, when the hull slipped from my fingers, hitting the floor nose down

When I picked it up, it wasn’t as bad as I had feared, luckily. I had expected the whole frame to be broken or torn off the model, but only the side plate on the right had broken into pieces. I found one almost immediately, but spent about ten minutes crawling around the ground with a lamp and tweezers to find the other bit. That’s one of the advantages of resin, though: it tends to break cleanly and in only a few pieces that usually fit back together OK:

 

[Steven000]

Nice details and progress

Yeah ... crawling on the floor is part of the hobby ...

Cheers, Steven

 

[Jim R]

Hi Jakko
A heart stopping moment. Mind you you were lucky and the repair is virtually invisible.
Jim

 

[Jakko]

Thanks, I certainly felt lucky when this was all that got damaged — I already imagined having to make the plate from plastic card, which is a bit tricky because of the shape. Whether it’s invisible remains to be seen, but I certainly hope so

After the glue had dried on this, I proceeded to do what I was doing originally, namely, making the pivoting part fit correctly. This required only a little modification:



Note the hole at the top right, which is where a bolt head on the outside broke off. I’ll just have to make and new one, for which my new punch-and-die set should come in handy

Anyway, it then fits nicely:



Next, there is a big plate that sits between the two rods, to deflect the dirt from flailing and the blast from detonating mines away from the tank. Resicast supplies this as a flat piece of resin and tells you to bend the top over after heating with a hair dryer. I took a look at it, and considered it very unlikely you (or at least I) will be able to do this neatly. So instead, I decided to build a replacement from aluminium sheet (a printer’s plate) and plastic card:



The bolt heads are still missing, because I intend to drill holes through it — the plate attaches to the rods by means of four loops around it, which Resicast provides in resin … a U-shape 5.5 mm wide and a thickness of 0.5 mm … If you ask me, this will be best replaced by some copper wire glued into drilled holes. Bolt heads can then go on top of those holes, to cover them.

 

[scottie3158]

Jakko,
Keep it up.

 

[Jakko]

I intend to, and here’s evidence

When looking at the shield I built as well as photos of real Crabs, it appeared the Resicast part is far too long. A quick mockup with some aluminium leftover showed that yes, I needed to remove quite a bit of the top of the shield — about 11 mm to get it to approximately the right length when bent into shape, it turned out. It also has a sharply bent lip at its forward edge, which I discovered was almost impossible to add after bending the shield into a curve, so I straightened it out again, then bent the end over using an Etch Mate (a tool to help in bending photoetched parts) before putting the curve back in.

I had already drilled the holes through the bits of plastic strip, and added some more strip on the back where the Resicast part also had that. So now, with the shield the right shape and the holes in place, I put it between the two round beams and threaded 0.5 mm copper wire through those holes, before gluing it in place — taking care not to glue the shield to the beam. This ties the shield to the rear of the two beams.

Rear view from above:



Front view from above:



Front view from below:



I still need to trim the excess from the front side and add bolt heads over the holes, and after that, the bars for the front need to go in. These are, essentially, four pieces of L-angle iron that attach inside the top lip of the shield, run down to behind the front beam and tie to it in the same way as the shield to the rear beam. That will come tomorrow, though, when the glue here is well and dry

 

[Jakko]

That blast shield is a scratchbuilding job in its own right … I intended to use Resicast’s parts for the front supports, that attach around the forward of the two round beams, but noticed a major mistake in Resicast’s instructions. Here is how they would have you fit the front supports, parts CM:



Later on in the instructions, though, there’s this photo of a real Crab (the one at Overloon, before it was moved indoors):



Spot the difference?

If you thought: the pieces of angle iron are behind the beam here, but the CM parts are in front of it on their model, then you noticed the same thing I did

Looking closer at the parts, they’re also made the wrong way round, so that the angle iron is mirrored if you put the CMs on the correct side. Everything together, making them from scratch would be simpler than trying to use the kit parts. Luckily, I found a piece of plastic L-angle of the right size in my collection of scratchbuilding materials, so worked out how long each support needs to be (15 mm) and drilled two holes through for the copper wire bracket, then filed a round bit out of the plastic to accommodate the beam.

Here are the parts I made, plus those supplied by Resicast for these supports:



You may notice the set gives plenty of spares, which I’ve found to be typical of Resicast, and to be highly applauded in the hope that other resin kit manufacturers follow this example. Some bits will break or fly off into oblivion, so you can usually still complete a Resicast kit if this happens to one of the more minor parts.

One support is already on the beam because I made that one yesterday to work out how, the other three today because the first one was so fiddly that I didn’t feel like doing the rest anymore yesterday night The other three went together more easily. Attaching them to the beam was easy enough: just bend the copper wire around it, stick the ends through the holes in the plastic strip, push everything together as far as it will go, then add a few drops of superglue to secure it all. I still have to cut the wire to length, but will wait for the glue to dry.



I don’t think I’ll add a bit of strip and bolt heads on these, unlike on the blast shield, because they will be barely visible, if at all, and the protruding ends of the copper wire will probably do to give the impression of a bolt being there anyway.

I also completed the deep-wading trunk on the hull rear:



Mostly just adding grab handles (more copper wire) and locking handles (supplied with the Resicast trunk set) and a few other bits and bobs. I did have to make a new hull bracket for the left side:



This was because when I tried to glue the resin part into place, I knocked it off with my tweezers and it disappeared Unfortunately, of course, this is one they didn’t supply a spare of, unlike the handles for example. Oddly, though, this wading trunk set does include plenty of parts that aren’t even mentioned in the instructions for it.

 

[Jim R]

Hi Jakko
Very interesting stuff going on.

Resicast supplies this as a flat piece of resin and tells you to bend the top over after heating with a hair dryer.

That sounds like a recipe for disaster and frustration. Your fix is spot on.
It certainly looks as if the Resicast research was a bit off as the angle iron is behind the beam in the photo they provide. Nice of them to provide spares even if they are not correct
A most enjoyable build to follow
Jim

 

[scottie3158]

Jakko,
Lovely detailed work.

 

[Road of Bones]

Nicely done Jakko- good work on the curved shield especially. A tricky bend to get right, I think!

 

[Jakko]

Thanks, all The bend was a bit difficult to do, and I don’t think I’ve got it quite right, but it looks reasonable enough. The problem is getting something in there small enough to bend the aluminium around, because it needs to be thinner than the actual bend will be. Also, for anyone contemplating doing the same, it’ll be better to make the bend first and only then add the plastic card. Furthermore, the Resicast part is a little too narrow — my guess is through shrinkage they didn’t account for, because the notches in the underside of the shield are supposed to go over the flanges on the transmission cover, but they won’t. I had to widen them on my replacement shield to fit.

 

[Deleted member 7181]

Stunning attention to detail

 

[Road of Bones]

I’ve had pretty good results bending around the handle of an XActo-type craft knife. I used it for getting the curvature on the mesh in an M60 turret basket, for example, by using it a bit like a rolling pin on the metal part (Pretty sure you know this though, Jakko!)

 

[Jakko]

Stunning attention to detail

Thanks

I’ve had pretty good results bending around the handle of an XActo-type craft knife. I used it for getting the curvature on the mesh in an M60 turret basket, for example, by using it a bit like a rolling pin on the metal part (Pretty sure you know this though, Jakko!)

I did know that, but thanks for mentioning it for those who may not A knife handle is far too big here, though. I think I ended up using the soft plastic handle on one of my recently purchased Trumpeter diamond files, which I’d guess (I’m not in my hobby room now) is maybe 5 mm in diameter, and bent the sheet over it when rolling didn’t work well enough. I did use a knife handle to roll a curve into the perforated sheets on the turret basket just like you suggest, though.

 

[JR]

Great work there Jakko.
Lots of research and patience.
Nice recovery with the damaged section

 

[Jakko]

Thanks

 

[Jakko]

It’s beginning to look like a Crab now!



I painted the hard to reach parts of the shield and beams with Humbrol dark earth (enamel, as that will probably adhere better to the aluminium than acrylic), because I’m still not sure what colour these tanks had: SSC 2 brown or SCC 15 olive drab?* Better to have brown showing under OD than the other way around, if you ask me.


* Everybody on the Internet seems to paint their Crabs dark green, which is the wrong colour in any case.