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

Jakko

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It is very fiddly at times, especially the clean-up and trying not to break all those thin levers and actuators :smiling3: However, the parts are well-moulded and fit well (after a little work sometimes, but nothing an average modeller shouldn’t be able to do), so if you want an M3-series medium tank, I would so far certainly recommend this one. There are also variants without the interior, for those who don’t want that whole job added to the dreariness of the tracks (which I have yet to start on — still working on the M4 HVSS tracks first …).
 

Jakko

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I skipped ahead to the engine. If you think the levers and things in the driver’s compartment are fiddly to clean up and add, you had better do those first, as practice for the engine.

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The pushrods are moulded as a single piece with the ring in the middle, and there is a sprue attachment point on the side of each of the 18 rods, plus one on the ring and four inside it. Then there’s the valve covers, of which there are two on top of each cylinder — one with some kind of rod or pipe to connect it to the other one, and one without. You can see how big all this is in the photo: the bits just above the ruler are the covers with the pipe, the bits above those are the ones without. This means you get to put 18 of these on the engine, but it’s nowhere near as bad as it seems. Just take care when you remove them from the sprue and clean up the attachment points.

Here’s the engine with all those bits on:

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I haven’t cleaned up all the seams yet, because it’s usually a lot easier to do that with a sharp knife once the part is securely in place.
 

Jakko

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Ammo rack now painted:

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After using a brass colour on the shell cases, I painted the clips that hold them in place with white and then put a wash of black over all of it. Then I put the part into the model, which took a bit of work because the fit is tight with the side plates and sponson bottoms fitted:

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Note the piece of tape over the brass etc. so they won’t be sprayed white later. You can just see I also put straps onto the jerry can and added the radio operator’s seat (and the shelf below it) at the centre left.
 

Si Benson

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You look to be progressing nicely, engine looks great :thumb2:
 

Jakko

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Thanks, though the engine isn’t even half done :smiling3: And look at all the fun cabling and stuff I’ll still have to add once the plastic bits are together …

7242-BAIV-Continental-R975-C1-Overhauled-1-1.jpg
(source)
 

Jim R

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Hi Jakko
Engine is looking good. Good luck with the cables etc.
Jim
 

Si Benson

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blimey....your going to be busy adding all that lot!
You could just leave as it is and model it under a tarp :smiling5:
 

Jakko

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The good thing is that a fair number of those cables are actually supplied in the kit, as hard plastic parts of the right shape. All the thin cables, though, I’ll probably add from copper wire or something. Eventually :smiling3:

I’ve meanwhile added the hull sides and yet more interior bits — mainly the auxiliary generator in the rear left sponson, though I also built other fittings like ammo racks and the radio, but not installed them yet.

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And here is what it looks like with the front and roof plates in place as well, without glue still:

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This mainly to ensure the plates line up correctly, else I’ll have a problem later :smiling3:
 
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adt70hk

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Looking very nice Jakko. True thought of a full interior scares me stupid at the moment, do hats off to you.

ATB.

Andrew
 
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Jakko

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If you can build the exterior, then the interior is within your skill too, I would say. It is a lot more work, though, and you have to think carefully about what will and won’t be accessible for painting later on — as I hope this build demonstrates. Better to paint too much in advance than too little, though.
 

Jakko

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On to the gun (not that any of the previous is finished yet, of course :smiling3:). This is very nicely done, but I have an Aber aluminium barrel that I felt looks better than the plastic one in the kit. Don’t get me wrong: the kit barrel is certainly acceptable, and even includes the rifling, as does the Aber one:

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One oddity about the gun is that it has a separate breech block that can be positioned open or closed, but there is no opening for the cartridge to go into with the block open … I glued the gun halves together and when dry, clamped them in a modeller’s vise so I could drill through from the barrel end with a 3 mm bit. This is easy, because the barrel is hollow and only the chamber end is solid. After cleaning up the mess left when the drill broke through (before I glued in the breech block), I have a satisfactory chamber opening:

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Now for that Aber barrel. I compared it to the kit one and found it was about 6 mm longer …

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Luckily, Sherman by R.P. Hunnicutt includes the overall length of the 75 mm gun M2, which in 1:35 scale turns out to be 66.6 mm. As you can see above, the kit gun is the correct length — the gap between rear end and barrel is accounted for by the thickness of the gun shield, that sits between the two. I suspect the Aber barrel is intended for the old Tamiya or the less-old Academy M3 kit, that probably has a recess for the barrel.

This, of course means I had three options: saw off the barrel, turn down its rear end, or cut down the internal part of the gun. I discarded the first because I don’t trust myself to make a square cut on a tapered barrel, and the second because that same taper means the barrel is hard to get into a lathe.

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So, I took 6 mm off the front of the gun. Rather than try to go around it, I just cut through the bottom recoil cylinder because its front end sits entirely out of sight inside the gun shield. The top one, though, is where the shield attached to the gun so cutting that is not really an option.

The barrel has a 2 mm diameter extension, but the gun’s internal diameter is about 3 mm, so I cut some bits of 1 by 0.5 mm strip and glued them inside. I also drilled through the gun shield and opened it up to the full size of the recess that the kit barrel would have glued into:

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And here’s what it looks like with all three pieces together:

E8ABE23C-ED6E-45B8-8832-28E7F353C61A.jpeg
 

JR

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Nice work Jakko. Agree with your method of assembly, their way would cause more problems trying to line everything up.
 

Jakko

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This one does too, but I still think I chose the lesser of two evils :smiling3: Of course, any kit with an interior is going to be complex, so you need to question even more than usual if the assembly sequence will actually work.
 
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Jim R

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Great work Jakko. Also really clear photos and explanation of what's going on. Well done with the barrel - looks good.
Jim
 

Jakko

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Thanks. The rest of the 75 mm gun should be plain sailing, except it will also need lots of plumbing added for the stabilisation gear. Hopefully the photos I found will suffice for that :smiling3:
 

Tim Marlow

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Looking good Jakko. Nice recovery on the gun.
 

Jakko

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Thanks, this was easier than I thought it would be: just cut the plastic instead of the aluminium. Of course, if you use the plastic barrel then none of this is necessary, but as I had gotten the barrel set with the kit, I figured: why not use them?
 

Jakko

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The engine is slow going, for some reason. Well, largely because I don’t particularly like building engines because they always need stuff adding to them to look good …

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This is just the kit parts so far, the ones I showed earlier but now painted and with some bits added to the back, with the inlet pipes, wiring harness (the light grey ring) and magnetos (the black protrusions the wiring harness connects to); the exhaust pipes are still loose, as you can see. I wasn’t sure if the instructions were right about the colours, so I asked advice from someone who has access to a real R975 engine and he sent me some photos and explanations that came in very handy to paint these bits.

Most of the real engine was painted black, which I replicated by painting it dark grey and then adding a black wash and a grey drybrush. The inlet and exhaust pipes are stainless steel — so don’t paint them rust colour! (Which I had originally intended to do.) Instead, I used light grey, the same as the wiring harness ring, and added a dark grey and an earth-coloured wash over that. On the real tank, the pipes turn a very dark grey, almost black, after some use, but I want to portray a fairly new engine so I went with the matt stainless steel colour.

Now the really fun bit of trying to figure out what wiring to add, where, and how.
 
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adt70hk

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That's coming on nicely Jakko. Well done.

Andrew
 
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