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

[Jakko]

Thanks. I’ve still not started on the cabling because I don’t like that kind of work … and as I also have the plumbing to add for the gun stabiliser, I guess I’d better just bite the bullet …

 

[Jakko]

More engine work done:



I painted the rear mounting bracket red, because my source said they were white, black or red, and I felt this a nice contrast with the white engine compartment and the black engine. I’ve added one bit of cabling, but it needs more.

Here’s the 75 mm gun in its mounting:



Still missing are the top plate and the bits that attach to that, of course. I glued the gun at a fixed elevation, because the elevating mechanism fouls the side of the shield, and can get knocked off as it’s only glued by a small area. I taped up a bit of the gun barrel because on the real tank there’s a bare steel area, and an easy way to replicate that is with bare aluminium.

There should be all kinds of plumbing for the gun stabiliser, but I test-fitted the gun into the hull with the roof on, and just about nothing will be visible of any of it, so I’m not going to bother adding it.

 

[Graeme C.]

Like the engine Jakko, you're putting plenty of extra detail in this build.

 

[Jakko]

To be honest: so far, exactly one thing — the bit of copper wire This is a very well-detailed model straight from the box, and the only things I’ve noticed that are really missing is part of the engine wiring and most of the gun stabiliser’s hydraulic lines. I find the former to be a bit strange, because plenty of other pipework in the engine compartment is included, both for the engine and the fire extinguishers, but somehow they missed all the cabling that leads to the magnetos.

 

[Jakko]

I thought I’d start on the suspension …



A known problem with this model is that the axle holes in the wheels aren’t big enough. On the left is how far you’ll get the axle in without forcing it, while on the right, I’ve drilled out the opening to 2.2 mm.

Be careful that you can assemble the wheels inside-out on their suspension arms. On one side of the wheel, there are two little nodules near the hub: these are the grease nipples and they should go on the outside. (An easier way to get them on right is that the side with the moulding seam goes on the outside.)

Much the same applies to the arms themselves: they have a regular nut on one side and a crenelated nut on the other. The latter goes on the inside, towards the hull of the tank.

Also, MiniArt would have you clean up a little rod that sits between the two arms, but it’s far easier to replace it with a bit of plastic rod. I used 0.5 mm, that seems about right.

Problem solved, let’s build a bogie!



This is the two bogie halves with the springs, the spring levers and one wheel arm installed. This leaves a big enough gap that the wheel arm will simply fall out … Without the springs and levers, though:



… the arm fits neatly. Great …

There is an axle attached to the springs, to which the levers mount. This has narrower ends that fall into holes in the bogie halves. Either the thicker part of the axle is too wide or the holes are too shallow, I’m not sure yet, but it needs fixing.

Also, if you’re building this kit, be careful to get the levers (parts Ed6) on the right way round. When seen from above, the levers should curve outward a little. It feels like you can’t put them on wrong without forcing them onto the axle, though, because I have the impression both axle and mounting hole in the levers are slightly tapered. But still, take care to put them on the right way.

 

[Jakko]

After some investigation, the holes in the bogie side pieces are too shallow. I tried drilling them out, but though this is doable on the back half, on the front you are likely to go through the material, so I decided to instead modify the axles by cutting off the narrow bit at each end. A little test showed this works just as well, but it allows the springs to move up too far inside the bogie. Luckily that’s also easy to fix by adding a bit of 0.5 mm plastic strip to the top. This needs to fit between two locating tabs on the rear bogie half, though, so it can’t be longer than 5 mm. All in all, here’s what you get that way:



And with this fix, the suspension arms fit nicely into the bogie as they should:



However, I can’t help but think that MiniArt made all this unnecessarily complicated. Everything here fits pretty much like on the Asuka equivalent, but there is no movement in it at all — unlike the Asuka parts, which you can build as the suspension being compressed, for a diorama or to represent a heavily loaded vehicle, for example. Here, though, they would have done far better to just mould the arms to the bogie front and rear halves and gotten a far more sturdy assembly and easier assembly. Oh, well …

 

[Isitme]

Jakko,
This is coming along nicely, pity about the bane of most Sherman based kits - the suspension.
Mike.

 

[Jim R]

Hi Jakko
Coming on a treat. I do like that red bracket - don't often get a chance for a splash of colour. Gun looks great. Don't blame you for not tackling cables/wires if they're not seen. Gun looks good, Suspension is often awkward.
Jim

 

[Jakko]

This is coming along nicely

It is, isn’t it? There’s a lot of parts and some of them are fiddly to assemble, but on the whole this is a very good and pretty impressive kit. Not one I would recommend as anyone’s first (or tenth) tank kit, though

pity about the bane of most Sherman based kits - the suspension.

It’s not too bad, but you need four hands if you’re going to put it together like MiniArt would have you: by simply putting all the parts between the two halves and then joining those. I forgot to mention above that I found the better way is to put the springs (with the levers on, but not glued) between the two bogie halves, and only then insert the two wheel arms.

All in all, I prefer the Asuka version, which is only slightly less fiddly to put together but has a more positive fit. I was thinking this afternoon that, if I had a set of that lying around, I might just have built those instead of trying to figure out why MiniArt’s are too wide. But I don’t, so I had to tinker with these to make them work

Coming on a treat. I do like that red bracket - don't often get a chance for a splash of colour. Gun looks great. Don't blame you for not tackling cables/wires if they're not seen. Gun looks good, Suspension is often awkward.

Thanks. There really is a mess of hoses around the gun, and though it looks more complicated than it really is (because some coil around), I don’t see it as worth the effort putting in if you could only see them with the roof off — since I intend to glue that down. I will still need to add some cables that can be seen around the fighting compartment, though.

 

[Jakko]

The whole suspension is now done:



Note that the sprockets are Asuka, which I found a bit better than MiniArt’s. The latter are also awkwardly attached to the sprue, with attachment points on the outside face of four of the teeth, which means it’s easy to damage them. Anyone who’s built an Asuka Sherman is bound to have a spare drive sprocket, though, and in addition to better detail, they’re also easier to clean up. Because both the Asuka and the MiniArt hulls include the full spindle (for want of a better term) that the sprockets attach to, the Asuka ones fit fine on the MiniArt hull — it’s just that the poly caps in them don’t grip the axle, but that is something I can live with

Here is a comparison:



The MiniArt idler wheels are better than the Asuka ones, mainly because of the etched rings that create the recessed inside bit, which most Sherman and M3 medium tank kits lack (the Bronco Ram also has it, though). However, the MiniArt wheels lack the grease nipples, so I’ll have to add those from bits of plastic.

By the way, those rings are another reason this kit is probably not suitable as one of your first tanks. They’re difficult to clean up, with four attachment points on the outside and the inside, and there is no plastic alternative in the kit. I cleaned them up by carefully cutting the attachment points with a knife and, holding the ring between flat pliers very close to the attachment point, filing them off with a half-round diamond file.

 

[Tim Marlow]

Nice to see you are wrangling this one into shape Jakko. Not sure about the over fiddly suspension though, as you say it could have been simplified without detracting materially from the build quality.

 

[Jakko]

This is my first MiniArt vehicle kit, and I’d read that they like to break things down into lots of parts, apparently for the sake of it. This appears to be a fairly accurate assessment, certainly as far as that suspension is concerned. Still, there’s always worse in that department — I’ve also got a Meng M4A3 (still to be built), and that has not just separate, but working volute springs for the bogies …

I also keep postponing adding all that wiring to the engine, which is what’s really holding up progress Maybe I should just spray the interior white soon and get on with painting it, that should force me to complete the engine as well to stick into the otherwise finished engine bay …

 

[Jakko]

Suspension done, it’s on to the turret. There isn’t much to show yet, as it’s all different bits that eventually come together. There are big seams on the turret basket, though, as that is made up from three pieces:



After some filing and a little filling, though:



It’s almost entirely disappeared. After taking that photo I did some sanding with fine wet-and-dry sandpaper, which seems to have cleaned it all up very nicely.

I also have an aluminium barrel for the 37 mm gun, but there is a little problem:



The thing is that both are correct: the Aber barrel has the right length for the M6 gun that was fitted to the majority of M3 medium tanks, but very early ones had the shorter M5 because of shortages of the M6. Because I want to build a very early version, I will have to use the plastic barrel instead of the metal one. Cutting down the aluminium barrel isn’t really an option because of the flare at the muzzle.

There is very fine detail on the commander’s machine gun turret:



The vision ports come with two etched pieces each for the small vision slits in them, you can see the inside and the outside ones of each in the photo.

 

[Steven000]

Nice progress Jakko, details look great
Steven

 

[Tim Marlow]

Looking good Jakko. Great attention to detail as always!

 

[Jakko]

Thanks. By now I’ve fitted most of the turret basket internals — photos will follow

 

[Jakko]

Here is the turret with most of its bits:



The turret is really only missing the gunner’s seat and the gun elevation mechanism here. I could add all kinds of cabling and plumbing to the turret shell and the gun, but I checked and just about all of that would be completely out of sight, so I’m not going to bother with it at all.

I had to scratchbuild a box on the turret wall and a tray on the turret ring, because I noticed in photographs of the real tank interior (in my new book ) that MiniArt inexplicably missed them. The box is a leftover from a 1:72 scale kit, that I cut down a little and added the lid and catch to from thin plastic strip. The tray is a simple scratchbuild from a few bits of plastic card and strip.

The copper wire, by the way, represents hydraulic lines for the turret drive. MiniArt doesn’t include parts for them but does tell you what you need to scratchbuild. Though I think this is good, it would have been better if they had supplied the hoses in plastic — they can for the engine compartment, so why not the turret?

Then I sprayed the whole interior white with Vallejo primer from an aerosol can.

Or that was the plan, anyway. In practice, the already mostly empty can ran out before I had painted everything I wanted to As I didn’t have another, I waited for it to dry and then airbrushed the whole interior Vallejo Model Air signal white instead:



Most of the bits I sprayed are in the picture, but as I had the paint in my airbrush anyway, I also painted some parts that are still on the sprue, like the armour plates for the rear corners of the fighting compartment and the engine compartment rear doors.

Now on to washes, detail painting, etc.

 

[Graeme C.]

Coming together nicely Jakko.

 

[adt70hk]

Jakko

That's coming on very nicely Jakko.

ATB.

Andrew

 

[Jakko]

Not really, as there was no progress at all yesterday I hope to get on with the painting today, though.