Unconverting a Sherman V from the Rye Field Models Sherman VC
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Thanks 
It still needs a couple of washes and drybrushings to properly weather the tank, and of course I need to install the tie rods for the wading ducts. If anyone knows a good way to make a small eye on the end of a piece of thin spring steel rod, do tell …
It still needs a couple of washes and drybrushings to properly weather the tank, and of course I need to install the tie rods for the wading ducts. If anyone knows a good way to make a small eye on the end of a piece of thin spring steel rod, do tell …
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Before weathering the model, I masked off the deep-wading gear, because it would only have been installed at most a few days before the landing, and so would not have had much time to get dirty:
Then an overall wash of Tamiya XF-52 Flat Earth, thinned with water to some random degree:
You can see the difference this makes from this shot after the masking tape was removed:
Also obvious here is that I painted the Bostik waterproofing compound too soon: I should have done that after the wash. As a result, I had to re-do it with Tamiya XF-69 NATO Black after I took these photos.
Also, a picture of the tools, that I painted before weathering but forgot to photograph:
The real things were dip-painted in olive drab, so I added chips to represent wear by painting gun metal, Humbrol Polished Steel and a wood colour onto them.
The track, suspension and lower hull sides then got another wash to dirty them up some more:
This time, with Tamiya XF-67 German Grey. Yes, dark grey This tank would have been plowing through the remains of the Westkapelle sea dyke at the time this model represents, and dykes in the Netherlands are essentially constructed as an embankment made from clay. The local soil on Walcheren island is a heavy clay that’s a medium grey colour when dry, but dark grey when it gets wet, so a dark grey wash seems a good way to represent this, over the sand-coloured dirt already on the tank to represent the sea sand that would also have been present.
Then an overall wash of Tamiya XF-52 Flat Earth, thinned with water to some random degree:
You can see the difference this makes from this shot after the masking tape was removed:
Also obvious here is that I painted the Bostik waterproofing compound too soon: I should have done that after the wash. As a result, I had to re-do it with Tamiya XF-69 NATO Black after I took these photos.
Also, a picture of the tools, that I painted before weathering but forgot to photograph:
The real things were dip-painted in olive drab, so I added chips to represent wear by painting gun metal, Humbrol Polished Steel and a wood colour onto them.
The track, suspension and lower hull sides then got another wash to dirty them up some more:
This time, with Tamiya XF-67 German Grey. Yes, dark grey
This tank would have been plowing through the remains of the Westkapelle sea dyke at the time this model represents, and dykes in the Netherlands are essentially constructed as an embankment made from clay. The local soil on Walcheren island is a heavy clay that’s a medium grey colour when dry, but dark grey when it gets wet, so a dark grey wash seems a good way to represent this, over the sand-coloured dirt already on the tank to represent the sea sand that would also have been present.
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Jim R
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Coming on a treat Jakko. Good call on the wading gear being clean - makes sense.
Jim
Jim
Beautiful finishes.
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Thanks. That realisation came to me just in time — well, not literally as I was reaching for the paint, but this morning I suddenly thought: “The wading gear needs to stay clean …”
Thanks
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I’ve never rigged a biplane or a ship, but I think I now know what doing that is like …
After thinking a fair amount about how to make the rods that connect the wading ducts, I noticed in one of Resicast’s instruction photos that it showed a cable (whereas an official British Army drawing calls them rods), and that meant I no longer had to figure out how these rods would have connected to the release mechanism: a cable can just loop through that, with an eye and a turnbuckle on both ends that go onto hooks on the ducts.
That just left the problem of how to make this so I could attach a line to the turnbuckles and preferably have it adjustable until after everything was actually in place. The solution proved fairly simple:
I cut a bit of the turnbuckles away and glued a piece of brass tube in place, 0.5 mm outer and 0.3 mm inner diameter. That allowed me to glue 0.2 mm nylon fishing line into the tube of half the eyes, and when the glue had set, hook it up to one of the ducts, thread the line through a hole drilled left to right through the release mechanism, and thread a second eye onto the line:
All that remained was to slip that eye over the other hook, tighten the line and apply glue, then pull the line taut for a bit until the glue set. I did have to hold both the turnbuckle and the line for this, to avoid pulling it up at an angle, but all in all, it was fairly easy — aside from threading 0.2 mm nylon line through an 0.3 mm hole …
Repeat with the other two:
I’m now waiting for the glue to fully dry before cutting off the excess line, which will need sharp and precise cutters. My normal plastic cutters have trouble with nylon line this thin, but I also have some high-quality ones designed for thin copper wire that do work fine, a quick test proved.
After thinking a fair amount about how to make the rods that connect the wading ducts, I noticed in one of Resicast’s instruction photos that it showed a cable (whereas an official British Army drawing calls them rods), and that meant I no longer had to figure out how these rods would have connected to the release mechanism: a cable can just loop through that, with an eye and a turnbuckle on both ends that go onto hooks on the ducts.
That just left the problem of how to make this so I could attach a line to the turnbuckles and preferably have it adjustable until after everything was actually in place. The solution proved fairly simple:
I cut a bit of the turnbuckles away and glued a piece of brass tube in place, 0.5 mm outer and 0.3 mm inner diameter. That allowed me to glue 0.2 mm nylon fishing line into the tube of half the eyes, and when the glue had set, hook it up to one of the ducts, thread the line through a hole drilled left to right through the release mechanism, and thread a second eye onto the line:
All that remained was to slip that eye over the other hook, tighten the line and apply glue, then pull the line taut for a bit until the glue set. I did have to hold both the turnbuckle and the line for this, to avoid pulling it up at an angle, but all in all, it was fairly easy — aside from threading 0.2 mm nylon line through an 0.3 mm hole …
Repeat with the other two:
I’m now waiting for the glue to fully dry before cutting off the excess line, which will need sharp and precise cutters. My normal plastic cutters have trouble with nylon line this thin, but I also have some high-quality ones designed for thin copper wire that do work fine, a quick test proved.
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Excellent solution.
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Thanks The initial plan was to drill holes into the turnbuckles, lengthwise that is, but they turned out to be too thin for that. Then I remembered those Albion Alloys very thin tubes I bought some time ago. And yes, threading was indeed fun, for a given definition of “fun”. My hands shake a little when trying to do fine work like that — though luckily, it’s gotten better since last year or so, but it’s still, they didn’t used to do that at all before 
Bracing one of the fingers holding the tweezers against one of the fingers holding the turnbuckle got me there, though.
The initial plan was to drill holes into the turnbuckles, lengthwise that is, but they turned out to be too thin for that. Then I remembered those Albion Alloys very thin tubes I bought some time ago. And yes, threading was indeed fun, for a given definition of “fun”. My hands shake a little when trying to do fine work like that — though luckily, it’s gotten better since last year or so, but it’s still, they didn’t used to do that at all before Bracing one of the fingers holding the tweezers against one of the fingers holding the turnbuckle got me there, though.