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

[Guest]

After comparing the two, they turn out to be pretty much identical in dimensions, so it looks like the photos distort them somewhat.

Continuing with the running gear, I’ve now got the basics of the left side for the monument tank:

[ATTACH]367407[/ATTACH]

Sherman wheels have two grease nipples on one side but not the other, for example, and the positions of the spokes etc. are “fixed” on a monument, so I went back to the real thing yesterday to take more pictures just to get the wheel positions and damage right About half the wheels are on inside out, I discovered, and the damage to the rubber tyres is also interesting and not all that easy to replicate on the model. Carving with a modelling knife seems to have done the trick, though. I also thinned the outer edges of the skids on top and drilled out holes in the return rollers that Dragon somehow missed:

[ATTACH]367406[/ATTACH]

What I still need to add now is bolt heads to the skids (Dragon puts some on the sprues but says not to use them … though I’ll add them with a hex punch and die set) and drill holes in the fronts of the bogies. For that, though, I’ll need to make a jig first so I get them all the same. Once all that is done, I’ll also have to rust these up — see the pictures earlier for how bad the rust is. I think this will require something like a thin layer of putty, that I’ll then stipple to create the rust texture.

[Jim R]

Hi Jakko
Really interesting. Not just the comparison between the kits but also the work needed to ensure historical accuracy. Progress so far shows you are certainly up to the challenge.
Jim

[Guest]

Thanks, I do my best to get these accurate within my abilities

[Guest]

All of the bogies are now finished, except for the rust:

[ATTACH]367505[/ATTACH]

To ensure all the bogies go into the correct position on the tank, I scribed the number onto the back. As you can see above, though, I didn’t take enough care to put them in the right order for the photo The bogies are still articulated at this point, so I can fix them in the correct positions when they’re on the tank — the missing tyre bits on the undersides of some of the wheels means they won’t all line up otherwise.

I detailed all of them by adding six bolt heads to the skid and return roller bracket and drilling four 0.5 mm holes into the front (this is where the bracket could also be mounted, because the bogies were identical on the left and right sides of the tank):

[ATTACH]367506[/ATTACH]

For the holes, I made a jig from some plastic card and square rod:

[ATTACH]367507[/ATTACH]

I initially wanted to use this to drill through, but even before the first bogie was done, I found it easier to stick a pin through the holes to mark the locations, then remove the jig and drill out the pin marks instead.

[Guest]

On to the other tank’s suspension … No overall shot because, hey, when built they look basically the same as the other ones, except green Instead, a comparison between the parts from the two brands. First the Asuka parts, then the Dragon ones:

[ATTACH]367678[/ATTACH][ATTACH]367682[/ATTACH]

In both photos, the wheels have already been built (they’re two-piece in both kits) and in the Dragon one, the springs and the yoke below them have also been glued together (because I had done that before deciding to take these photos) but everything else is the individual parts. As you can see, the Asuka ones consist of more bits, in order to make the bogies articulate more accurately. Compare them in the photo below to see what I mean:

[ATTACH]367679[/ATTACH]

Notice how the upper arms move relative to the lower ones in the Asuka parts but stay in the same place on the Dragon parts (and on the Italeri ones they’re based on too, for that matter). Asuka provides plastic spacers (the flat parts marked A, B and C) to go above the springs, but fails to say which ones you’ll need — in fact, the spacers aren’t mentioned in the instructions at all, but only on a diagram on the side of the box … Now, Sherman Crabs had their front suspension compressed at all times because of the weight of the flail equipment, so I decided to go for B (1 mm thick) for the front bogies, A+C (2 mm total) for the middle and A+B (2.5 mm) for the rear ones, but you can’t get the bogies to close over the last one, so that became 2 mm as well. I again drilled holes in the fronts as for the Dragon parts, and added two bolt heads — Asuka moulds all the others on the skids already, and the outer edges of these are also thin enough that you only need to clean up a mould part line, not thin the whole edge down like for the Dragon kit.

Once the bogies were dry, I used Blu-Tack to attach them to the hull, applied glue to the arms of the front two bogies and placed the model on a glass plate with a weight inside to keep the front down:

[ATTACH]367681[/ATTACH]

I’ll only glue the rear ones when the others have dried, because I need to pull the wheels on these down a little so they all reach the ground.

Oh, and another fun thing about the Dragon kit. See if you spot what’s wrong with it in regards to the drive sprockets:

[ATTACH]367680[/ATTACH]

Yes, the pins are too long to go all the way into the final drive housing … The length of the pins is another Italeri throwback, and is no problem at all if there is a hole in the hull side. Somehow, though, Dragon have forgotten to make one … Even more strangely, the sides for the one-piece housing do have holes deep enough to accommodate the pins. Not sure what Dragon’s designers were doing here, but building the kit probably wasn’t in their job description

[Guest]

Just too much for me, I'd just blunder on and make a mess. Your certainly managing well .:thumb2:

[Guest]

Thanks My next trick, incidentally, has to do with the missing fifth roadwheel …

[Graeme C.]

Such are the pitfalls of Dragon kits! I'm sure you can sort it all though Jakko. I was going to mention the missing wheel, maybe you are a roadwheel short of a Sherman...….

[Guest]

Such are the pitfalls of Dragon kits! I'm sure you can sort it all though

I’d never built one of their Shermans before, but I don’t think it’s up to the standards of other Dragon kits I’ve built over the years.

Wait, that first statement is not entirely true. Maybe twenty years ago I built their Israeli M50 Sherman. Well, 95% built. It’s still in its box waiting to be finished and painted one day As far as I van recall, it was better than this one, though I had to replace the hull top by one from Italeri to get rid of the far overdone texture.

I was going to mention the missing wheel, maybe you are a roadwheel short of a Sherman...….

The wheel is missing because it also was on the real tank

[Guest]

FX: sound of a big sigh of relief

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It doesn’t look like much, but the above was at least an hour and a half of work that at times made me think, “So this is probably what surgeons feel like sometimes …” and given me an even greater appreciation for what people like Neo manage to build.

Let’s start at the beginning, though In the photo of the real tank, you can see, if you look closely, that even though there is a missing wheel, the axle is still there and the suspension arm is being held up by means of a chain and not one but three shackles, one big one around the axle and two smaller ones above it. Quite why the wheel has been removed, I don’t know, but clearly it was felt necessary to keep the tank mobile without it.

As I didn’t have any chain of even remotely the right size, I had to resort to making my own. Luckily, this is not overly difficult. I’d never actually done this, but I began with some copper wire that I wrapped tightly around a length of plastic strip; in this case, 0.6 mm wire and 2 mm by 0.75 mm strip. I then sliced the wire into links by means of a chisel-shaped knife blade:

[ATTACH]367767[/ATTACH]

You can’t do this by hand with wire this thick, but carefully hitting the rear end of the knife handle with a small hammer a few times did get me through:

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Then it was a matter of twisting open a link with long-nosed pliers, hooking it onto another, closing it again, and repeating with the next link:

[ATTACH]367769[/ATTACH]

That was the easy bit (after the first couple of links, anyway) …

When I had about 4 cm of chain, I went to add the shackles to one end. The big one comes from my spares box, while the smaller two are towing shackles from the Asuka kit that I cut the half-pins inside away and replaced by a length of 0.5 mm plastic rod. So far, so good. Attaching the chain was an exercise in frustration management, though I opened a link at the end of the chain and hooked it to the shackle, then had a devil of a time closing it again without damaging the shackle.

That done, I tried adding the other shackles, which caused one of the small ones to split. That turned out to be a blessing in disguise, as it meant linking the three together was actually easier: glue one half to the big shackle, hook the second small shackle (on the chain) over it, and glue the second half over the gap.

Next, I put the big shackle over the axle (a length of pastic rod) and pulled the chain through the skid on top of the bogie, like it was done on the real tank. That left me the problem of trying to hook the free end of the chain to the shackle, which was pretty much impossible. Eventually I decided to split the chain, hook it up to the shackle and then attach the two free ends together. This turned out to only really be doable if I removed the shackles from the axle again, else the bogie kept getting in my way so much I couldn’t get anything done. After splitting more shackles and so having to redo much of what I thought I’d already completed, I managed to get this together last night:

[ATTACH]367770[/ATTACH]

By then, my hands were shaking enough that, even if I didn’t need to let the glue dry, I would have stopped anyway.

Leaving the glue to dry until this afternoon, I had come up with a better plan to link the chain ends: use much thinner copper wire on the back, behind the skid where it wouldn’t be visible. So I added a length of that through one of the end links, slipped the big shackle back over the axle and pulled the chain with the wire though the skid. Then it was a matter of more fiddling to get the other chain close enough to wire them together, after which I snipped off the excess links and wire. I left on extra link so I could glue that over the wire, disguising it better, and while I had the superglue out, glued the whole chain into place for safety

[Guest]

More suspension work, but on the other kit

Since there’s a fair amount of rust on the monument tank, I did a little test on how best to replicate it. I applied some putty from a tube to the bottom of the hull and textured it with an old brush whose bristles have been cut down to about 2 mm long:

[ATTACH]367842[/ATTACH]

About half of the large patch, I did with a brush damp with thinner, the other half with a dry brush — that’s what the pencil line indicates, damp on the right, dry on the left. I think dry looks better, but I then added some paint over it to make sure:

[ATTACH]367844[/ATTACH]

All in all, I think the dry does look better, so I then began applying rust to the suspension parts with that method, to the areas where I could see it in my photos of the real tank:

[ATTACH]367845[/ATTACH]

Also note I swapped out one of the drive sprocket rings for a grey Dragon part. This is because I had added the “flat” rings before looking closely enough at the photos: the real tank has a flat one on the left, but one with the extra “scoops” out of it on the right. A little more research told me that this is because all Chrysler-produced Shermans had the latter, and all M4A4s (which this tank is) were made by Chrysler. The flat one must therefore have been added in the 1994 restoration. (That, by the way, also meant I had to make another set for the Asuka model, as I had built the flat ones for that too, but luckily that kit includes all three types.)

[Graeme C.]

The fiddly bits always take all the time Jakko, looking at the rust, which you will use depends of the rust on the real tank, by the look of it some areas are worse than others. I'm sure you will sort it all, looking good so far.

[Steven000]

Love that chain Jakko :thumb2:
Looks good

[scottie3158]

Jakko the detail work is looking good I make my larger chain the same way.

[Guest]

The fiddly bits always take all the time

This one took more time than I had expected, though

looking at the rust, which you will use depends of the rust on the real tank, by the look of it some areas are worse than others. I'm sure you will sort it all, looking good so far.

Thanks, and yes, it should all work out in the end The good thing is that, if I put paint over it and it turns out to be too textured, I can just tone it down with some model cement (which will soften the filler) and/or redo it.

Love that chain Jakko :thumb2:
Looks good

Thanks

the detail work is looking good I make my larger chain the same way.

Thank you too, and though, like I said, I’d never tried this before, it just seemed the sensible way to do it like full-size chain is made. Well, that, or order some and have to buy more stuff to make it viable and wait days or weeks for it to arrive, of course.