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

[adt70hk]

Love the work on the chain very well done indeed.

ATB

Andrew

[Si Benson]

Coming along nicely Jakko

[Guest]

Thanks, guys.

[Jim R]

Hi Jakko
Love the chain. Great patience and dexterity. I agree the rust with the dry brush looks good.
Jim

[Guest]

About that chain … it now looks like I may have to take some or all of it off again and redo it

Until today, I couldn’t work out what the thing is that can be seen in the picture of the real tank above, in front of the last bogie. Looking at a high-resolution scan (it helps to have access to the photo scans collection of the museum that has the original of that photo ) I finally worked out it’s a piece of wood, probably from a broken beam, tied to the bogie by means of what seems to be rope. What’s still puzzling is why it’s there, but also how it relates to the chain. I’m wondering if the chain is actually attached to the wood, but can’t work out a reason why it would be — but at the same time, I can’t really see the return length of chain that I modelled because I thought was was behind the thing that turned out to be a block of wood. So perhaps I need to remove the inboard length of chain and replace it by the wooden block.

[Guest]

With much thanks to Alex van de Wetering, I got enough information to continue work on the interior — principally, the housing that covers the chains running from the main drive shaft to the flail system. I first made 1:35 scale drawings (attached to this message as a PDF file) based on the information Alex supplied me with, so that actual construction was pretty straightforward. Here are the main pieces cut from plastic card:

[ATTACH]368165[/ATTACH]

I made a template from paper, visible at the left in the picture, that I glued to the plastic so I could just cut along its outline (with a steel ruler, of course) and so produce the front and back of the main pieces, then did the same for the sides of the thicker bits at the top and bottom. Glued together, with plastic rod and strip between them to make up the required thickness:

[ATTACH]368169[/ATTACH][ATTACH]368170[/ATTACH]

The underside is open because it will be out of sight entirely, so I don’t see a need to fill it in. I’ll now need to leave it to dry before I can putty the joints and file and sand it to a smoother shape. The real thing was from welded sheet steel, after all, not a laminate like here

Fitted into its approximate location in the model, it looks like this:

[ATTACH]368168[/ATTACH]

[Guest]

Now with a finished chain-case:

[ATTACH]368385[/ATTACH]

After filling the upper side and filing it to shape, I added details from mainly plastic card as well as a few pieces of leftover sprue, punched bolt heads and some or another chromed hub nut-like thing from an old car kit. I’ve only built the bits that will (likely) actually be visible through the driver’s hatch, so there’s nothing on the back except the one strengthening rib you can see in the picture, and things like the bearing at the top, the bolted flange that connect this whole part to the part of the case actually in the sponson and the feet that should be underneath are missing for the same reason.

Edit: I say complete, but still to be added is the bar that runs behind the driver’s seat, with the engage/disengage handle.

[scottie3158]

Jakko,
A great bit of scratchery.

[Jim R]

Hi Jakko
Great research, planning and scratchery.
Jim

[Guest]

Thanks, guys. Now all that remains is to scratchbuild the other visible bits of the hull interior (mainly the ammo rack beside the driver and the battery case on the left floor, plus the gyro compass and a few other Crab-specific fittings) before I can finally go on to the exterior again.

[Guest]

Wow Jakko, that's some dedication alright.

[Guest]

Thanks, though I respectfully disagree that it’s anything special — just trying to build a reasonably accurate model

[Guest]

The hull interior is now mostly done:

[ATTACH]368752[/ATTACH]

All I really need to add at this point is the ammo rack in the left sponson, beside the driver’s seat. The whole front part, with transmission, floor and seats is still loose so I can paint everything more easily. It just slots in from the front.

You may also notice I removed the Resicast firewall again and replaced it by that from the Asuka kit that I had originally put into the Dragon hull. This has two reasons: some test-fitting of hull and turret showed that the firewall won’t be visible at all on the Dragon kit, so it would be wasted in there. By the same token, the great detail on Resicast’s firewall would be mostly out of sight as well, so I felt it was better to take it out and keep it for a possible future model. Instead, I put in the kit part and added the most obvious of the missing detail myself from some plastic card and strip.

The reason for this is that I did some more reading on Shermans and their various updates, and concluded that my subject would probably not have received any of the later updates that were retrofitted to many existing tanks ca. 1943–44. I say this because it doesn’t have the additional armour plates on the hull sides, and therefore probably not the associated armoured racks inside either. This also means it most likely would have retained its full turret basket, instead of having had the perforated screen (that protected the turret crew when the turret rotated) removed for easier escape into or out of the turret. Thus, I will need to add that screen as well, which would obscure most of the view of the firewall.

Talking of which, I also started work on that turret basket:

[ATTACH]368753[/ATTACH]

I used a circle cutter to make the floor (38 mm diameter) and outer ring (47 mm) from 0.75 mm plastic card, and then also cut another floor plate from card with a non-slip pattern on it. As you can see in the illustration from the Tech Manual for the M4 and M4A1, the main floor was like that, but the plastic I had is much thinner than I’d like, so better to make it out of two layers for strength.

[Jim R]

Hi Jakko
Just gets better and better.
Jim

[Guest]

Thanks I forgot to mention earlier that I also began building the gyroscopic compass:

[ATTACH]368764[/ATTACH]

However, after I cut the front and back pieces and had built the basic shape of it, I remembered this photo:

[ATTACH]368765[/ATTACH]

That’s the Crab that stood directly behind the one I’m building a model of, and shows (presumably British) soldiers who were apparently tasked with salvaging anything useful from the derelict tanks. This explains the missing periscopes etc. in the photos of all the Shermans in Westkapelle, and I doubt they would have left something as advanced as a gyroscopic compass behind in any of the three Crabs. Therefore, I only put a little piece of plastic card (the prop at the back is invisible with the hull top on) in its place to represent the mounting for it. I don’t know what that actually looked like, but a little square something there is better than nothing at all