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

[outrunner]

A lot of very neat work in there, I like it.

Andy.

[Guest]

Are you sure you’re looking at the same thread I am?

[Guest]

Hull with the front plate glued in place:

[ATTACH]417077[/ATTACH]

This was tricky, as you need to line up the machine guns and attach their mounting to both the front plate and a support at the rear of it. The two guns sit on a squarish plate that has a long extension running forward, which attaches to the front plate. I installed it the way MiniArt would have you do it, by putting the guns onto the mounting, glueing that to the front and the putting the lot onto the model. This is not very easy, because the rear end will drop down and needs to be carefully lifted up and its support slotted into it, all the time trying to prevent the mounting from coming out of its position and the support from bending or breaking.

It would probably be easier to leave the guns off the mounting, fit the latter to the front plate and install the plate and mounting. Only then, when this is dry, add the machine guns. This will give you more room to work, in the very tight confines of the hull front where you’ll find it hard to get tweezers in, let alone your fingers.

Now to the rear corners of the superstructure. There are two vertical plates that form the corners, and two plates that form the sloping sides of the rear deck:

[ATTACH]417075[/ATTACH]

Notice the screw heads on the plates. I was expecting MiniArt to have omitted these, leaving me to carve slots into bolt heads to replicate the screws that should be there. Luckily, no need. However, MiniArt did make one small mistake: there are screw heads on the left-hand deck plate, when on the real tank, these were rivets. The reason is that the right rear corner plate was removable, to allow the 75 mm gun to be removed from the tank (and re-installed, of course). There was no need for this with the left-hand corner, though, so that plate was just riveted all around.

So, out came one of my new(ish) rivet punches to make some domed rivets from 0.25 mm plastic card, that I glued over the screw heads:

[ATTACH]417076[/ATTACH]

[Guest]

I can’t keep putting off the engine cabling any longer, because the engine needs to go in before I can add the remaining hull plates. After studying photos, I reached the conclusion that the main cables to be added are from the distributor to the cylinders. The distributor sits at the top of the engine, more or less (?) on the inlet pipe to the topmost cylinder, and the cables run to some or all of the inlet pipes, which they enter just before the pipe reaches its cylinder. I have no idea what all this is for or does — they don’t appear to go to the spark plugs, because those are on the front of the engine, behind the fan, and this is all on the back of it. What’s more, there are nine cylinders but the distributor only has eight sides, and in most photos I can only make out six or seven cables coming out of it … Anyway, all I need to do is build something that looks like it

MiniArt doesn’t include a distributor, but it does have a part that looks very similar, Fb33 which it says you need to stick low on the back of the engine. Photos of real M3 medium tank engines don’t show it, though, so I left it off (I wonder if it’s a Sherman-only item?) and repurposed it as the distributor. To do that, I drilled through its centre and glue it to a length of 0.5 mm copper wire, then drilled smaller holes into seven of its eight sides. I also drilled holes in the sides of the inlet pipes, plus a hole in the top pipe to mount the distributor on, using a bit of excess copper wire I’ll leave on the part:

[ATTACH]417176[/ATTACH]

To do this, I had to remove the exhaust manifolds again, and in doing so, the engine mount came loose as well.

You can also see in the photo that I fitted the engine accessories and painted part of the engine blue. This because the restored engine has this bit blue, and black-and-white photos often show this same part to be lighter in colour than the main body of the engine and its accessories.

[Guest]

After figuring out what all these pipes are for (fuel primer lines, presumably for starting), I added the thin lines to the model from 0.25 mm copper wire:

[ATTACH]417500[/ATTACH]

Hard to see there, because the wire is black, so with a coat of aluminium and one of Tamiya Smoke:

[ATTACH]417501[/ATTACH]

The main line leading to the distributor doesn’t actually go anywhere on the model, except out of sight below the engine, because I haven’t been able to figure out what it actually connects to, or even whereabouts.

Now it needs the exhausts refitted and a few more cables installed behind the mounting bracket. Once that is done, it can go into the engine compartment:

[ATTACH]417502[/ATTACH]

The dark stains are the same black wash I used for the rest of the interior, just thicker, and some black ink (from an old Games Workshop jar) to make the really strong stains. I’m quite pleased with how it came out.

[scottie3158]

Jakko,
All coming on nicely the wiring looks good.

[Nicko]

Nice bit of engine work Jakko...

Nick

[Guest]

Thanks Not exactly my favourite part of building models, adding all this kind of fiddly wiring, which is why things are almost stalling at the moment. But the end is in sight, and then the pace will pick up again with the exterior of the tank!

[Guest]

After much more poring over photos and checking the model, I decided not to bother with more wiring. I can’t figure out where half of it goes and/or originates from, and different models of tank appear to have had different cables and pipes, so it’s very hard to pin down how to get this accurate. Plus, most of it will end up out of sight anyway with the engine in place.

[ATTACH]417529[/ATTACH]

Like that. The engine is now glued into the hull, as are the air filters (the rectangular boxes at the upper rear of the engine compartment), the pipes running from them to the carburettor, the fire extinguisher nozzles and some miscellaneous pipes.

I replaced two MiniArt pipes (Fb11 and 12) by copper wire, because they had both already broken into two pieces on the sprue, and one of those bits flew away when I was trying to clean it up, so I just gave up on them. The other bit of pipework behind the model should go inside the engine compartment, but if I try to add it before attaching the rear plate, the pipes get pushed out of alignment. Luckily I can insert them through the engine hatch opening when the plate is on.

Also notice I glued the extinguisher nozzles to the rear plate. The kit’s instruction designer appears to think that they are best glued to the side plates by their tails, and the nozzles will then magically align with their support bracket locating points on the rear hull plate … yeah, right. It’s far simpler to glue them to that plate and shorten the pipes for them a little — those will be out of sight anyway underneath the air filters.

A few more pipes still need to be added, and then they all have to be painted. Once that’s done, I can finally get on with the outside. I hope

[Guest]

The engine bay is now done:

[ATTACH]417718[/ATTACH][ATTACH]417719[/ATTACH]

I attached the photoetched screen at the rear (this was to prevent enemy troops form throwing grenades into the air exhaust opening) after priming it with an aerosol can, and carefully painted it white once the glue was dry. You can’t attach this until the rear extension of the upper hull is fitted, though, because it goes between the side plates of that. Without those, the screen is narrower than the opening.

I will leave the engine deck plates loose and the rear doors open, else all of this was for nothing. That did mean I had to find a way to mask the engine compartment. When I dry-fitted the rear deck side plates, I found a small gap left between them and the engine compartment walls, so I decided to cut a piece of paper to fit over the whole engine compartment and underneath the side plates, with a piece at the back that goes just inside the screen:

[ATTACH]417720[/ATTACH]

In place:

[ATTACH]417721[/ATTACH]

And with the engine deck sides added:

[ATTACH]417722[/ATTACH]

The engine hatch in the hull will be closed by temporarily glueing its doors in, with PVA glue I suppose, so I can pry them loose again after painting.

I also attached the rear corner plates for the fighting compartment, and put the roof on to align them correctly, without glueing the roof down yet.

The turret interior is now also done, with the gun controls and stabiliser in the upper half and the gunner’s seat in the lower:

[ATTACH]417723[/ATTACH]

[scottie3158]

Jalkko,
The engine bay looks very good

[Jim R]

Hi Jakko
That engine bay is very impressive as is the turret.
Jim

[Guest]

Thanks The engine bay is very well done — sure, it lacks some of the cabling, but if you don’t add it, nobody will really be the wiser and the whole thing looks very convincing anyway. It’s just a bit fiddly to put together, but I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend MiniArt’s separate engine set for anyone wanting to stick such an engine into a model that doesn’t come with one.

[adt70hk]

Jakko

Coming on very nicely indeed.

ATB.

Andrew

[Neil Merryweather]

I'm enjoying this very much Jakko - but rather you than me