Rare Medium Tank M3 variant, from a MiniArt kit

[Guest]

Another fitting added to the front of the superstructure:

[ATTACH]426180[/ATTACH]

The green bits were sawed from one of those leftover bits from a Tamiya kit, needed for the motorised version so that a serious modeller always has them left over The rest is plastic card and a bit saw from a tube, though I still need to file the top and bottom so they curve like the green parts.

[Guest]

Let me muddy the waters a bit further:

[ATTACH]426269[/ATTACH]

The large barrel is 2 mm plastic rod with a brass tube around it for the thicker bit. I initially wanted to make this from that rod and 3 mm sprue, but they needed pinning together, and drilling a hole for that in the 2 mm rod proved almost impossible. I tried four times, and though I started centred well enough every time, the drill soon moved sideways and I ended up with an off-centre hole anyway. My father then turned a brass barrel for me on his lathe, but the muzzle hole ended up off-centre as well due to the barrel being pushed aside slightly when the drill hit it Rather than try again, we decided to drill out the thicker part so the plastic rod fits through, leaving me with a brass sleeved for the plastic rod. (I would have built the barrel completely from plastic tube, if I had some of the correct diameters.)

The upper barrel is simply thinner plastic rod, which I also used for the MG barrel. I drilled dimples into the sides of the latter, because the real thing had ventilation holes. The flash hider was made from stretched sprue, the conical part between the actual stretched bit and the base sprue.

[Tim Marlow]

Nice additions. Still don’t know what it is though…..

[adt70hk]

How about a flamethrower version....

[Guest]

I’m having fun thinking about these suggestions, anyway

[Guest]

This probably won’t help to clear up the confusion, will it?

[ATTACH]426445[/ATTACH]

I cut these plates from 0.5 mm plastic card after drawing them on my computer and printing them out, so I could glue it to the plastic and cut accurately without the kind of measuring and drawing inaccuracies you’re likely to get with a ruler and pencil. I then stuck the bogies to the hull with Blu-Tack and glued the plates to them so the assembly is removable for painting.

Now I need to find a way to make 1.5 mm quarter-round plastic strip, or find something else to buy together with that so the postage costs don’t outweigh the order value too much

[scottie3158]

My next guess target tug.

[Guest]

In a strange way, it kind of was something like that, now that I think about it.

[Guest]

Is the periscope an important part of this?
So it's a wader of some sort .

[Guest]

The periscope does feature prominently, but not for underwater use — sorry

[Jack L]

Nuclear test observation?

[adt70hk]

Ok. So based on your response to Paul's suggestion it was designed to tow/pull something in some kind of way....

[Guest]

Nuclear test observation?

Someone else suggested that too, but how would it explain the gun barrels?

based on your response to Paul's suggestion it was designed to tow/pull something in some kind of way....

When I said it kind of was something like that, the emphasis was very much on “kind of” So no, not designed for towing something.

[Graeme C.]

A moving target tank? A tank adapted to serve as a target driven by a crew, with extra armour to protect from the practice rounds.

[Guest]

That actually was a small part of its role, yes. Just not in the way you’re probably thinking of