I managed to get a little more work done with the road wheels tonight. I wasn't able to spend much time on the project tonight.

I finished painting the road wheels on the right side.

And most of the left side is done too. However I have to complete the return rollers.

If you look closely in the background of these photos you can see the Sherman's nemesis, the Panzer III ...

Enjoy !

As usual, comments are encouraged. Have a good night.

Thanks David.

While the F6F Hellcat planes were drying from the Year of the Cat GB, I decided to take some time with the Sherman.

I wanted to try and paint the crew before I glued the upper hull to the lower section. If I had this to do again I would paint my crew before they were installed. It was tricky getting to the nooks and crannies once they were in place.

I went online and found a few pictures of earlier WW2 US Army tanker helmets. This is what they looked like and my Dad who was in Sherman tanks and Pershing's in the Korean War told me that they based the early tanker helmets on football helmets.

Here's how the original ones looked.

So armed with this information I gave it a try. I'm not very good at painting figures.

Here's how they look and I'll try to pick out some more little details on them later.

Now I can glue the two halves of the hull together.

Comments are encouraged. Thanks for looking.

Excuse me, but those figures look fabulous. Am I missing something? If that's "not very good" then I am really up against it...

Tonight I decided to take a break from the F6F Hellcats, and work on filling in the underside of the hull sponsons. It was actually much easier than it sounds.

It would have been much easier if the suspension was not installed. You could even take the upper hull and make a tracing of it to use as a pattern before the two parts were glued together...

Please follow along and I'll show you how I did this, but I'm also sure there are many other ways to achieve the same thing. This upgrade should work for almost any Armor build that is lacking in this area.

I started out by making a template using plastic card stock that has small lines on one side of it. This makes it easy to keep things squared up. Here's the template after a few attempts at fitting and trimming. It's much easier to trim off a little at a time, since you can't add the material back on once it's been cut away...

Here's the same part test fitted in position.

Once I was happy with the fit, I simply flipped the part over and checked to see if it would fit on the other side. Luckily for me it did, so it was rather easy to make a tracing onto another piece of plastic card and before I knew it, there were two made in a mirror image of each other...

I decided it would be best to glue on some small pieces of plastic strip to act as a backing when the parts were finally glued in place. This will help to keep the plastic from falling inside the hull.

Then I added some reinforcing along the outer edge of the hull. In this picture below, (taken from inside the hull through the turret ring), you can see both thin plastic strips after they have been glued in position. I found it was easier to use two smaller parts instead of one long continuous piece.

Once the glue set up sufficiently, I glued the new sponson bottom sheets in place... and they fit like a glove !

Here's how the hull looks like as seen from looking through the hull turret ring...

Then it was simply a matter of spraying the new plastic in Olive Drab Green. In these two pictures seen below, the paint is still very wet... henceforth the shine in some places.

I think this helped the looks of the lower hull tremendously, and was time worth spent on the additional effort.

As usual, comments are encouraged...

If you think this last posting would be a worthy addition to the "How Too" Section, please let me know and I'll add an article over there.

Thanks for looking.

Is it also an anti-gravity tank?! (Sorry, couldn't resist.)

Really fine work, Lou. This is certainly coming along very well. I've never built armor--ever. But you are giving me a taste of it!

Earlier this afternoon I completed the decals on the Sherman.

But just before I got started I noticed something that I had done very wrong with this one. It was a rookie mistake and I should have known better. But it's too late to fix now since I don't want to take a chance on damage to the suspension.

This is supposed to be an early M-4 Sherman. The one depicted on the decals is a very early variant. I found a picture of the actual tank that was used for the decals.

It has the return rollers mounted directly above the VVS suspension units as shown in this photo of my Tamiya M-3 Lee kit.

In fact the first Sherman tanks used the earlier M-3 Lee suspension and did not have the trailing arm spring like installed on my model.

Oh well. Ignorance is bliss they say.

Since most of the decals were small and had some clear carrier material surrounding them, I thought it would be better if I sprayed a few coats of Future on the tank to help the decals from "silvering".

So for now it's shiny. But not for long ...

I still have to paint the rest of the yellow stripes on the sides of the turret. Once that's done the next step will be to paint and install the OVM tools.

Meanwhile here is how she looks right now.

Turret and side decals:

Front unit markings:

Rear hull number and unit markings:

I managed to get the large yellow number "3" to snuggle down nicely with some solvaset. It looks painted on now.

Overall it was a good day.

Comments are encouraged.

Thanks Paul for the kind words. I'm starting to like the crew figures a little more each time I look at them.

Tonight I was painting some yellow on one of my other Kasserine Pass builds, a 1/48 scale Curtiss P-40 L called "Light House Louie". Since I had the air brush loaded, and the stripes hadn't been painted on the turret yet, I decided to mask them off and spray them.

The yellow isn't an exact match, but it will be "close enough" once the dust and dirt / grime get applied.

Next I gave the turret another coat of rattle can "Dull Coat", then placed the turret back on the hull. I don't think the clear had yet dried completely when I took these pictures.

But we are making some headway...

Next thing will be to paint the OVM tools...

Calling it a day... Comments are encouraged, and come with an unlimited bumper to bumper 5 year 50,000 mile warrantee ! Ask your local dealership for details...