Jakko’s Sherman BARV

[Scratchbuilder]

Good to see this build on the way. With the problems of fit I was wondering if given the age of the mould it was based on a Tamiya kit.
As for the 'oddments' collection - yes, we all need one of those, it is in there that you find that bit that you were thinking of for your next build and never realised you had it....

[Guest]

It was originally a full resin/etched kit — I know someone who built that one, though I don’t remember if he ever took it with him to one of the shows we both used to be at. Once Tasca (now Asuka) released their M4A2, Resicast probably reworked the parts to fit that kit (the instructions say “Master by Graham Sellar, March 2014”), but I have the impression they didn’t do that as well as they could have. As a result, I just spent a fair while scraping away putty

First, though, I trimmed the plastic card. This was a lot easier than expected when I realised that by pushing it down firmly, the shape of the splash guard underneath would become clear:

[ATTACH]513729[/ATTACH]

By wiggling it up and down some more, material fatigue even cracked it along part of that white line, and then some careful work with a sharp knife did the rest, followed by scraping it down to tidy up the edge.

Next, I used straight and curved knife blades to scrape down all of the filler:

[ATTACH]513730[/ATTACH]

The shape is so complex that filing is almost impossible for most of the model, and sandpaper will also be tricky to use. I did find out very quickly that “for metal and polyester”, as the tube of putty says, does not equate to “for polyurethane resin” because it just chipped off the resin parts. That, of course, is useful at this point, because it meant a lot less scraping there than on the plastic bits, to which the putty does adhere well. Once done, I had to add more filler in some areas, especially the nose, where shrinkage had caused it to form a depression even though I had trowelled it on pretty thick. Now I’m kind of waiting for that to dry.

[Guest]

At the back, I glued thin plastic card to the sides to cover the holes, trimmed it to size when the glue was dry, filled the gaps that remained with the same car filler, and filed and scraped it flat when that had dried:

[ATTACH]513802[/ATTACH]

I also washed thinned putty into the gap between the block with the tread plate on it and the rear plate.

At the front, I glued a number of detail parts on:

[ATTACH]513803[/ATTACH]

Most of these need weld beads added around them, as does the whole superstructure, but I’m still debating how to best make those.

Resicast seems to not have noticed that on the real thing, the ventilators on the hull had a flat ring welded over the opening to waterproof them. I made this by sawing two thin rings from 7.1 mm plastic tube and glueing them into the tops of the ventilators. That the plastic was softened by the glue helped a lot in getting them in.

[adt70hk]

That's coming very well Jakko, despite the fit issues.

Keep up the good work.

Andrew

[Tworrs]

Great progress Jakko, albeit a little frustrating.

[Guest]

Thanks, but nah, this is not frustrating — it’s just a little more work than expected

[A_J_Rimmer]

Looks like you're well on the way to getting it sorted Jakko.

[Guest]

I think I am, though one thing I’m not looking forward to is the splash plates that will go around the top of the superstructure. You get them as flat pieces of resin that you need to heat and then bend on a former (supplied with the kit), a method I’m not really a fan of. I’ve seen a build from someone who replaced this all by brass, but I’m not sure my skills are up to that, so maybe heat-forming it is.

[A_J_Rimmer]

I think I am, though one thing I’m not looking forward to is the splash plates that will go around the top of the superstructure. You get them as flat pieces of resin that you need to heat and then bend on a former (supplied with the kit), a method I’m not really a fan of. I’ve seen a build from someone who replaced this all by brass, but I’m not sure my skills are up to that, so maybe heat-forming it is.

That sounds like fun!

[Guest]

I haven’t checked, but maybe the kit supplies a spare I can practice on Resicast is good that way, BTW: for parts that are likely to break or go missing, you usually get more than you actually need. Those little triangular plate thingies above the viewports, for example, you need one on each side, but there were two for each side in the kit. Same with lots of other small parts.

[colin m]

An interesting beast, and a huge amount of work for you. All looking good though.

[Tim Marlow]

Lots of work, but you seem to be beating it into shape quite nicely.

[Scratchbuilder]

That is now starting to take shape and surrender to your charms, keep going Jakko, you can beat it, or you can beat it.....
Mike.

[Guest]

Thanks, guys Most of the real work so far has been filling the too-large gaps, but now I really need to start adding the weld seams before I can do much else.

[Guest]

Continuing at the back, I sawed off part of the square block, then re-added the cover on it with bolt heads from punched plastic card:

[ATTACH]513978[/ATTACH]

The reason for doing this is because I noticed in photos of a real BARV that the plate seemed to be angled inward more than the rear hull plate above it, whereas Resicast has it slightly the other way instead. It also had a treadplate pattern on it, but the real BARV in the photos doesn’t, so I used regular plastic card. The reason for the bolt heads being blue, BTW, is because I used card that I had coloured blue on one side with a marking pen, because I’ve used it in the past to punch domed rivet heads from, and for those it’s very handy to have it a different colour on the two sides.

At the sides, along the edges, I glued a piece of strip, because on the real BARV the side plates extend below the lower plate a little, but the conversion kit doesn’t have that.

I also started making weld seams on the front:

[ATTACH]513979[/ATTACH]

This is Magic Sculp two-part epoxy putty that I mixed up a very small amount of, then took even smaller amounts from that and rolled it as thin as I could in my hand before pressing it into the join between the parts. Getting it to stick there is tricky, especially once I began texturing it with the tip of a knife — it wants to adhere to skin and steel much better than to plastic, unfortunately But with a bit of perseverance it does eventually stick.

There also needs to be a weld seam on the outside of the driver’s window, but the putty had run out by the time I got to that. It also takes ages: the bit you can see here took me around twenty minutes, and I still need to do the same on the other side plus the whole of the rest of the join between the superstructure and the hull …