Jakko’s Sherman BARV

[Guest]

Weld seams on the hull front and lower rear now mostly complete:

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I realised I probably won’t need to add them along the sides of the superstructure, because they will be covered by the catwalks and end up (mostly or wholly) out of sight. I do need to add them along the rear corners of the superstructure, though, where I had to fill the big gap with the rear plate.

[Jim R]

Marrying the ResiCast stuff to the kit is certainly not easy. A lot of fettling and filling. Looking very good though .

[Guest]

To be honest, most of this conversion is fitting that big superstructure to the hull top. The majority of the parts are small detail bits, plus a few bigger ones like the splash guard and the bumper on the front. But I need to finish those welds first.

[adt70hk]

Coming on nicely Jakko. It's really starting to look the part.

ATB.

Andrew

[Scratchbuilder]

Jakko,
When meeting the problem of two-part putty and plastic to add weld details I had the same problem. A tip is to keep a pot of water next to you and dip the tip of the 'weld' tool into it, this gets rid of the stick to anything process....
Mike

[Guest]

Thanks. I know the water “trick” but didn’t want to risk it getting between the putty and the plastic, because adhesion was already poor enough as it was.

[Guest]

On with the welds today. I started off with the Magic Sculp as before, but soon decided to switch to Green Stuff. I’ve got some that’s positively ancient, but which has never actually been used, so I figured: what do I have to lose? By looking at the photos of the real BARV and the etched parts, I worked out that I do have to add seams to the sides of the superstructure, because the catwalks sit higher than I thought at first.

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Kneading it was hard work, probably because it’s so old, and it stuck to the model even worse than the Magic Sculp. It sort of wanted to stay in the corners between superstructure and hull, but not at all along the rear edges of the superstructure, so after a while I ended up glueing it down with superglue before I even started texturing it. This may just be due to its age, though. On the positive side, you can roll it it into much greater lengths than Magic Sculp: at the thicknesses I’ve been using here, that has pieces breaking off the ends when you get it to a centimetre long or so, while I easily could roll out the Green Stuff to four or five centimetres at the same thickness.

You may notice I also added the smokestack/chimney/exhaust (whatever you want to call it), because the weld seams have to go over that as well.

[vizenz]

I've worked a lot with Greenstuff years ago. For welds, the trick is to use a little more yellow than blue. Then the compound becomes stickier and adheres better to the surface. It just takes a little longer for the compound to harden properly, and it stays a little more flexible at the end.

[Jim R]

I've only ever used Green Stuff and then only once for welds so glad it has worked for you. Do you dip the texturing tool in water to stop it sticking?
Looking good.

[Guest]

For welds, the trick is to use a little more yellow than blue.

Thanks for the tip, I’ll have to keep that in mind!

Do you dip the texturing tool in water to stop it sticking?

No, I didn’t, again for the same reason as before: it stuck poorly enough already, so I didn’t want to risk getting water under it. Once I began putting superglue under it, though, it only lifted off in places where there was no glue, or where that had dried before I could properly stick the putty to it. Applying a little extra there stopped that, too.

[Guest]

Okay, on then to the next bit of major work: the splash plate around the roof of the superstructure. Resicast usually gives you plenty of spares for parts you might lose or mess up, and these are no exception:

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That’s plates for two BARVs, plus one jig to form them on, because they’re cast flat but need to be curved outward. The instructions tell you to use a hair dryer, and I prefer that to the hot-water method of heating resin for shaping, but … these just did not want to cooperate. I’ll spare you the details, but suffice to say I’ve seen that I’m not the only one having trouble doing this. Someone building one on some other site (I don’t recall which) replaced it all by soldered brass sheet, which I suppose probably means he was a railway or steam modeller before he discovered that tanks are much cooler things to be building models of. As I myself saw that particular light much earlier in life, I solved it the armour modeller way:

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0.25 mm plastic card, onto which I simply put the resin parts and cut around them with a sharp knife. I then curved them by pressing them around an aluminium knife handle with my fingers, for which you need a much smaller diameter handle than the curve in the parts, because they bend back quite a lot. A bit more fettling later and they fit well enough, the Blu-Tack supporting them in the right position, of course.

The drainage holes in the underside are in different positions than on the Resicast parts, because I took their locations from the pictures of the real BARV I linked to before. The ones in the front plates were made with a round file, because I forgot to add them before bending the parts. Those on the side plates were made with a punch and die before bending, by making a mark where the hole was to go and putting both parts into the die at once, then punching out a half-hole out of both at the same time.

The third plate, at the back, still needs adding but I made a mistake measuring somewhere, so the ones I cut are too low. I’ll add them next time, as I don’t feel like making new ones just now.

[Steven000]

Looking good Jakko, interesting build :thumb2:

[Guest]

Thanks Once the splash plates are on and complete (gaps need filling and a round edge added along the top) it should be fairly plain sailing, as the rest is mainly adding detail parts …

[Guest]

All six panels are on now:

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I filled the gaps between the front four with thinned putty, but not the gaps with the rear ones, because on the real thing they’re separate bits attached to the engine cover. I also put a round bar along the top edge:

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This was simple enough to make by glueing 1 mm half-round rod on both sides. I was worried a little that it wouldn’t look properly round, but a little measuring told me that this “1 mm” material is actually 0.5 mm thick and 1.15 mm wide, so it works out well enough. All I need to do now is fill some of the gaps and scrape it all down smooth.

[Jim R]

You look to have got the curves spot on. I reckon your solution is preferably to trying to bend the resin. Even with spares resin is brittle and you'd have cracked some even with hairdryer heat.