Jakko’s Sherman BARV

[Steve Ski]

Missed this one myself, catching up, Jakko. Having never heard of this version, it's impressive the amount of resin and PE available for this. Excellent conversion taking place here, Ruck On!

[Waspie]

Caught up now. Wow Jakko you have done some amazing stuff there. Making your own welds!! That's a new one I'll have to file away for the future.
I'll try and keep up with this now.

[Guest]

Having never heard of this version

It was in fairly limited use, mainly on the beach in Normandy but they did see use later on in and after the war, too. The Canadians built an equivalent on a Ram chassis and the Australians on an M3 medium tank, but both remained just as one-off prototypes, unlike the Sherman one of which something like a hundred were built. As I said in an earlier post, they were eventually replaced by a Centurion-based version:

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That, in turn, was replaced by two different Leopard 1-based ones. Here’s the British model, used by the Royal Marines:

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And the Dutch one, used by the Korps Mariniers:

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it's impressive the amount of resin and PE available for this. Excellent conversion taking place here

Thanks. It’s quite an extensive conversion, but far less involved than you’d think at first sight. Mostly, it’s getting the superstructure to fit right, and after that most of the real work is in the splash plates and the catwalks. I had expected it to be more difficult to put together, really.

you have done some amazing stuff there. Making your own welds!! That's a new one I'll have to file away for the future.

Thanks, though making welds isn’t actually that difficult, if your putty cooperates, anyway I normally use filler putty from a tube, putting little bits of it into a line to make much subtler welds than here, but the BARV didn’t have subtle welds and that type of putty doesn’t want to stick well to resin anyway, so it wouldn’t have worked well.

[papa 695]

Coming along very nicely Jakko.

[Guest]

I added the remaining small details:

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Here, chiefly the stuff on the forward superstructure roof, like the aerial mounts, the fire extinguishers, the spare tracks, etc. The conversion kit gives you extinguishers, spare track links, and the rack to put them in, but I used different ones. The resin extinguishers are simply to big both in length and diameter, so I used Asuka ones, which are slightly too short (but not as much as the Resicast ones are too long) but the correct diameter. The track links you get are a different type than I’ll fit, else I wouldn’t have replaced them, and the plastic rack is just a bit finer.

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At the back, I added the folding plate with tread pattern (oddly, you don’t get a part to build it in the up position) and the ladder, for which you get the etched parts but have to find the plastic rod for the steps yourself. I also added two tiny bits of strip as stops, else the ladder could not realistically fold down (but I just realised I got them wrong …). Also, I had to build a replacement bit to the snatch block, because it turned out that if you glue the two rings to the block, you can’t fit it over its stowage hooks — the real one has swivelling rings, of course, so that probably did fit easily enough. I had glued the rings on first, and the hooks to the model, and only then discovered this … Trying to cut the large ring free, part of the block broke off and went flying into oblivion. I heard to tick a couple of times against things in my hobby room, but couldn’t find it anymore Also, the handholds from copper wire glued into holes I drilled (and at the front as well).

And with that, I think the build is finished:

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Other than the tracks, but I’ll only finish those after I’ve glued the bogies to the hull, else it’ll be hard to judge the correct length.

[Steven000]

Looks like a very clean build, nice details, well done :thumb2:

[Guest]

Thanks After I correct the ladder’s stops (hopefully without breaking it off) I can start painting …

[scottie3158]

Jakko, that looks great mate.

[David Lovell]

Excellent looks brilliant proves the point you only get out what your prepared to put in well done sir. Dave

[Guest]

Thanks You’re right, David, I could have built it straight from the box(es), but then it would have all kinds of minor inaccuracies that would keep niggling at the back of my mind

This afternoon I put a coat of primer on it:

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Mr. Primer Surfacer 1000 from an aerosol can, to be precise. I’ll go over it with a very similar light grey colour as the actual paint, even though I could probably have painted the whole thing with this primer and used it as a base coat. But spraying the bogies and especially the wheels like this feels like a tremendous waste of paint, so I’ll get the airbrush out for another grey coat of Tamiya acrylics.

[Tim Marlow]

That looks very good under primer Jakko. Looks very like a railway snowplough in some ways.

[Guest]

The primer didn’t cover as well as I thought it would, but maybe I should have applied one more thin coat than I did. Regardless, it looks like a good primer that I may just use again in future. I bought it specifically for this model because the text on the Mr. Whatever web site says it’s for metal and resin as well as plastic.

[Stefee]

Looking good.

[Andy T]

The primer didn’t cover as well as I thought it would, but maybe I should have applied one more thin coat than I did. Regardless, it looks like a good primer that I may just use again in future. I bought it specifically for this model because the text on the Mr. Whatever web site says it’s for metal and resin as well as plastic.

I've found it to be an excellent primer for giving adhesion on mixed media like resin & metal. I use the airbrush version, and whilst it does it's job really well, it isn't as opaque as other Mr primers.

[Guest]

The opaqueness is something I noticed too. It seems to adhere well on the resin and metal parts, but I could still see some of the Rs and Ls I had written on the splash panels through the primer. They disappeared when I sprayed the whole model with Tamiya XF-80 light grey last night, though.