Greg's 1/48 Tamiya Sherman Firefly

[Greg_147]

Hello all,

I'll be having a crack at a 1/48 Firefly for this build. It doesn't look like there's a lot to the kit, but it comes with a metal hull which is a nice addition. It also screws to the upper hull, so it looks like I can build both separately and just screw them together as and when I need to, which is quite handy.

In the interest of using up spare parts from the kit-box, I'll also be doing some crew members and a small display base. I'll be doing the tank with hatches open, so depending on if the crew are in them or not I may end up scratch-building some form of interior.

[A_J_Rimmer]

Excellent choice!

[Jim R]

A metal hull - that's unusual. I like 1/48, seems a nice compromise scale.

[Guest]

The early Tamiya 1:48 kits have a die-cast hull, which IIRC was intended to give the kits a more realistic weight. Not my cup of tea, but I think I read the more recent ones have plastic hulls but a metal plate to put into it to give the same effect.

[Geoffers]

Nice Greg, good luck with your build :thumb2:

Geoff.

[Lee Drennen]

Very nice I’ll be watching this one I need to get this one for my collection.

[Lee Drennen]

metal plate

Most of the ones I have are half rounds. Not plates.

[Guest]

Ah, that was it, then — a metal weight, anyway

[Greg_147]

So I've made a start, and it's gone together quite well so far. The hull doesn't have a huge amount of steps, but a lot of the parts are going to be additions once the paint is done. I'm also leaving the running gear and tracks until later; as the upper hull just screws off, it should make painting the sections much easier.









The first main issue was the hatches - all of them have injector marks on the inside, which is no good as I want to have 3/4 of the hatches open. So out comes the putty, and hopefully it should look less obvious once painted.

[A_J_Rimmer]

Great start Greg, that looks to have gone together well.

I assume you're having to glue parts to the metal hull with CA glue or similar?

[Guest]

That goes together a lot faster than its 1:35 scale counterparts, that’s for sure

[scottie3158]

That looks like a nice kit, the detail looks nice and sharp.

[Geoffers]

Nice start Greg :thumb2:

Injector pin marks are annoying and not something I would associate with Tamiya . Hopefully the putty treatment will do the trick.

Geoff

[Greg_147]

I assume you're having to glue parts to the metal hull with CA glue or similar?

Indeed, standard super glue seems to have done the job so far!


A bit more work has been done on this one. One of the problems the Tamiya kits seems to have is that the hull ends over the tracks, which lets a of light in and looks quite obvious. Not idea if the hatches are going to be open!



So my fix has been to cut a couple of strips of cardboard and superglue them in place on the interior. Crude, but it does the job!




Much better!



Next up the running gear:



And then some primer. One Firefly, ready for the first coat.

[Guest]

Those open sponsons were a misfeature of Tamiya 1:35 scale tank kits from the 1960s through the 1990s at least, and just when they started to release new kits that actually had them closed, they do it again in 1:48 scale …! The normal solution was to glue some plastic card in, but paper card will work just fine too. Everything is better than those open sponsons floors.