Medium Tank M3 from MiniArt — not a Sherman for once!

[Guest]

If you can build the exterior, then the interior is within your skill too, I would say. It is a lot more work, though, and you have to think carefully about what will and won’t be accessible for painting later on — as I hope this build demonstrates. Better to paint too much in advance than too little, though.

[Guest]

On to the gun (not that any of the previous is finished yet, of course ). This is very nicely done, but I have an Aber aluminium barrel that I felt looks better than the plastic one in the kit. Don’t get me wrong: the kit barrel is certainly acceptable, and even includes the rifling, as does the Aber one:

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One oddity about the gun is that it has a separate breech block that can be positioned open or closed, but there is no opening for the cartridge to go into with the block open … I glued the gun halves together and when dry, clamped them in a modeller’s vise so I could drill through from the barrel end with a 3 mm bit. This is easy, because the barrel is hollow and only the chamber end is solid. After cleaning up the mess left when the drill broke through (before I glued in the breech block), I have a satisfactory chamber opening:

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Now for that Aber barrel. I compared it to the kit one and found it was about 6 mm longer …

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Luckily, Sherman by R.P. Hunnicutt includes the overall length of the 75 mm gun M2, which in 1:35 scale turns out to be 66.6 mm. As you can see above, the kit gun is the correct length — the gap between rear end and barrel is accounted for by the thickness of the gun shield, that sits between the two. I suspect the Aber barrel is intended for the old Tamiya or the less-old Academy M3 kit, that probably has a recess for the barrel.

This, of course means I had three options: saw off the barrel, turn down its rear end, or cut down the internal part of the gun. I discarded the first because I don’t trust myself to make a square cut on a tapered barrel, and the second because that same taper means the barrel is hard to get into a lathe.

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So, I took 6 mm off the front of the gun. Rather than try to go around it, I just cut through the bottom recoil cylinder because its front end sits entirely out of sight inside the gun shield. The top one, though, is where the shield attached to the gun so cutting that is not really an option.

The barrel has a 2 mm diameter extension, but the gun’s internal diameter is about 3 mm, so I cut some bits of 1 by 0.5 mm strip and glued them inside. I also drilled through the gun shield and opened it up to the full size of the recess that the kit barrel would have glued into:

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And here’s what it looks like with all three pieces together:

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[JR]

Nice work Jakko. Agree with your method of assembly, their way would cause more problems trying to line everything up.

[Guest]

This one does too, but I still think I chose the lesser of two evils Of course, any kit with an interior is going to be complex, so you need to question even more than usual if the assembly sequence will actually work.

[Jim R]

Great work Jakko. Also really clear photos and explanation of what's going on. Well done with the barrel - looks good.
Jim

[Guest]

Thanks. The rest of the 75 mm gun should be plain sailing, except it will also need lots of plumbing added for the stabilisation gear. Hopefully the photos I found will suffice for that

[Tim Marlow]

Looking good Jakko. Nice recovery on the gun.

[Guest]

Thanks, this was easier than I thought it would be: just cut the plastic instead of the aluminium. Of course, if you use the plastic barrel then none of this is necessary, but as I had gotten the barrel set with the kit, I figured: why not use them?

[Guest]

The engine is slow going, for some reason. Well, largely because I don’t particularly like building engines because they always need stuff adding to them to look good …

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This is just the kit parts so far, the ones I showed earlier but now painted and with some bits added to the back, with the inlet pipes, wiring harness (the light grey ring) and magnetos (the black protrusions the wiring harness connects to); the exhaust pipes are still loose, as you can see. I wasn’t sure if the instructions were right about the colours, so I asked advice from someone who has access to a real R975 engine and he sent me some photos and explanations that came in very handy to paint these bits.

Most of the real engine was painted black, which I replicated by painting it dark grey and then adding a black wash and a grey drybrush. The inlet and exhaust pipes are stainless steel — so don’t paint them rust colour! (Which I had originally intended to do.) Instead, I used light grey, the same as the wiring harness ring, and added a dark grey and an earth-coloured wash over that. On the real tank, the pipes turn a very dark grey, almost black, after some use, but I want to portray a fairly new engine so I went with the matt stainless steel colour.

Now the really fun bit of trying to figure out what wiring to add, where, and how.

[adt70hk]

That's coming on nicely Jakko. Well done.

Andrew

[Guest]

Thanks. I’ve still not started on the cabling because I don’t like that kind of work … and as I also have the plumbing to add for the gun stabiliser, I guess I’d better just bite the bullet …

[Guest]

More engine work done:

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I painted the rear mounting bracket red, because my source said they were white, black or red, and I felt this a nice contrast with the white engine compartment and the black engine. I’ve added one bit of cabling, but it needs more.

Here’s the 75 mm gun in its mounting:

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Still missing are the top plate and the bits that attach to that, of course. I glued the gun at a fixed elevation, because the elevating mechanism fouls the side of the shield, and can get knocked off as it’s only glued by a small area. I taped up a bit of the gun barrel because on the real tank there’s a bare steel area, and an easy way to replicate that is with bare aluminium.

There should be all kinds of plumbing for the gun stabiliser, but I test-fitted the gun into the hull with the roof on, and just about nothing will be visible of any of it, so I’m not going to bother adding it.

[Graeme C.]

Like the engine Jakko, you're putting plenty of extra detail in this build.

[Guest]

To be honest: so far, exactly one thing — the bit of copper wire This is a very well-detailed model straight from the box, and the only things I’ve noticed that are really missing is part of the engine wiring and most of the gun stabiliser’s hydraulic lines. I find the former to be a bit strange, because plenty of other pipework in the engine compartment is included, both for the engine and the fire extinguishers, but somehow they missed all the cabling that leads to the magnetos.

[Guest]

I thought I’d start on the suspension …

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A known problem with this model is that the axle holes in the wheels aren’t big enough. On the left is how far you’ll get the axle in without forcing it, while on the right, I’ve drilled out the opening to 2.2 mm.

Be careful that you can assemble the wheels inside-out on their suspension arms. On one side of the wheel, there are two little nodules near the hub: these are the grease nipples and they should go on the outside. (An easier way to get them on right is that the side with the moulding seam goes on the outside.)

Much the same applies to the arms themselves: they have a regular nut on one side and a crenelated nut on the other. The latter goes on the inside, towards the hull of the tank.

Also, MiniArt would have you clean up a little rod that sits between the two arms, but it’s far easier to replace it with a bit of plastic rod. I used 0.5 mm, that seems about right.

Problem solved, let’s build a bogie!

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This is the two bogie halves with the springs, the spring levers and one wheel arm installed. This leaves a big enough gap that the wheel arm will simply fall out … Without the springs and levers, though:

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… the arm fits neatly. Great …

There is an axle attached to the springs, to which the levers mount. This has narrower ends that fall into holes in the bogie halves. Either the thicker part of the axle is too wide or the holes are too shallow, I’m not sure yet, but it needs fixing.

Also, if you’re building this kit, be careful to get the levers (parts Ed6) on the right way round. When seen from above, the levers should curve outward a little. It feels like you can’t put them on wrong without forcing them onto the axle, though, because I have the impression both axle and mounting hole in the levers are slightly tapered. But still, take care to put them on the right way.