US Army M32B1 Tank Recovery Vehicle

[Guest]

Always used thick leather gloves w/gauntlets when handling wire cable.

You were clearly not in the US Army, then:

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[Airborne01]

Most excellent to date Jakko!
Steve

[Guest]

Thanks, I hope it continues Here is the interior with a black wash and a light olive drybrush to bring out the details:

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I also painted the seats and mortar ammo tubes black, while I put some dark yellow on the fire extinguishers. They need to be red, but red over olive drab just gives a dark, muddy colour, so because dark yellow covers well, putting that on first should make the red go on much more easily later.

[Jim R]

Great looking interior. White or OD - sounds as if you could have gone with either. Red is difficult over certain colours, don't really know why as it doesn't seem particularly transparent.
Jim

[adt70hk]

That really is coming on very nicely indeed Jakko. Top notch work indeed!!

ATB.

Andrew

[Tim Marlow]

Great looking interior. White or OD - sounds as if you could have gone with either. Red is difficult over certain colours, don't really know why as it doesn't seem particularly transparent.
Jim

Red pigment is very transparent Jim. Worse than white in my opinion. Best way to get coverage is to underpaint in a red brown, like cavalry brown or red leather from Vallejo. For a brighter colour like scarlet underpaint in something like amaranthe red.

[minitnkr]

Top marks Jakko. No, never served, so never used cable w/strands that large. All the winch cables I used had much smaller & more numerous strands so you would shred the flesh off your hands handling steel winch cable that'd been heavily used for any length of time. That heavy stuff prolly stowed easier too as the light stuff was a real PITA to get back on the spool correctly.

[Guest]

Great looking interior. White or OD - sounds as if you could have gone with either.

Probably, but my impression is that only the early vehicles were white on the inside, so I felt OD to be a safer bet.

Red is difficult over certain colours, don't really know why as it doesn't seem particularly transparent.

It is, yellow and red paints are almost always transparent to some degree, and benefit a lot from having a lighter colour underneath that does cover well, especially when you brush-paint them. Not a problem once you know, but annoying before then

No, never served, so never used cable w/strands that large.

I’ve seen cables that large, but certainly never handled any

All the winch cables I used had much smaller & more numerous strands so you would shred the flesh off your hands

I know exactly what you mean. The awning on my bedroom window has a thin (maybe 3 mm) steel cable and I need to be careful that it doesn’t cut my fingers when I need to unjam it (as happens from time to time).

[Caustik Filth]

Impressive Jakko,
Great interior, informative too, loving it!
Cheers Rob

[Guest]

The interior is mostly finished:

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I glued the cable to the winch drum before glueing that into the floor, leaving most of the cable rolled up so I can work out the length it needs to be after painting rather than beforehand, like Tasca would have you do it. I’ll put it inside the hull like the last two photos show, so I can just thread it through when the rest of the model is done.

I still need to add the hinged cover over the winch, but because that will be open and resting against one of the seats, I can only do that after glueing the hull halves together. They’re still loose now because the driver isn’t completely painted yet, and he needs to go in first. I’m also looking for some other stuff I can put in to make the vehicle look more lived-in.

[Guest]

The main accessories I found in my spares boxes that I could add to the interior, are a helmet and an M1928 pack, so these were duly painted. So was the driver:

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I did this the quick way: paint the base colour, drybrush with a lighter shade (in this case, white for the flesh and the uniform) and apply Army Painter “soft tone”. The face additionally got some thinned clear red added to make the chap seem colder. The pack and helmet were painted in a similar way.

All of them in place in the hull:

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And with the upper hull on, though still loose:

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I need a way to mask this head for painting, of course, and after some thought I settled on cutting a piece from a bag intended for wrapping up sandwiches:

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This doesn’t stick to the figure so it won’t lift the paint, and can be pulled up through the driver’s hatch with no trouble at all. I tested it first to see what model cement does to it, and the material is impervious to that, so there’s no risk of holes appearing in it because I’m glueing something to the model

At the rear of the hull, I made covers for the grouser compartments from plastic card:

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The kit supplies the air scoops that were fitted over the grouser compartments on M4, MA1 and M4A4 tanks. The M32B1 was converted from the M4A1, but on many, the scoops were apparently removed and replaced by the simple lids that the M4A2 and M4A3 had instead. The reason for this puzzles me a bit, because the scoops were there so that air would be drawn over the fuel tanks (forward of them in the sponsons) to cool them, and that would seem just as necessary on the M32 as on the gun tank.

The grouser compartments, by the way, were stowage spaces at the back of the tank in which grousers were stored that could be bolted to the tracks for greater traction in soft ground. Here’s what that looked like, on an M4A4 in this case:

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(We’re looking towards the right rear of the tank here, from inside the engine compartment.) One side of the grouser compartment has unfortunately been cut away, to allow access for sandblasting, but the openings for the airflow over the fuel tanks are clear in the thick bulkhead (which is part of the tank’s rear armour). The fuel tanks themselves would have been to the left of the bulkhead in this photo.

Anyway, I made the lids by just putting a scoop on some 0.5 mm plastic card and cutting around it with a knife to trim it to the same size, then rounding off the corners with a file. The bolt head in the centre is punched from some thinner plastic card.

[Jim R]

Excellent work as usual Jakko. Figure look excellent, shame so little will be seen. That a good idea using the sandwich bag. Coiling up the cable inside and then threading it and cutting it sounds a sensible way to go.
Jim

[Guest]

I originally thought of using regular masking tape, but the figure’s right shoulder is very close to the roof, and even without that it would be difficult to pull tape off in the confines of the hatch. Add to this the worry of lifting paint from his head and body with the tape, and a thin, non-stick cover seemed a better idea

[JR]

You were clearly not in the US Army, then:

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Ha, and nor was that actor in the photos. Any winch rope will tear your hands to pieces pulling out like that !

[JR]

Nice idea with that plastic to cover the driver, and to have tested the method first .looking interesting .