Excuse the flurry of posts, the build is a little more progressed than the previous posts reflect so I'm adding updates to keep everything in the right order.
The hull has been stripped out, the battery box removed with a dremmel along with the plastic idler mounts, rear engine doors, exhausts and transmission cover.
It's looking a little rough at the moment but I need to fill the exhaust holes in with plasticard, glue the battery lid in place, P38 car filler the gaps and sand everything smooth in preparation to cut the hull into 3 parts in order to lengthen it (something I'm not looking forward to!).
When I build I flit from one thing to another so I've already started work on detailing the turret
I've added a stowage box to the back of the radio box. It's made solely out of plastic card and the measurements have been made by eye as there isn't that great amount of references for one. I also addressed the simplistic detail on the radio box which had no lid detail, so I cut a recess in the top, and fitted grab handles. I also used humbrol model filler and Tamiya extra thin cement to make the moulded in weld seams blend in with the turret, otherwise there would have been a weird looking gap.
The resin pieces are quite brittle on the turret so I've used some of the HengLong parts instead as they are stronger and fit perfectly.
I used the bottom part of the turret and gun mount, including the part that allows the gun manlet to move up and down. The 17pdr barrel fits snugly in the manlet with a little bit of dremmiling of the plastic parts to get it to fit all the way in.
The commanders periscope was missing from the kit so
http://www.forgebeartanks.com/store/c1/ ... ducts.html sent me a mato commander cupola in the post free of charge. Unfortunately it was too large for the kit so I popped the metal periscope cover off and fitted it to a piece of plasticard that was cut in to a circle. Once the periscope protector is fitted and the whole thing painted you'll never no the difference!
I've also added a few more details to the turret including weld seams to the appliqué armour, hatch supports blade sight and mount on the rear of the turret (does anyone know what that mount is for?). I also added a handle to the commanders hatch and MG mount using plastic rod.
Weld seams were created with humbrol model filler and Tamiya thin cement to smooth it out and a scalpel blade to impress the weld seams. On the blade sight mount and loaders hatch support I used a tooth pick cut to a flat fine point.
Overall I'm not to impressed with the accuracy of this kit. For £150 I expect a little more detail and for it to be accurate- P.S I'm not a rivet counter, honest!
