RC Tank Warfare community hobby forum

Sure. I'm away from home for a few weeks, so it may take a while. Send me a pm with your email.

That’s fine. I’m having an issue deciding if the back of mine is right or not but I think it’s factory dependant so may get away with it

Which part of the country are you from. Was thinking I could bring you my hatches to take a mould from or send them to you if that helps?

Exhibitedbrute wrote:Which part of the country are you from. Was thinking I could bring you my hatches to take a mould from or send them to you if that helps?

He’s in Australia so that a fair hike !!

Yeah a little. Could explain the delays with his hatches though

Thanks for the offer - I'm sure they will turn up eventually. That is unless they were on the APL England...

I would hope they would be coming by air rather than sea

It seems like a long time since my last post - I finally have some significant progress.

The hatches from Christian Ludwig eventually arrived. Christian has someone else make the cast metal parts, so he in turn was waiting for a delivery. All good now and I am so happy to have them. Thank you Christian!



I sized them up against the large hatch hull and decided on locations based on photos of 1:1 Shermans. After removing the originals, I then cut away the excess.



The holes were filled with plasticard, and then I needed to create the Jane Russell bulges in the front. I found some old Tiger exhaust shields that had the right curvatures and cut them to suit.



I needed to move the hull vent further forward, again using some spare model parts. Unfortunately the geography of the Mato hull doesn't match the M4A1 shape exactly, so the vent cannot be the correct shape. It is what it is. Then came a lot of filing, filling and sanding to blend things together.



A touch of primer helps to find the faults, before stippling some Mr Hobby primer to add the cast finish.



And after what seems an eternity, the first coat of some olive drab goes on. I followed the Andy's Hobby Headquarters recipe for lightening the Tamiya paint to a more reasonable colour.

Wow! Your body work skills are perfect. Everything is blended so well.

Faultless, and I’m no bc Sherman fan