1:72 Scale Sherman V, Lower Hull

I picked up a 1:72 kit at the bargain store last week, and I started work on it this morning. The "Tulip" was a pretty rare conversion, limited to one battalion of British guards. I'll be leaving the rocket launchers off and building this as a straight Sherman V.

First up are the wheels. Each bogie contains four parts, one of which is not visible once the assembly is built. I'm leaving off the sprocket for now to help make painting easier. I'll glue it in when I attach the tracks.

The two halves of the casing don't quite align. If I were doing this right, I guess I would fill that gap with some putty, then sand it down. I'm not going to bother, since I don't think this part of the bogie will be visible once the build is done.

The transmission cover comes next, and this is a good time to look at how tiny the kit's photoetch is. I'll be replacing the tow lug mounts. I had to fold that tiny piece of brass to get it to that shape.

Then I cut away the kit's styrene tow lug mount and sanded the transmission cover smooth.

Here's a good comparison of the styrene and brass.

Both replacement lug mounts.

Completed transmission cover. The towing lugs are now attached to the replacement mounts. These are so thin that I couldn't remove the little wisp of plastic where the sprue attached without breaking them to pieces.

One more insanely small piece of photoetch: that handle is almost too small for me to see with the naked eye. It's so small, you can hardly make out the bottom arm.