|
|
Modeller Build Logs
Tasca M32 Recovery Vehicle w/ T1E1 Mine Roller |
| By James Wechsler | | Started: | Apr 15, 2008 | | Updated: | Jun 19, 2008 |
|
First off let me say that Paul Owen is a great guy, even if he is a Vancouver Canucks fan. Having built 44 Shermans, I really hadn’t planned on buying the Tasca M4A1 kit since I’d built that variant a few times over. But Paul sent me this kit and it is a really, really great gift. So I got motivated to do something special.
After thinking about it for a while, I realized that simply building this kit as a gun tank really didn’t get me excited. Then it dawned on me, it would make the perfect conversion base for an M32 Armored Recovery Vehicle. I mean the old Italeri kit was just staring at me and screaming ‘I need a new hull, suspension, and transmission cover!’
So there it was, my mega project. But then I got to thinking a little more. Why not go further? Let’s scratch build the T1E1 ‘Earthworm’ mine roller! Never heard of this massive contraption? Check here:
http://www.jedsite.info/engineer/tango-number-us/t1_series/t1e1/t1e1-intro.html
But wait, there’s more. The M32 has two huge hatches on the turret structure that just scream ‘interior’. At last, my project has reached planning fruition. This blog will be of an M32 ARV w/T1E1 Mine Roller and a full interior.
Plan on a lot of chapters. |
|
|
|
| Preparing the Hull | Apr 21, 2008 |
The Tasca kit is a wonderful model but it is not really set up for an interior. There are a lot of ejector pin marks and some large recesses where the suspension mounts to the side of the hull. All these had to be filled and sanded smooth.
One item I really needed to think through was the firewall between the fighting compartment and the engine bay. Tasca provides this part but without detail. CMK provides a very well detailed part but it is intended for use in the old Dragon M4A1 kit. The problem is that the Tasca part is a key piece of the hull assembly and acts like a jig to keep all of the other parts correctly aligned. So I didn’t want to simply leave it off because I was concerned that the lower hull would end up misaligned and then I’d have a hard time fitting it to the upper hull at a later stage.
I ended up removing the locating channel on the hull bottom but not on the hull sides. My logic was that I could still use the Tasca part to make sure the location of the other pieces was correct. I could remove it later and replace it with the CMK part by not gluing it in place. But removing the location channel on the lower hull would have been very hard. The channels on the hull sides are easier to remove since there is direct access to them. Hope this works.
Finally I removed the rivets from the outside of the hull. The Tasca kit represents a riveted lower hull but most Shermans had a welded hull. Normally I wouldn’t care too much and might have blown off this step. But I just bought Mission Models’ Microchisel and I was dying to try it out. It worked great and I popped off the rivets cleanly with only a light sanding required afterward.
|
 |
|
|
