Desert Rat Achilles

[Beekster]

Confession time:  Ever have one of those project ideas that you know you really should leave alone for a while, but you start fooling around with anyway?  One where you see pretty pictures and the fantasizing starts, and before you know it fresh plastic is being cut even though you don't even have all the materials for the project?  One where the primal urges just get the better of you?

Cue the soundtrack to the musical "Hamilton":  "Lord, show me how to say no to this...I don't know how to say no to this..."

Well, in my case the pretty pictures are these:


This is a page scan from that recently acquired book about British M10/M10C units in the ETO.  The offending inspirational materials are numbered 2, 3, and 4.  They are a photo and artwork of an M10C of the 65 AT Regiment in the spring of 1945.  This regiment was attached to the famed 7th Armoured Division, the Desert Rats, for the entire campaign from Normandy to the end.  Several things to note here:  Most obvious is that this vehicle has applique armor fitted, which is most unusual.  Many sources indicate that US Army Ordnance never ordered any applique plates as the original design called for; indeed the threaded bosses on the hull sides were eventually deleted.  But either the plates were made and supplied via Lend-Lease, or the drawings were and the British made their own.  Also of note is the turret design; it is the mid-production style with the wedge counterweights just like the nice Tamiya M10 kit (I have two of those).  

Now, that kit is not an Achilles 17pdr variant, and I need one of those.  A pair are on order from Hong Kong as I write.  It's clear that this vehicle also has no overhead cover fitted to the turret, which is a bit odd considering the improved hull protection.  That means I need to make an interior for the driver's compartment, which means making molds and casting parts (and another how-to thread on that process).

But I couldn't help myself, and I had to limber up the slicing & sanding tools to get a start on working out whether or not I could reasonably fabricate the applique armor.  This is what I accomplished over the weekend, in between work on other projects:








What you see here is just tacked on with white glue for photos and cut from Evergreen .030" sheet using North West Short Line tools.  The turret and glacis pieces, once trimmed up, can be attached to the relevant parts any time since the locations for the hex heads & washers on top are easily visible from around the edges of the plate.  The sides are more challenging, but I think I have a method worked out.  I will apply liquid glue to each of the armor bosses on one side, and stick the panel on for a few minutes before pulling it off.  This will leave circular smudges on the plate.  I can put the hex nuts & washers directly on those locations, then use that plate on the opposite side of the hull.  The right side will also need a cutout for the antenna, which will require some careful measurement.

This one won't go much further until the Achilles kits show up in about three weeks, but I'm happy with how the applique looks so far.  Now it's time to shoot some more primer on that Ram Badger project...

[JCON]

There he goes again off the deep end!!! Lord have mercy!!!

[JED]

I'm in for the long haul 👍

[Beekster]

Apr 21, 2020 14:06:48 GMT -6 JED said:

I'm in for the long haul 👍

And a long haul it will be.  I've continued to work on the applique armor problem while primer dries on the Ram Badger and glue dries on footman's loops for tool straps on the M31.  And as with many things Sherman-family related, all is not as it seems.  All the available kits, Tamiya included, deal with the armor bosses as two-piece affairs:  A part on the hull, and a second one which sits on the first and has the washer and bolt head.  All of these are designed so that there is a visible gap beneath the washer, between it and the top of the welded armor boss.  The real thing looks like bottom left when assembled, and the adjacent shot of the antenna mount shows an armor boss without a bolt or washer (scan from Squadron's Walk-Around title)


What this means is that I can't just put the Tamiya bolt/washer parts on the outside of the applique plates, since they have structure that is actually part of the armor boss which should be hidden.  Dealing with this is straightforward, if tedious:  figure out how much the center of the boss should protrude above the ring portion molded to the hull, and punch out discs of suitable thickness and glue them in place.  Then make larger, thinner discs for the washers and glue them to the applique plates along with hex nuts.

I have determined that the glue on, take off method will give me workable locations for the washers on the outside surface of the plates.  The rings left by the bosses are a bit larger than the washer, so I've got a perfect placement marker that will only need a small amount of sanding to clean up afterwards.  But with ten bosses per hull side, eight on the front, and four on each turret side there is a lot of punch work to be done.  So I had better get to it...

[Beekster]

My bad...an even dozen armor bosses per hull side. Back to work with the punch set...

[dogfish7 (R.I.P.)]

You're a glutton for punishment Beekster, but I can't help but watch you work your magic on these obscure beasts you find.

[Beekster]

Here's a slightly larger version of the photo I'm working from:



There are several more interesting features to note here. First of all, we do NOT have a proportion issue here. The dude in front is Maj. General Colin Muir "Tiny" Barber of 15th Scottish Division chatting with the crew. He was 6' 9" tall, thus the inevitable British nickname. Next, this vehicle has the early round-front E4186 differential cover, which Tamiya provides as standard. They also provide the step in the middle. The fenders and lower skirt armor have been removed, and the right side fender mount strip is bent out of shape. I will have to rummage for some P/E for that. Just visible on the diff cover is a vertical section of the inside of the missing fender; more styrene needed here. "Tiny" Barber is obscuring the other side, but I have no doubt that the fender mounts on that side are the same (though possibly not bent). There's a grab handle looped through the middle lower bolts on the glacis armor, something to make from brass rod. It seems that the applique armor is not equally thick everywhere, the sides seem thicker than the glacis & turret plates. I will add .015" stock to the back of my side plates, which would make the scale thickness a bit less than 1.5". The tube coming up from the antenna base location is bent; need to figure out how to do that. There's a vertical weld seam aft of that, and there may be one or two others further aft that aren't visible. The turret plate has a rectangular extension on the top. I think it is simply welded to the top of the applique? It looks thinner than the main plate, and it seems that there are bars welded to the plates to hang those tarps & rucksacks off of. The spare track rack on one side is filled with duckbill end connectors; the lower bracket has two different types (the widths aren't the same). I'm honestly not quite sure how the upper row of end connectors are held there. They aren't situated so that the rack holds them like the lower three. I don't think they are on that cable; that looks like a tow cable and no way would an end connector fit over the tow loop end. I need to think about how this might be done. What looks like a cable reel is sitting on the brush guard behind the right headlight (which has a blackout cover or is painted over), and only the center jerrycan seems to have any means of keeping it there (the grab handle), and that flimsy at best. I can't tell is there is thin rope or wire run through the handles of the cans and tied off somewhere. The steel-cuff tracks are very shiny indeed where they aren't crusted with mud. The location of the photo is near Goch during the Rhineland campaign. Clearly there's a lot of sand in the terrain this tank has been churning through to burnish the tracks that brightly.

[JCON]

Wow he was tall!!!

[dogfish7 (R.I.P.)]

I'm not sure I'd like riding in an open turret with 15 gallons of fuel strapped right in front of me, but the Scottish Giant can see over the smoke.

[Beekster]

Apr 22, 2020 14:28:20 GMT -6 dogfish7 (R.I.P.) said:

I'm not sure I'd like riding in an open turret with 15 gallons of fuel strapped right in front of me, but the Scottish Giant can see over the smoke.

Agreed, though they could have water in them.  In that case, they would form another layer of "armor"...though if they were filled with concrete or sand, they might actually trigger the warhead of a shaped charge.  Not sure thin sheet metal & water would do that.  And if they were creative enough to fill cans with something likely to provide a measure of protection, why position them as shown rather than just welding on a whole row of them?  It's hard to figure out just what they were thinking when puzzling out the reasons for the cans to be placed as they are.

Certainly the applique plates would be helpful against shaped charge rounds since even the small air gap in between the back of the plate and the hull side would disrupt the jet of molten metal.  Probably not quite as useful against a solid shot, but by this time of the war enemy tanks were very scarce indeed, AT guns somewhat less so, and Panzerfausts absolutely ubiquitous...though in the case of all three the professional skill of the crews was sketchy at best.

[Beekster]

Before I get started: Anybody know why my avatar rotated 90 degrees counterclockwise? And how do I fix it?

There is some progress to report. The upper hull and turret halves now have their punched discs inside the armor bosses, and you can see here the front plate is on and most of the washers. Two tiny discs will be the standoffs around which I will bend a grab handle, before adding the larger disc.


And the applique plates have come along nicely. I have added thickness, done some putty work, added washers & bolt heads, and weld seams. The latter are pure guesswork, other than the one behind the antenna opening which is visible in the photo. I just did what made sense. And a question to those of you who weld real things out of real metal: Should I add weld seams to the back of the plates, too?


And some work on the lower hull. To be perfectly honest, I started work on this as soon as I got these kits a couple of years ago to do the engineering to fit a driver's compartment. I also tried then to add the sponson floor to the lower hull, but at the time that didn't turn out too well. That's part of the reason you see stripes of white where they join; additional material was needed to make them fit.


They also have a tendency to warp, which is why I've added stiffeners aft of where the firewall will go. Now, why did I have to do all this? Because this kit wasn't designed for an interior and was developed from the more toy-like 1/48 scale version. Tamiya has you add the ammo stowage to the sponsons, paint them, then glue them into the upper hull. This might work if you don't want to detail the interior, but it is totally unsuitable if an accurate interior is to be fitted. Done my way, the upper hull can be added close to the end of construction after the interior is in, and that project always requires a lot of trial and error to fit things in...which requires the hull top to come on and off easily until you want it locked down for good on a finished, painted interior.

The next images illustrate some of the work required to fit an interior. These first two show what the area looks like now (with more sanding and filling to do), and what an un-modified kit side panel looks like. That thicker area is 42 thousandths higher than the base level of the side wall.





And this is why all this effort is necessary:



These are master patterns in progress mocked up to check the fit. Obviously, those thick side walls have to go to fit the transmission in there, and that is an Academy part which comes from one of their too-narrow M10 kits. It will all work just fine in the end, but this kind of work isn't unusual when fitting an interior where none was intended by the kit designers.

[dogfish7 (R.I.P.)]

Excellent.
You may have changed your photo from it's original location. If I delete or change a photo in Photo Bucket, that will change it here.

[Beekster]

Apr 26, 2020 15:53:59 GMT -6 dogfish7 (R.I.P.) said:

Excellent.
You may have change your photo from it's original location. If I delete or change a photo in Photo Bucket, that will change it here.

Thank you, sir!  I found the original on an archive disk and uploaded it again.  Not sure what happened, though I cleaned out cookies not long ago.  The image was taken outside the museum in Ste. Mere Eglise in Normandy in 2005.  The beard is a little grayer now and I'm a little fatter, but otherwise the likeness is good!

[dogfish7 (R.I.P.)]

Ohhh yehhhhh ....... there's a person in the photo.

[Beekster]

So, about an hour ago I lay in bed this morning in that half awake fog, when sometimes useful stuff presents itself as the brain is doing the boot-up process. This morning the useful stuff requires a small step backwards. It occurred to me that I haven't made provision for the grouser racks on the hull side applique plates, so some minor rework is in order there. Oops. Easy to fix, though, particularly if I sand down the height of those weld seems a little.

[dogfish7 (R.I.P.)]

Who knew??

[JCON]

Beekster knew...

[Beekster]

Now this is looking better! I have reworked the side plates to include the frames for the grouser racks, and replaced the bolt/washer detail. I've added those bits to the front, and made the center grab handle. It is a little too tall, but that's life. It will be more secure support for a jerrycan if I put one there. The hull applique plates are now on for good.






When doing the rework, I also reduced the number of weld seams other than the front ones and moved the remaining ones aft. And I consulted a professional about how welding plates like this should be done: My middle nephew Hunter, a Hull Technician USNR. He confirmed that front and back of plates should be welded when butt-joined like this, so I added weld seams on the back side:


Not seen is work going on at the back of the lower hull, where styrene strip is being added to fill the gaps between the two hulls back there. This isn't Tamiya's fault; built straight from the box none of the stuff I am fixing is visible at all because the bottom, inward-angled light armor strip makes seeing the area impossible. But it's a different story when those plates are cut away to make room for duckbills, or for the E9 spaced suspension with doubled duckbills inside & out seen on some postwar tanks (especially M36s)

[JCON]

Very nice work Beekster!!!

[ogrejohn]

Really looking good!