Desert Rat Achilles

[Beekster]

The pair of Tamiya Achilles kits arrived from Hong Kong today:


At first glance they look wonderful, just like the standard M10 kits which preceded them. It appears that virtually all of the relevant British bits are here, at least for the turret. There's no No. 19 radio set, of course, since that sits in the driver's compartment and Tamiya doesn't give us one. I'll rummage around to see if I have one somewhere, otherwise I'll locate a resin piece and order a few. This is hardly the only kit which lacks proper radio equipment for a Commonwealth example.

[JCON]

Very cool!!!

[Beekster]

Indeed! I don't anticipate any serious fit issues, though I may have to shave a few tabs and fill a few locating points, particularly for the main gun stowage in the turret. The rounds aren't quite the same size as the US 3" rounds, but until I build up those subassemblies I won't know for sure how they fit in the earlier turret design. Must of the rest will be simple parts swapping, with careful attention to references. The British rearranged tool stowage outside and various fittings inside, but there's nothing inherently difficult about moving stuff around.

I do have an Academy No. 19 set, but it is somewhat simplified. Undecided as of yet as to whether or not I'll use it.

[dogfish7 (R.I.P.)]

Looking forward to your decision Beek.

[Robbo]

Now this looks an interesting undertaking, very interesting

[Beekster]

Just a little mock-up here. I've reworked the floors for the driver's compartments, though you can see I did use my resin copies. The Academy floor has some stuff at the back of the driver's side where their seats mount on posts. While some early Shermans had that, later variants like the M10 didn't. These parts are proof-of-concept pieces; I will probably modify the original kit part using these methods to make it more accurate before I do another mold. Everything fits pretty well here, which is gratifying. Before any of this goes in for good, there are a bunch of bolt heads (nuts, actually) to be added to the side walls where the long bolts mounting the suspension bogies came through the hull side. And the seat mounts have to go in there too before the transmission, drive shaft, and floors can go in for good. The bottom of those floors is skimmed with .005" sheet superglued to the resin, so that I can glue them normally and nudge them around a bit before the glue sets up.

[dogfish7 (R.I.P.)]

Will this portion be visible from the Turret opening Beekster?

[Beekster]

May 15, 2020 14:28:54 GMT -6 dogfish7 (R.I.P.) said:

Will this portion be visible from the Turret opening Beekster?

It is partially visible from that direction unless you have crew dudes obscuring the view, or have fitted overhead cover either official or unofficial.  And it is fully visible with the drivers' hatches open, as they will be.

Unless a build is straight out of the box, per IPMS rules (and probably AMPS, too; I haven't looked lately), if a subject is open-topped then the interior is supposed to be in there and complete.  Same goes for a closed-top vehicle which has the hatches open, unless crew figures obscure the view.  Since this one will be sitting still without crew, the interior needs to be more complete than Tamiya provides if it ever sees a show table.  Conversely, an M10 built with the drivers' hatches closed and overhead cover (official or unofficial; there were multiple designs) could be shown with only the turret & sponson interior done, as the kits provide for, since the sight lines forward will be almost totally obscured.  I do plan to do one that way; the other standard M10 kit I have will get the late style turret parts from the Achilles and I will fabricate one of the field-expedient overhead cover kits for it.  If that doesn't obscure the view forward quite enough, I will use imperfect castings to create the right general shapes up front and call it a day.

[dogfish7 (R.I.P.)]

Thanks. I was too lazy to go out in the garage and dig out my copy of the M 10. I'm glad you're letting it all show.

[Beekster]

Still working on necessary castings in the background; got a transmission shift linkage that I can use despite a bubble-marred cast but a little piece of the mold broke away. I want to ensure I get good copies of this piece so I'm going to do another mold with some changes to it.

Also have been on a bit of a spending spree. Coming from David Doyle books is his title on the Achilles, and via Amazon the OOP (and expensive) Progres Publishing book on the Achilles. The latter title should be particularly helpful; I have other volumes in the series on the Firefly variants and they are superb. So that's more reference material on the way.

From eBay, I did order a Resicast No. 19 radio set.

From Tiger Model Designs (www.newtmd.com) I ordered two sets of their detailed M10 driver's hatches and mounts. There's a loop detail missing on the Tamiya mounts; unfortunately mine are already installed for this project. Karl Van Sweden's work on TMD's masters will serve as inspiration for my own work to add the missing detail on this project and one of the other M10 kits in the stash.

[JCON]

Sounds good to this guy!!!

[Beekster]

Aaahhhh, the little joys of cross-kitting are without number... See the image below, with Thing One on the left and Thing Two on the right:


Thing One is the front roof panel from the mid-production M10 and Thing Two is the same panel from the Achilles kit, which is a late-production example. There are some obvious differences between the two, most notably visible at the top of the picture. Less obvious is a slight change in contours of the outside edges just a bit forward of the reflective highlight that marks where the roof curves downward towards the front. Now, the real M10 turret didn't change in this area when the late duckbill version went into production; everything that was altered was at the back. But what Tamiya has done is subtly alter the profiles where the roof meets the sides. The side profile isn't really altered, it's just a slightly different bit of engineering.

What it means is that I have to alter both pieces. Since Tamiya's fit is so precise, I don't want to try to sand the sides of Thing One and Thing Two to give them new homes, each in the turret of the other. No, I'll have to alter Thing One to match the changes at the front for the 17pdr, and alter Thing Two to look like Thing One since the late turret will eventually get the standard 3" gun of the M10. There's going to be some alterations on the underside of each roof pane, too...good thing I have those new references coming.

At least the 17pdr gun itself is a work of art:

[JCON]

Nice gun!!!

[Beekster]

Whatever the challenges of cross-kitting, these are still Tamiya products and go together accordingly:


Thing One on the left has been altered to look like Thing Two originally did, and Thing Two on the right has been changed to look like Thing One once did. While there's still some fettling and cleanup to be done on both roof panels, each one fits perfectly onto the turret for which it was designed. It really was easier to do the plastic strip work to change these parts than to try to reshape each of them to fit the other turret where they weren't designed to fit.

Also notable here is how much beefier the 17pdr breech assembly is than the M7 3" gun. Both guns fire similarly sized projectiles, but the British gun has a much bigger propellant charge. That and a longer barrel account for its better penetrating ability. No, I'm not really building both kits in parallel; the M10 with the late turret isn't going any further than this for now. But since I had to do the work on the turret roof panels, it seemed equally sensible to build up the 3" gun so that both turrets could be mocked up to check the fit of the roof panels. Yeah, this can be done without the guns in place but it's much easier with them in there; the friction fit of the breech assembly in the poly-cap trunnions helps hold things together.

[JCON]

Looking good!!!

[ogrejohn]

Nice progress Beeks! 

[dogfish7 (R.I.P.)]

Amazing differences, when seen side by side.

[JED]

Good work Beekster

[Beekster]

This arrived yesterday:


It's long OOP, and don't ask what I paid for it. But it's worth it's weight in gold-pressed latinum, just like the author's other titles on Firefly Vc and Ic tanks, if detailing an interior is the objective. As expected, it has revealed numerous shortcomings of the available M10 kits, inside and out, which is about what I expected. I've already started on some of the additions which this book makes clear should be added. More mock-ups here, and it's going to get real crowded in there before this is over:








Bolt details for the inside at the locations where the front bogie and the differential cover attach have been added to the side walls. The shape of the transmission has been rounded off at the corners, and I will sand the bottom a bit more for clearance and to get it to sit at a bit more of a backward angle. There are boxes to be built to go atop the tan drive shaft piece, and I may yet have to pop the pedals off the driver's position and chop some more off the front. It fits fine, but until I get the two control rods built (in process), I won't know for sure. Those rods should be more or less vertical, so if they have a really noticeable angle I'll have to chop the floor so that it fits further forward. Might have to sand down the thickness, too.

There are missing sponson bulkheads forward that Tamiya missed; those can be cribbed from an Academy kit (I have a couple...) and cut down. They are too tall to fit the Tamiya kit, a consequence of Academy's dimensional errors which makes their kit too tall. I will probably mold and cast my modified parts, since I have three other Tamiya M10/Achilles kits to do eventually and the bulkheads are definitely visible if the front hatches are open.

And the seats...now those are going to be a job of work. Academy's seats come with posts which go into their floor, which works but is correct for early dry-stowage Shermans but not M10s. AFV Club tried to portray the right thing, each seat supported by two rods which attach to brackets beneath the seat and then to pivot locations on a side wall bracket, with a spring behind. A lever on the seat allows it to go up or down by way of the crew member using their weight to balance against the spring until they get comfortable and lock the seat in place again. I'll post images when this is further along, but doing it right requires scratchbuilding brackets beneath the seat and drilling them for the rods; bending and cutting four identical brass rods, and making the side plates with pivots, and springs. Fortunately I have two remaining from a stash I acquired from a former employer decades ago.

[dogfish7 (R.I.P.)]

Your usual amazing details abound Beekster. Very nice works.