Halinski Sherman M4A4 VC Firefly

the missing up dates

Well these road wheels are not gone as well as I hoped, the sides went in all right.
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The outer end of the spokes all cut out and shaped.
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And glued in place.
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The main section of the spokes cut out and shaped.
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And all glued in place.
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The end pieces glued in place on the hubs and the edges all painted in. Hurray the road wheels finished.
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Road wheels fitted in place onto the suspension carriages and either end covered up by the fixing nuts.
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The end of the first part of the update more to follow.

The second part of the update, with the suspension carriages made up
there was nothing for it but to glue them onto the tank hull. They glued
on well but being handed the did need doublechecking that I was glueing
them on the right way round with the return roller to the back of the
tank. Also the two front carriages had smaller fixing flanges to the
base of the hull.
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Now
if I followed instructions through, I would have had the nice little
job of cutting out all the track parts. Instead I could just reach into a
cardboard tray and take out some I made earlier. Now my tracks are good
fit into the sprockets and need just a little help to sit in the nicely
so I split the tracks in half. I then threaded one half from the back
over the idler wheel and over the top of the return rollers fix the end
into the sprocket and turned it round to spread over the sprocket wheel I
then joined the two halves together. Then it was the turn of joining
the other end up. I ensure that the idler wheels which are eccentrically
mounted were turned to face inwards and then lined up to ends the track
and discovered that I needed to discard 2 treads to get a nice tight
fit as Sherman tank tracks were fixed tight. Once I got the tracks
joined up I then turned the idler wheels round to take up the slack, I
think I could probably get a bit tighter by removing another link but I
think they look tight as they are and I don't want put a strain on the
idler wheels.
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The
next stage in the build is to add all the external fittings to the tank
hull. Next part was the bit of shaped armour covering the old
machine-gun opening and then the two front lifting brackets.
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I then added the extra armour in front of the Hatch fronts.
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That's it for now starting to look bit more like a tank now with the track on.

On with the update, made up and fitted the air vents to the front and
one just behind the turret also made up and fitted to Keats to hold the
towing cable.
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In the process of making up 3 fuel tank caps.
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The 3 fuel tank caps fitted in place I stuck a little strip of paper to represent a catch to one side of each cap.
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Starting to make up the 2 front hatches.
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The domes fixed the top of the hatches.
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That's it for now