I have finished the Sherman Crab, and had a great deal of fun doing so. Unfortunately, I didn't take any WIP progress shots as I was so keen to finish the kit. The kit consists of the classic old Airfix Sherman, but with new rubber tracks, and a new casting of the flail gear. Unfortunately, the chains are cast in action mode , so I decided to go for a chains down model. to do so, I used a combination of old jewelery chain from the local charity barn, and plastic flails from the kit. I had also seen a number of flails down modifications of this kit elsewhere on the net, so I decided to give it a crack.
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| Left over jewelery chain and plastic flails. |
Assembly of the Sherman was great fun, but I found putting the flail mechanism together to be somewhat challenging. I also decided to add a .50 cal to the tank. I have seen numerous debates about this online in various forums - essentially saying that it's a big no-no, but like many things, it did happen sometimes, and as time goes on, more research show up quite interesting things. Besides, I like .50 cals. That being said, the 'Tombstone' ammo can is very much a stretch and probably quite wrong - but to me it looks great!
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| The Crabman cometh... |
I don't normally mount tanks on bases, but I felt the fiddly nature of the flails needed some protection. I made the base at work, from some scrap MDF. Painting the tank was interesting, as I wasn't quite sure what colour to paint it, as while it was British, it was a lend-lease vehicle, so should it be Olive Drab, or a Dark Green, or something different again? I did some research and blended a very nice colour, which then looked like Olive Drab after I applied the wash....so Olive Drab it is! Clearly, that's how all the Crabs supplied with the .50 cal./tombstone ammo can combination were painted...
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| .50 cal. HMG with 'Tombstone' ammo can. So wrong that's it's right! |
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| A side view of the beast. |
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| Flails on view. |
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| Look, I actually put transfers on and wasn't slack... |
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| View from above. I am tempted to put down some nice golden sand to finish the base up. |
So that's another of the Christmas stash sorted. Time to do some more model building, some painting, and some gaming too. Then I can do some more blogging - or post the backlog of pictures I have taken recently.
awsome!!!, I love the idea of old jewlery as flails that is great
ReplyDeleteThanks, I'm very pleased with the result.
DeleteWow!! This has really worked out well. Great work.
ReplyDeleteThanks, I now just have tho finish off the rest of the Sherman stockpile!
DeleteThat is one flash sort of vehicle, Brian. Having acquired one of those things some months back, I was wondering what to do with the flails. I had some vague notion of detaching, heating and bending, but your scheme looks the business, all right.
ReplyDeleteCheers,
Ion
I thought about doing that, but it seemed like too much effort. I didn't get the type of chain i was hoping for - but then I was only wanting to pay under $2 - but it seems the type of chain I used is a better 'fit' that the fine link type I wanted. It seems they replaced that type of open link chain with a more compact flat type, as it was more resistant to exploding mines. This seems to be the reason the metal balls at the end of the chains were eliminated too, as they added to the shrapnel produced by the detonation of mines.
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