Sherman M4A3 105mm with Resin Upgrades

I've been accumulating a few Blackdog conversion sets and the kits to go with them for a while now and finally decided my skills were up to scratch to have a crack at building one of them. With the conversion sets, you can really create a unique model. 

The Objective

What I want is to recreate something similar to this tank here with log armour and duckbill tracks. 

The Raw Ingredients

To do it, I used this kit from Dragon. I would have preferred a M4A3 75mm gun tank but Dragon doesn't have one of those at the moment so 105mm it is. 

I used the Blackdog log armour and accessories kit designed for the Dragon M4A3 hull. Up armouring the Sherman was common and the troops used everything from spare tracks and logs to reinforced concrete and old boiler plate. 

I also added some T54E2 'Duckbill' tracks from Modell Trans. The wider tracks reduced the ground pressure exerted by the tank by 20% through spreading the weight of the tank the over a wider area thus improving mobility in off road conditions. Still not as good as a Panther but an improvement. 

The Build

The Dragon M4A3 Sherman wasn't the easiest of builds compared to the Revell kits I've built. 

I had two main gripes with this kit. 

Firstly, the VVSS suspension units didn't really line up that well. I basically hid that by sanding the mismatched halves smooth after I had assembled them. 

Secondly, the hull halves didn't go together straight out of the box. I had to shave 1mm off the inside of the sponson on the chassis to get the top and bottom of the hull to go together. This led to issues with the radiator which required the trimming of the exhausts (see below) to allow the radiator to fit. 

Luckily they can't be seen due to the position of the radiator. 

On the resin tracks side, they too were a pain to fit around the drive sprocket and idler wheels until I discovered you need to dunk them in boiling hot water (cup of water in microwave for 2 mins) and have about 10 seconds to mould them around the sprocket or idler before they go hard again. With some patience, and repeated dunking, they go on fine. 

I had no issues with the Blackdog resin parts although did need to put some filler to close some gaps. In retrospect, it would have been better to have not replaced the fenders with the photo etch parts provided despite the better detail. 

I added a strip of plastic under the driver and radio operators' position for the crew members to sit on. 

Rest of build was fine. Just fiddly given the scale. There were a few bits that could have been done better but that is another model. 

Ps: One thing that has been bothering me is what is the hole in the left hand corner of the turret for? My reference books don't really say. 

To be continued .....