The Workbench
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Tamiya Sherman Firefly, Part I
After reading a bunch of really good reviews of Tamiya's 1/48 armor kits, I decided I had to try one. I'm not much of a WWII modeler -- I prefer modern or between-the-wars subjects -- and building Nazi tanks kinda turns my stomach, so I didn't have much choice. I chose the Firefly.
Wow! What a fun build. Everything went together well and I thoroughly enjoyed it. The only problem I had was with the link-and-length tracks. While fitting them around the wheels, I shoved 'em together really tight and ended up with a gap -- almost out of sight on the bottom, luckily, but still annoying. I checked around on the Web and it turns out that's a fairly common problem. You need to leave a little space between the links to make everything fit right.
There's a lot of room to detail the Firefly: grab handles, headlight guards, fenders, etc. but I was just looking for a fun build. The only thing I did was add weld beads around the plate armor. I covered the sides of the armor in liquid cement and hacked at it with the back of my hobby knife. I wasn't all that happy with the results so I tried laying some stretched sprue along the side of one plate and hacked that up. I wasn't really happy with that, either. I think thinner sprue and a less heavy hand might make things better the next time I try that.
I had some Dark Green Gunze Sangyo Mr Color paint that I brought back with me from Singapore (you can't find it here in the States) and used that as the base color. Then I lightened it a little and added some highlights to the center of some of the panels. The details were painted with Tamiya acrylics -- the wood simulated by using Buff as a base color and then unthinned Raw Sienna oil paint over it to simulate wood grain.
I don't know why, but every time I airbrush flat colors the surface ends up really gritty. I don't think I'm holding the airbrush too far away, so I guess the paint isn't thin enough -- but it seems pretty thin to me. I met a guy who's good with an airbrush and I'm going to hit him up for some advice.
Next step is to give the Firefly a coat of Future and lay down the decals. That shouldn't be too hard...