Work continues to move forward albeit slowly.

Armed with all the reference material Ethan supplied has really pushed me to add some additonal mods and details. In an earlier post, I mocked up Nick's resin mantlet and aluminum turned barrel. The resin mantlet was desinged to worked with the stock Tamiya 105mm articulation and turret opening, but it does leave some visible and unsightly gaps all the way around the mantlet.

On several earlier Sherman builds, Ethan had robbed the rotor shield off of a 1/18th scale 21rst Century Toy's Sherman, and scabbed it onto the Tamiya turret with good success. Armed with "Modeling the US Army M4 (75mm) Sherman Medium Tank" by Steven Zaloga (Osprey Publishing) I thought I would to tackle the necessary modifications to make my M4A3 as accurate as I reasonably could. Fortunate for me Ethan had an extra 1/18th scale rotor shield he was willing to share.

The 21rst Century Toys Sherman has the earlier style M34A1 rotor shield with a flange all the way around it's perimeter, but what I needed to model was the later E5721 configuration without the flange. Because of it's smaller scale the part would also need to be "scaled up" to look correct.

Keeping the gun slot in the center, and maintaining the position of the two inboard slots would be critical. The inboard slots align with two cast bolt heads on Nick's resin mantlet. The plan is to drill out the resin bolt heads and replace them with real ones that will pass through the mantlet, through the two inboard slots on the rotor shield and through backing plates that they will be bolted too. This will effectively "pinch" the rotor shield between the backing plate and the resin mantlet, and the slots will allow the anchoring bolts to travel up and down - while elevating and depressing the gun.

I figured out how much I had to "stretch" the rotor shield and decided the best method would be a combination of lengthening the part and reducing the the size of the turret opening. Actually the turret opening would have to get slightly narrower and taller.

Using a razor saw and miter box I removed the flange off of the left end of the rotor shield, and then cut it into three segments. This way I could leave the inboard slots alone but still grow the over all length of the part. Using .060 styrene spacers I glued everything back together using Tenax 7 plastic solvent. I then added .080 ribs to each side of the stock turret opening using Tenax and reinforced the joint from the backside with CA.

I will ultimately have to fill in the molded bolt detail on the flange, respace and drill new holes in which I plan to sink small brass bolt heads. But for now I set everyhting a side to dry.

More to follow I promise!

Squid