Ecclesiastical twins - 2 M7 Priests

[RonW]

With a few builds off the table I shall now turn my attention to something quite different; 2 pieces of artillery. 2 M7 Priests to be exact; an early British one in the African theatre and a later Canadian one in the Normand-campaign.
One is an old box-kit, needing conversion, the other is a saving/restoration of an old build, given to me.

[RonW]

So… let’s see what I have to work with here.

I’m telling you… this cat…!!

A session of carefull deconstruction was in order as I will mash and mix the parts.
The British/Italeri M7 will get the early bogies from the Dragon M7.
The Canadian/Dragon M7 will get the bogies from the Italeri one with added Tamiya wheels.
The resin early differential housing will be used in a later, all-resin build of an early Sherman, which will also get the resin early bogies, and the hull & housing from the early one will go on the Italeri M7. A lot of gentle prying and pushing seperated the bottom and resin top. I also picked apart the early front, which will end up on the British one instead.
I had to pry apart the Dragon’s top structure, since the gun had loosened and misaligned. I took off the bogies in one go.

[KoSprueone]

@RonW

I’m telling you… this cat…!!

There may be errors in the instruction sheets so it’s always good to have a helper to decipher the intended meanings

[RonW]

Nah, he’s more into SSC (square cardboard container) fetishism.

[Multibank]

Hi

I really like this kind of mix and match project while “re-cycling” good all kits ; The sherman family is very open to such projects. But if historic accuracy is a concern, you may be interested in the tricks about back-dating the Italeri M7 while Dragon was also offering a later version for your canadian project…

here is an old but well documented feature on the Italeri Priest :

http://www.usarmymodels.com/ARTICLES/Building%20Italeri%20Priest/1%20Intro.html

And good luck what ever the final plan will be

[RonW]

Thank you! That might prove useful indeed.
However, it is meant for a US-version, whereas I am going for the Canadian one. There are some noticeable differences.

[RonW]

Reference pictures for the British Priest.

[RonW]

And for the Canadian one:

[Multibank]

Great selection…

when visible, the VVSS boggies on your pictures for the Canadian version look like the early version with the horizontal arm for the return roller while Italeri kit provides the late upswet type, no ?

[Biggles50]

My daddy is a priest, you know,
And I am not a beast, you know…

• Peter Sarstedt