I think I see a bulge between the co-drivers vision slot and the opening (MG??)
further down.
Space needed on the inside to operate or aim the hull MG?
No bulge in front of the driver though …
Space needed on the inside to operate or aim the hull MG?
4 Likes
I see a bulge in front of the machine gunner’s position, but no bulge in front of the driver’s position.
2 Likes
Wow, I was complaining about my Asuka bogies taking a long time to build, you are combining parts from three kits to make those align to the height that you want. It’s crazy everything you did there and if you hadn’t mentioned any of it would’ve been impossible to tell that they had all that surgery. I think the sculpting on the bow gun is going really well once you finish sanding and cleaning it up.
I think the guys are right, it’s hard for me to say for sure but there might be a thickened bulge area directly above the the MG opening as they might’ve hollowed out the inside to give the gun the depression that they wanted and then thickened the outside to maintain the 2 5/8 thickness of the armor. This is going to look amazing!
3 Likes
On the inside, it looks like this:
I think the shape on both sides is much the same, so with a bulge on the driver’s side as well. The chalk line is not perfectly straight, so I think it misleads a little as to the true shape.
The only surgery was cutting off a slight bit from the end of both shafts on part A31, that the two B2s fit onto:
Well, and trimming the Asuka spacers slightly 
The Dragon wheels fit perfectly to the Takom axles, so that’s a very easy swap.
6 Likes
I wouldn’t say it is a bulge, rather there is a kink in the glacis and the slope is shallower to the rear/above the line.
On the M4A1 the contour was smoothed out.
KL
5 Likes
Great thread!
5 Likes
Thanks, Kurt Somehow, I didn’t think to look at the photos of the later incarnations of the T6 to see if they had a clue.
It’s still not quite clear to me, though, if the lower part (below the kink) is at the same angle as on the M4A1, or if the M4A1 angled the whole glacis back slightly more. The latter is relatively easy to add to the model, the former will be rather harder …
Back to things I have already figured out, then
At the back of the hull, both the M3A1 and T6 had a raised are in the lower edge, but the T6’s was much wider. I sawed it out, using a handy ledge moulded on the inside as a convenient guide, and then moved the “corners”:
I did have to bend those slightly to follow the curvature of the hull. Later, they will be puttied to blend in with the rest of the hull.
Much test-fitting and then measuring with callipers, showed that Takom’s hull is slightly wider than Asuka’s. That’s a problem if you want to make sure they’ll fit well together, but how to solve it? In the end I chose to saw through the turret ring and stick a piece of plastic strip in the gap, forcing the hull sides outward slightly so they’ll fit better against the Takom hull rear. How much to add depends on the width of your saw blade, so I just tried a few thicknesses until I could feel barely any difference between the two parts when I fit them together as they should. After the glue dried, I of course cut and filed down the bit that sticks out.
Then I could fit the upper hull parts together:
To do this, i first glued a piece of strip (a leftover edge from a larger piece of plastic card) on both sides — for which I had to cut away part of the support moulded into each side of the Takom part — and set the upper hull correctly on the lower until the glue had dried. I then added two more strips for extra strength. Once it’s well and truly dried, I can fill the seams.
In the meantime, I turned to the turret. To allow the machine-gun turret to fit on it, it needs a turret ring, which of course isn’t a separate part in the Takom M3A1 kit. No half measures, then:
After much filing, first to make it properly round and then to greatly thin it over about half its circumference:
I can highly recommend a job like this for anyone wanting stronger fingers and biceps Anyway, after much test-fitting and more fettling:
The hole in the turret also had to be enlarged, so that the thicker part of the ring fits inside the hole instead of lying on top of the turret. I could have filed the whole ring down, of course, but this way is a lot less work
9 Likes
Yes! Love this stuff, this is like tank pron for me. I guess I never really paid attention to how different the T6 casting is from the the early M4A1 casting. So many different shapes that they simplified later.
I vaguely remember reading about how the T6 was constantly changed over time to test out different upgrades for the M4 series. Was the main hull always the same casting or did they have several castings that they tested that we now call all of them the T6?
Thank you Jakko and Kurt for posting all of this 
4 Likes
Nothing you are doing is less work. You found a simpler way to accomplish the same thing that saves you time and energy you can spend on the rest of the build, smarter not harder 
1 Like
To be honest, a lot of it only really becomes apparent when you look closely, and begin comparing to both M4A1 and M3A1 pictures. It took me a while to work out that the whole rear end is much more sharply rounded on the M4A1 than the M3A1 and T6, for example — I had originally planned to use the whole M4A1 upper hull with just the “ledge” at the top centre added. Once I worked out this area is closer to the M3A1, I soon ditched the original plan and bought an M3A1 kit
Read the Sherman Minutia page about the T6 for the details on that
If it wasn’t for Kurt, I wouldn’t have all those photos of the real one
That’s pretty much my whole definition of “less work” Time is not an issue anyway, I don’t have a deadline to finish this model nor am I theoretically limited in how much time in a day I can spend working on it (beyond the obvious, of course) — I go for “less work” ways of doing things because it saves effort
2 Likes
I think the angle of the differential housing continued up to the kink (which looks to be at the level of the middle of the antenna bracket), something like this at the midplane.
KL
4 Likes
I’m looking forward to how it all comes together! Oh, and to the arrival of a plastic shake-the-box kit, which always happens just as the paint dries! 
4 Likes
That would really be something if we got this in a plastic kit.
3 Likes
That’s what I hoped, as it should be relatively easy to add to the model. I’ll need to put a straightedge on the glacis and compare to photos that show the kink to see for sure, though.
I kind of doubt that will ever happen, TBH It’s not like a manufacturer who already has an early M4A1 kit can just swap out a few parts to make it into a T6. Well, not a correct one, anyway Tiger Model Designs has a resin T6, but its hull shape is off because they modified an M4A1 hull but missed that kink in the glacis, the larger curves on the rear end and the sharper contours at the front — which I still need to add to mine. There’s also a 3D-printed T6 by SSModel, but, well …
4 Likes
I agree that it’s unlikely to come out in a plastic kit. I also never expected anyone to make an M4A5 in plastic and then someone did. Dragon came out with an M6 which I also never expected to see in a plastic kit.
to sharpen the front contours are you planing to remove material or are you going to add a bead of putty along the edges and then blend it in? This is definitely a project that requires a lot of sculpting.
2 Likes
Are you referring to Bronco’s Ram Mk. II? I have that in my stash and looked at it seriously before embarking on the T6, and it needs at least as much work … The lower hull is 2 mm too wide, the upper hull is closer to 4 mm too wide, the turret ring is in the wrong place and (apparently, I haven’t actually checked it) the turret itself has shape problems as well. However, the engine deck is the same width as that from a MiniArt M3 medium, so presumably that is correct.
Oddly, the rear plate for the lower hull is exactly the correct width, but then Bronco went and designed it so that the side plates sit against its edges rather than to the front of it. I wonder if this is what threw out the lower hull width: the extra thickness of the lower sides. But then, why is the upper hull even more too wide?
All of this is correctable, but needs a ton of work.
I put a ruler on the glacis this afternoon, and I think what happened is that the whole glacis of the M4A1 is closer to the horizontal by a few degrees than the T6’s. This photo of the wooden mockup provides a clue:
The blue arrow points to the kink, it looks to me.
All this is good news for me, because I can add some material to build up the glacis a little. I’m thinking of adding a piece of plastic strip to indicate the line of the bend and then add putty to reach that strip from both sides, filing and sanding it when it’s hard. This is also what I intend to do for the sharper contours of the front corners, as it should be easier to first set out the line to follow and then build up to that, than having to estimate it while sculpting putty.
4 Likes
Yeah, I’ve read that both the Ram and the M6 kits are a mess. Just a bunch of stuff wrong with them. I was still really surprised when they dropped. I never would’ve thought those vehicles would be made in plastic. So never say never on a plastic T6. Hopefully if someone does put it out they’ll do a better job than Bronco and DML did on the Ram and the M6. The only reason any of those kits got made in plastic was probably because of the video games that featured them.
It’s some project you got going here. One of my big takeaways from this thread is how incredibly different the T6 was to the initial production M4A1 like “Michael” that they have in Bovington.
2 Likes
There is a tank between T6 and Michael which acts a nice bridge http://the.shadock.free.fr/sherman_minutia/manufacturer/m4a1lima/m4a1_lima8.JPG
1 Like
