This is my first 1/16 scale kit…and after opening the box…I am blown away!
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Is that for one kit?
Duh !! 
Congrats,enjoy
wife said she would buy me the Tiger as a gift
Looks like the tank images on the big box are the same scale as the M51…
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If you have a 3D printer I make some spare wheels for these kits: https://www.etsy.com/listing/1299127547/
https://www.etsy.com/listing/1263328334/
I got time to do something on this today. I realized I’ve never built anything bigger than 1/32 scale…so getting set up to work on this presents a small logistical issue due to my workspace being a small area. So just laying out the sprues requires putting things back in the box and shuffling everything around when just looking for a different part. I decided to start small, real small, I’ll be building some of the wheels today…
It took me about 25 minutes to complete two road wheels, it required sanding down push marks on the inside face to get the best fit, also there was a seam even after I used a 5 pound weight to press the two halves together…after it dried, I filled, sanded, and then gave it some damage to simulate small chunks of rubber torn off by rocks during normal driving. Perhaps I’ll only be doing this on the twelve outside wheels…
The idea is to simulate some of the damage like seen on this picture here, but I’m not going for such a large chunk because the plastic isn’t deep enough to even try this…
Before
After
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Took a break from wheels this afternoon and decided to do something fun…so I messed around with this 
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You can be our guinea pig for the build. How is the fit of the parts?
The fit is amazing! The engineering seems very common sense and smart approach too…
the plastic tho…it is going to take some getting used to the softness of this plastic. I’ve never built a Takom kit before this one. Earlier today I used too much cement on a thicker plastic part thinking about cement getting all the way thru the thickness and getting a good bond. I learned that Tamiya extra thin eats this plastic up. Lucky for me this all happened on the inside face of a part that won’t be visible but lesson learned I’m going very light on the extra thin going forward…very light.
Since I’m planning to turn this one into an expedient jumbo with extra armor plate it’s good to know that I can’t use extra thin to soften the styrene plastic rod for welds because it would just eat right thru the Takom plastic. I’ll probably have to use putty to make the welds on the extra armor plates…
I have built 2 1/35 Takom kits, yes the platic is soft, but I had no problem with Tamiya Extra Thin.
The problem resides with my inexperience using this type of plastic. I just need to learn how to work it better.
I didn’t just have an issue with the cement, everything from how it comes off the sprue, how it reacts to being sanded and drilled into etc…it’s been warm so that might have something to do with it as well…
I apologize for quoting your post a second time, but I found these photos and I thought it was worth mentioning/updating this important issue with the kits tracks.
Here’s the CAD of the T-66 tracks on the second ILK sherman release.
The CAD image is awful but I think they tweaked it before going to molds because the actual image of the molded tracks looks more passable, still a bit off but a lot better than the CAD image IMO.
BTW, AHHQ T-66 tracks are a shade off too, still a smidge better than the new ILK T-66s but not 100% accurate either
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On the real tracks the waffle patterns are very thin and the two middle ribs are clearly shorter than the outer ribs, probably because the metal bar/chevron dips deeper into the waffle area than on the models, also the bar itself appears thicker on the real tracks.
On Andy’s T-66 the waffles appear uniform all the way across and the two inside ribs should be a tad shorter than they are. The ILK actually tries to model this correctly but they made the pad that supports the chevrons to narrow and it doesn’t extend past the inside part of the arched chevron like on the real one.
Neither kit has 100% accurate T-66 tracks but I still think the AHHQs are closest to the real thing. They just barely missed the mark on the AHHQ version. If the bar/cleat was a fraction thicker on the AHHQ, then the middle section would make the inside waffle ribs look shorter like they’re supposed to.
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FYI, I’m not sure why Takom even included a plastic barrel. The MB is clearly designed to fit the metal barrel. I built the plastic barrel yesterday just to see how it would turnout. I got it to look good with some putty filled in the small seams it was lined up perfect I used my old painters tape trick to get it glued and lined up correctly…but the end of the barrel where it meets the muzzle brake has an offset which made it difficult to fit the MB on evenly. When I centered and lined up the barrel correctly there was a small gap on one side that would require filling.
I wasn’t planning on using it anyways but I was interested in checking the fit and it’s literally the first thing on this kit that didn’t fit properly even with all the care I took to build the barrel correctly, pulled out all the old tricks and still it wasn’t going to look anywhere near as good as the metal barrel option.
The fit on the metal barrel is perfect, it’s snug, and there are no gaps or spaces anywhere
The MB did have some flash inside, it’s the only flash I’ve had to clean on any of the parts I’ve worked on so far. It was not difficult to remove just have to be careful and use a sharp blade.
Knowing what I know now, if I bought one of these without a metal barrel I would use the MB to line up the two halves by gluing it all together at once. That’s not ideal and not the way I’m used to building those but at the risk of creating more issues with seems and stuff on the rest of the barrel at least the MB would be flush and line up correctly then the rest of the barrel can be fixed later?
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Small update, just about done on the inside of the turret, jusr a few more details left.
I’m test fitting the armor plates, it looks like they clear everything. I think I have some bolt detail to stock somewhere around here otherwise I’ll be going to the LHS tomorrow to add those to the extra armor plates.
I’ll be adding the added on stowage bars seen on many of these tanks to the sides of the turret, I’m thinking about just using large paper clips or some wire…
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FYI, was looking to see if Andy has the new 1/16 scale American tankers in stock and I noticed the M4A3E8 is back in stock in case anyone missed out on getting on, he’s still selling them for $139.99
Beats paying ebay prices!
I found these on ebay a few weeks ago but the company is out of Russia and they are not shipping to the US right now.
I’ve never ordered from Aliexpress before, have you?
Yes, I order from them all the time, and have never had a problem. There are some really nice 1/16 German tank crew men also, for when the Tiger 1 comes out.