@Armor_Buff
If I’ve come across as having a positive take on this kit I do sincerely apologize. I feel I’ve gone out of my way to point out all the things that are wrong with it without sounding too negative. I’d hate to mislead folks out there, so I’ll be clear. I couldn’t in good conscience recommend this kit to anyone. Have I been trying to find something positives, perhaps I have because it’s in my nature to look at the positive side of things. I do like to see these kits in hand for myself before I decide what to think about them. My honest to god opinion about this kit is that it’s terrible, absolutely terrible.
Me saying that it has exceeded expectations is a bit tongue in cheek because like I said, my expectations were so low that the idea was simply to cannibalize the kit from the very beginning. for the goodies included and then see if I could make something out of the leftovers. It’s a terrible kit, terrible decals, the kit is missing parts to build the tank it advertises on the boxart, forget the ridiculous texture on the upper hull, the metal barrel included has a really ugly bump on the end that’s supposed to represent a thread protector, the whole hull is misshapen. Aside from the angle on the rear which I was reading on SOS that the big hatch introduced some angle? But the kit has way too much angle almost looks like an IDF tank which someone hilariously pointed out at the beginning of this thread. The instructions are awful although the presentation is high but the content is not well organized, it’s like an essay you didn’t edit or research properly and then you turned it in to your teacher anyways. It’s terrible because with all the information now available AND with Tasca having revolutionized how companies approach the engineering challenges of Sherman tank models, there is literally no excuse for Border Models to release a kit this bad. It’s like they traveled back in time before Tasca existed, when most companies had no idea clue about the Hunnicutt book and before Son of Sherman was even written. Before Sherman sites explained all the details of each variant etc. The kit is infuriating because you see the potential, they do one thing really nice and then they do some absurd ridiculous things that are just nonsense like the atrocious suspension. The whole kit some really odd choices by their designers. Me saying that a top notch modeler could make a prize winner out of it is just my absurd terrible sense of humor. It’s just not saying much because a top modeler could make a prize winning tank out of a cardboard box, LOL!
I don’t recommend the kit, like I said, I think that the hull is misshapen, I haven’t graphed the shape like how PMMS used to, but you can tell that they might’ve added the big hatches to what was previously small hatch hull design. If you guys pay attention to the images I posted the front glacis has a slope that’s closer to 56* hulls of small hatch Shermans than to the 47* it’s supposed to have as a large hatch. Even the old DML as misshapen and old as it is, AND designed without the benefit of computers, even that still has a better angle up front on the hull.
The only way I buy another one of these is if it’s discounted to the point where it’s priced like a set of tracks, and then with the knoweldge that the rest of the kit is going into the spares bin, at least the stufff that’s worth keeping. I appreciate the kind words but I just zoomed thru this thing in a lazy carefree way and without much worry about the outcome and that’s probably why it’s been so much fun.
@Jakko
Well, that explains a LOT. Especially if they originally planned to release it like that. I remember the uproar from the community. Perhaps the complaints caused the delay in it’s release as this was originally set to drop with the 75mm kit. Perhaps the complaints got them to modify their digital build of the small hatch hull quickly without regard to the proper angles of the big hatch hull. It makes sense that a company that was set to release a 76w on a small hatch hull would cut corners. I see why they pushed the gun crutch down without regard to where it was supposed to perform its function. Instead of redesigning the parts where the legs of the crutch hinge to the glacis they just slid the whole thing down to make room for the large hatches. They even reused the hideous metal barrel from this mock up. If you look at the image it has that lump on the end that’s supposed to represent a thread protector even tho the gun is not supposed to have one. It looks like they were even going to release it with the same tracks as the 75mm kit has. I’m glad they didn’t do that, the T48 tracks in the kit are a highlight. The turret has some things I like too and since it can be converted to an early version easily I think that’s its absolute best use. The second best thing to do with the turret is to blank off the forward antenna spot and use it as a mid tier between the early and the late versions. Some of those had the gun with the MB which is included. So with some mods the turret can be used to represent early to mid large hatch M4A1 76w as they evolved. The dust cover would never be useful for this turret. The turret as it comes OOTB it cannot be used to model anything that existed. I still like the turret if you don’t mind doing the easy mods, the molded on casting marks are really nice, the casting marks on the split hatch are nice, and with some work the metal barrel can be made nice too.
Also looking at the picture you posted they had to make an FDA for the 76mm which looks nice and also comes with casting marks. Both FDA the round and the sharp nose are cast as one whole piece and they look exactly like the Asuka FDAs once you put them together, but these are all in one piece.
positives: definitely the tracks, the resin brush guards also included is a bonus set of PE brush guards with a jig to shape them with, the plastic stowage (I love working with plastic), both barrels are really nice the slide molded M1A2 AND the metal one with the lump, if you are willing to work with the metal barrel it can be turned into a very nice M1A1 barrel. The tow cable hooks are nice as is the tow cable itself made of metal wire. NOTE: about the tow cable, it’s too thick OOTB so I took half the wire out of it and made two cables from the one. All you have to do is turn it with a drill and a pair of pliers and then it fits into the ends perfectly. The pioneer tools on the kit are not bad but the shovel is probably one of the best I’ve seen molded in plastic. That guy that designed the shovel for them was probably the same guy that did the tracks and the FDAs, he should’ve been in charge of the whole project, LOL!
Negaives: The lower tub, really? are we still doing tubs after Asuka taught everyone how to make a proper lower hull? The tub sucks and I had to really mess with it, hot water, internal beams to get it to line up square etc. It was like in the old days of DML tubs. The suspension is terrible, the wheels have nasty gaps once you put the rear faces on them, but if you’re careful you can get all those faces looking into the bottom of the tank and display the nice faces. The hull is awful, not shaped correctly up front somewhere between a 56 degree hull and a 47 degree hull and the the angle in the back is too pronounced. The kit is missing parts like spare track holders. the rear mud flaps included in the kit must’ve been modeled off of a postwar Sherman somewhere but they are useless for WW2. The kit includes a rear bottom hull plate for a M4A1E8 which wouldn’t even fit the idler mounts. I had to use the 75mm rear plate which is still wrong for the 76mm but at leas the idler mounts fit on it. So that’s a hot steaming pile of bovine feces and makes it impossible to build an accurate rear end without scratch building one for yourself which I chose not to. The MG has some serious issues. the barrel doesn’t fit, I had to modify it extensively and while it has some nice details on it also has some head scratching engineering choices and then the instructions have you build it wrong. It’s like a lot of things on this kit, coulda shoulda woulda.
I don’t think BM, not to be confused with bowel movement, I mean Border Models, I don’t think they care much about building a decent Sherman tank. The end results of this kit shows a complete disregard for accuracy or even a half way attempt to put some research and study into the vehicle. The 75mm looks to be a bit better but it still has that atrocious suspension and I’m certain I’ll find other issues once I build it too.
@SSGToms
No slagging here, just telling it like it is from having put my hands on it. I wouldn’t say total POS just because there are usable things in the box that are nice. I’d buy this again at a very heavily discounted price just for the tracks on the rest of the stuff I’ve talked about earlier. Otherwise I won’t be building this again, just don’t see the point of building something that’s almost impossible to make accurate without a ridiculous amount of scratch building, the hull is a throwaway, the tub is a throwaway, the lower rear plate is a throwaway, the decals are throwaways, it’s just terrible.
You’ll find there are some people who aren’t as “picky,” highly recommending a kit that wasn’t even the kit it was purported to be, but a prototype that was much different, and will say you’re nitpicking about inconsequential things.
But hey, for some folks, the BM kit looks like a Sherman!
One could say the Sherman looks like a BM.
It’s important to remember that there’s a large group of modellers who buy and build kits largely straight from the box, and they’re generally happy if the model looks like what it’s supposed to be and goes together easily.
The other kind of modeller is the one who writes (and reads) threads like the one we’re in now
@Jakko
There were a lot of little things I had to do to make things fit in the places that they’re supposed to, because I wasn’t shooting a video and was working continuously I didn’t have the opportunity show images of those issues. Anyone that tries to build this OOTB is going to have issues with things “going together” because it’s going to take experience and old tricks to make things work. IMO most inexperienced modelers are going to struggle with this kit.
@tankerken
The FDA is the “final drive assembly” it’s the nose of the tank, it has the differential and the clutch brakes all encased in the armor shell, it mates to the front of the tank from the glacis, the sides and underneath too. On the inside it also mates to the transmission housing. If you scroll up to post 171 you’ll see it at the bottom right hand side of the picture. I took a picture of leftover spare parts and the 76w comes with an extra early FDA that can only be used on the 75mm Shermans.
I found a random Tamiya M1 hull in my spares so tomorrow I’m going to post an image of that hull next to the BM so you guys can see the area that is problematic with the front hull of the BM. The casual modeler that doesn’t normally build Shermans is going to have a rough time telling the difference. To me it sticks out like a sore thumb. I just didn’t have the enthusiasm to correct another big issue. I would’ve had to build up the both corners of the top front hull with putty and then sculpted the correct shape and blend it in with the glacis. I know I could’ve done it but I had already left the rear engine plate incorrect and I just didn’t feel it made sense to go thru all that trouble of fixing the front without fixing the rear. Besides, I have several Shermans in the assembly line right now and that Asuka I ordered should be on it’s way soon.
BTW, after studying some of the images of these orphaned M4A1 76w tanks that got doled out to the 2nd and the 3rd AD prior to “Operation Cobra” both the Continental and the General Steel hulls are present. Just last week Kurt Laughlin told me on a different thread that if the parts the were using to build them performed the same function that the Army didn’t make distinctions so long as the tanks had the same engine and the same gun they were the same to the Army.
A while back I was told by someone on one of these forums that all those “orphaned tanks” were general steel ones, apparently they were mixed together continental and general steel hulls alike.
EDIT: In case anyone is wondering why that matters, the continental hull is the one with the more pronounced bulge over the bow gunner position and a smaller bump on the drivers hood area giving the tank a unique and asymmetrical appearance from the front. BTW, Lafayette Pool’s tank had a continental hull. To a nut like me that means I have an excuse to try to backdate/convert this Tamiya hull to make Pool’s tank, which is what the Asuka tank was going to be for, LOL. Ironically this is something I was going to attempt to do over a decade ago until I was told on a forum that all these “orphan tanks” were general steel hulls. Here’s an image of Pool’s tank were you can see the different shadow that the enlarged area casts over the bow gun area. A bit more difficult to spot is that the legs/hinge mounts on the gun crutch are a bit different so that the crutch moves normally despite the topography of the glacis being a bit unbalanced. It’s also been noted on other sites that the dust cover bracket that surrounds the bow gun is a bit wider than on the general steel hull.
So I can illustrate the area on the front of the BM hull that shows clearly that they used the digital build of the 75mm small hatch hull to make the mold for the 76mm. They did this because they either didn’t know or care about the differences between the small and large hatch hulls which decreased the angle in the front from 56 degrees to 47 degrees to eliminate the old style hoods and to make up for the reduced slope and reduced ballistic protection these tanks had thicker armor in the glacis area than the 75mm tanks. I’ve read that it also created a bit more space in the driving compartment area.
I don’t even need to do a side by side with the Tamiya hull but I will take a photo later too. I can just use Lafayette Pool’s tank to show how that shoulder in the front of the tank has a sharper more pronounced shape than the gentle rolling slope of the 75mm hull. Here’s Pool’s again highlighting the area I’m referring to.
So the BM is a hybrid of the 56 degree and the 47 degree hulls. In the center area underneath the gun crutch the angle is closer to 56 degrees because the hoods and the ventilator area spaced it out to that angle, but on the outside corners it tapers down to a 56 degree hull around the “shoulders”. Again, this would not have been outside the scope of what I can do, some putty and some sculpting and I could’ve had fun seeing if I could get it right. I guess I just gave up on fixing big stuff after seeing that the lower rear engine/hull plate needed to be scratch built to be accurate.
@tankerken
Call it that if you like. I don’t know about anything official just what I read in the books and what the authors of those books call it. It might be based on the terminology that was in the manual but I don’t know that for a fact. As for calling it the transmission cover, the transmission is not technically inside of the FDA, the differential is in there, the clutch brakes for turning and the final drive gears that lead to the sprockets are all in there. The transmission is inside the tank between the driver and the bow gunner.
I was hoping to get some paint on it today but life got in the way. these “Operation Cobra” 76w tanks were doled out so late that most of them don’t have much for markings. The only markings I have for these tanks are bumper codes 2nd AD 66th TB and 3rd AD 32nd TB. I have one complete set of markings left over from the old DML kit for “Duke” D13 and the serial number which is ridiculously comically huge, I doubt the tanks had numbers that big. The only other thing I have left for the BM kit is a tank called “delight” D16 I think 2nd AD 66th TB? The intructions make no mention of those decals anywhere, LOL!
Delight sounds like the perfect name for the BM kit
I thought the serials on the rear flanks were 4" numbers, so shouldn’t be huge. Are you giving it a black-band camo? If so, just make sure the stripes cover those areas and forget about the serials! (Nobody was taking much care with the paint at that time - I’m surprised we don’t see pics with the “shadow” of a GI that didn’t get out of the way fast enough…)
The manual (at least, TM 9-731A of 14 November 1942, that I own) doesn’t appear to have a specific name for the exterior armour of what it calls it the “power train”, which includes the transmission, the differential, the steering brake units and the final drive units.
The “final drive units” are only the teardrop-shaped plates on the sides, with the gears etc. inside of them.
Et al:
I’ve often heard and seen the “bow” of the hull called the differential cover, and/or transmission cover. The FD (final drive) is as @Jakko describes it. The actual FD assembly is inside the cover, and the external teardrop on the nose of the assembly mounts the FD to the plate and provides a stable pass-through for the shaft to the sprocket.
@barkingdigger
Speaking of the black camo added to these tanks, did they ALL have it? I can’t help but notice that it’s not evident on some tanks from Cobra, but I was also thinking that they were covered in dust? Even the ones where the black is obvious it looks like it was sprayed on with an airbrush but old post war images of duke show a tank with hardlines and strong contrast between the black and the OD, probably because it was inoperable and rain had washed off the dust?
