Getting two Sherman's at the cost of one !

I recently purchased the fantastic plastic M4A3 Sherman from Rubicon Models
The model is great and easy to assemble and I was super excited by the perspective of getting both the 75 and 76 mm turrets. Unfortunately during the assembling I got a bad surprise ! A few items that were needed by both turrets were only present in a single copy... They are not many but still this made the construction of two turrets a little bit tricky.




First of all I left unglued the base of the turret so that it can be attached to both versions (it stays well in place without glue. Maybe in the future I will magnetize it.









Then I magnetized the 75 and 105mm gun so that I can interchange them easily.

I also magnetized the Cullin hedgecutter so that it can be removed

The last part I needed to adjust was the cupola hatch for one of the two turrets (just one was present. To this end I used "minimold" a nice transparent plastic that softens when warmed and that creates easily a mold that can be used to replicate items with green stuff. The result is excellent and very easy to obtain....

The only think I fear is that I glued the two parts of the hatch in a wrong way since the periscope is looking backward... too late ! The next sherman will be correct!

After painting and weathering the tank I am very happy about the overall result !

Smoke markers

I made an attempt of constructing simple smoke markers for BA. I made two types of smoke: Black for destroyed vehicles and white for smoke screens.

To construct them I used some iron boater (once) used to clean dishes that you may find in some supermarket.

Once I modeled into the desired shape I glued with the hot glue the boater to an iron rove and painted with spry acrylic.

New bases from minibits

Inspired by the article on Blotaction.net I decided to rebase my teams. I found that single figures for teams are not so nice since I tend to mix them with other platoons. I then decided the following basing:

2 men teams on 50mm round bases

3 men teams on 60mm round bases

In addition I wanted to have some removable bases on the team ones so as to remove casualties. Hence, I contacted my favourite (and sole) bases provider (minibits) if he could provide me pre-cut bases: They did ! Here is a picture of the 60mm base with 2*25mm holes suited for mortar and MMG teams.

Here is the base with the holes bottom mad with magnetic material. note the small magnet placed in the wood part of the base so one can attach additional pieces on top of it (the piece is on around base under which I sticked some other magnetic sheet. I took the round magnet from a Geomac piece (an old toy of my kids they no longer use)

No Decals ? No panic !

I really wanted to start painting  the M3 halftrack nut have no usable US invasion star decals... then I decided to try preparing a stencil and use the airbrush for producing some decent stars.

I surfed a little on the net and then opted for a rather simple solution. I downloaded some samples and printed them on a transparent sheet. Then I cut three stencils with Xacto knife and sick them on the half track. I masked it carefully and used the airbrush loaded with white color: the result was quite good although since the stencil did not adhere fully I needed to refine the star manually a little. Next time I think I would use adhesive paper that sticks better to the surface to be painted.

To see the stencil and the results ...

Nice aircraft bases

This is quite simple alternative idea to the typical aricraft mount for FOW (that easily gets broken).

First of all look at the effect.

you may put the aircraft in the usual horizontal way...

...or you may bend it to have a much better looking