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#135
10-11-2020, 06:39 PM
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Thanks to all for the kind words. A quick update: I haven’t done much on the model lately since the fine autumn weather in my area has led me to take a few vacation days and pursue an outdoor pastime, geocache hunting. But I have installed the starter crank (wow, like a big Model T, I guess) and the tail lights (with their brush guards). The crank will probably never be seen again, since a shelf gets installed over it. The bottom of the shelf has a set of cleaning rods, but my reference book does not explain what, exactly, they are used to clean. The shelf will be attached at the three small rectangles above the crank. The white markings at each side are the locations for track block holders. Those seem to be the last hull details. Woohoo!
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#136
10-12-2020, 05:43 AM
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The rods screwed together to make the long handle of a brush used to clean the bore of the main gun. The brush head was normally stored in one of the tool boxes. It's very important to keep the gun barrel clean and oiled - it's a piece of precision engineering which has got to withstand enormous pressures when it's fired.
regards, Charlie
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#137
10-13-2020, 08:59 AM
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Could someone (or several someones) actually crank this tank's engine?
I'm reminded of a time when my brothers and I let the battery on a houseboat run down overnight, so next morning we couldn't crank the 100HP outboard. On the engine was a little door, and label "emergency starter kit". Yup...a rope and handle. For the life of us (not to far exaggerated) we couldn't muster enough strength to turn that baby over!
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#138
10-13-2020, 04:19 PM
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The engines weren't high compression engines so they were reasonably easy
to turn over and the cranks on big engines were often geared down to make it a bit easier. Found a video of cranking an M4A1 with radial engine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oymXPYTDapI Not sure I'd want to crank start the multi-bank engine on a cold morning but it seems to have been doable. Charlie
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#140
11-06-2020, 10:50 AM
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It’s been a while since I’ve done an update, but as of Election Day, the hull is finished. The last details to be added were the shelf in the back with its cleaning rods, and the spare track block holders. I rolled the cleaning rods as tightly as I possibly could and they were still too big to fit next to each other. I ended up squashing them into ovals so I could assemble them, a process comparable to building the Eiffel tower out of toothpicks — without glue. After several collapses, I finally managed to get them assembled and glued in place. As predicted, the starter crank is now almost invisible. The track block holders went much more smoothly, and it’s great to finally see the tank hull with no white “part goes here” spots.
The model designers have inserted a little “intermission” here after completing the hull. The next step is to build two crates of C rations. There are six more such crates on the optional accessory pages as well, but I’ll just do the two for now. After that, it’s on to the turret. 
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