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#144
11-06-2020, 03:13 PM
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One way of getting long, thin tubes is to use paper lollipop sticks. These are tightly wound paper tubes which are used in confectionery making. It's fairly easy to peel the outer layers off to get the diameter you need. The bottom limit is about 1.5mm since the sticks aren't completely solid.
I've seen people suggest using Q-tips in the past but not all countries have paper Q-tips, in Australia they have plastic shafts, and the length is limited. Regards, Charlie 
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#146
11-08-2020, 04:47 PM
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Update: I enjoyed making the two crates of C rations for my tiny, hungry troops. Today I put the turret framework together. I had cut the pieces out back in August, and they slotted together nicely. The picture shows the eggcrate just before gluing the top piece in place, with the top piece, the pivot (trunnion? Axle? The thing the turret turns on), and the crates of C rations also shown. The front is to the left in the photo, and the big gun also pivots. That mechanism is next. I expect that fitting the skins will be the most challenging part, since I do not intend to make the upper hatches open. The forward hatches were traumatic enough!
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#148
11-22-2020, 07:09 PM
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I’ve continued to work on the turret and gun parts, making slow, careful progress. I built part 91, the mantlet, and glued it onto the upper skin before starting to skin the turret. It was not the recommended sequence, but I think it worked better that way, and helped keep the front skin flat. I also installed the cylindrical gun elevation pivot mechanism and built the gun barrel itself. Some of the circles that give these cylindrical or conical pieces were off in size a tiny bit, with some undersize and others needing to be shaved down.
I spent most of Saturday skinning the turret. I took careful note of Kevin’s warning to take my time with this step and worked as precisely as I could. It’s pretty good, but not quite perfect. There are only two pieces making the skin and they have to be shaped into some pretty complex shapes. The first picture shows the worst flaw. The lower skin doesn’t fit properly to the upper former, and the skin is a little buckled. The second picture shows the mantlet and the movable cylinder that the gun barrel will be glued to. Third is the underside of the counterweight — also very slightly wonky, but who’s going to be looking under there when it’s done?  The last three show the turret from various angles. If you look very closely under the large white circle in the fourth picture, you can see a small wedge. The petals gapped on that side, but they overlapped by the same amount on the other side, so I used the trimming from the overlap to fill the gap, and that worked well. I’ve started work on part 92, which is a kind of shield that fits around the base of the gun barrel and moves with it. My reference book mysteriously says absolutely nothing about Sherman turrets, so I’m not sure what the proper name of this shield is or whether it’s considered to be part of the mantlet. The numerous white locations on the turret show the places where my remaining work will be going.
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