M4A4 Sherman VC Firefly, Halinski 1:25

[Igor]

Originally Posted by aleiserthe13

Dear Igor

I want to know what kind of material did you use for this rounded bars (steel?)

Thank you so much

Hi. I am using solder wire. It easy to band and paint. And you get get variable diameter sizes.
You can check my first post, where I described tools and materials i will use.
Click here for first post

[Igor]

Elevating mechanism with supporting rack







There are several thing to pay attention on:
Manuel handle must be glued about 30 degrees to forward axel
Rack mounting hinges better be assembled on the elevating cylinder and then glued to rack
Main gun mounting point consists of base itself and plate (another point to designer) Base better be glued to the gun and plate to elevating mechanism. This way it will be easier to connect both later.





Here you can see offset manual handle



Base glued to main gun



Plate glued to elevating mechanism





Everything is moveable

[romanmodels]

looking good Igor

[Michael Mash]

Wonderful details.

[Kevin WS]

Very nice!

[Igor]

Thanks David, Michael and Kevin

Last bits..
Turret hydraulic travers gear





On the left oil reservoir, on the right control box, on the top hydraulic switches. And funny looking handle is gunner's power traversing control handle.
This is only a half of whole mechanism.

[Michael Mash]

Excellent highly detailed tank.

[Erik Zwaan]

Wonderful details, Igor. The model is very fascinating. In my younger years I built numerous 1:35 Tamiya plastic military models but never built a 1:25 paper one. As your work is highly inspirational, it might be a good idea to consider building one....

Erik

[Igor]

Thanks Michael and Erik

Second part of hydraulic travers gear - manual controls





I want to notice that there are no markings how to glue parts in angle to each other, so you must figure it out by 3D drawings only





Next step was to connect two parts together by piping. But first i decided to to glue them in basket. Gear itself has marking on one of the beams to glue to, but manual controls glue marking is in turret itself. So i dry fitted basket into turret and marked placement of the controls. Then i glued it inside basket and attached previously prepared pipes.
Also, there are two parts of protective skirt. Those have hole mesh, that very difficult to cut in paper. But friend from neighbour forum also assembled this model and got him laser cut ones. And i got the spares!

Skirt from book



Laser cut skirt



Took one sample and painted to look like original



Everything assembled in basket









Basket finally glued to turret!





And look what attached next



Gun inserted into opening like it should. It was easy to connect lifting cylinder with gun base, through the openings in floor.
I think, on real tank, when gun unit was faulty, they just pulled whole unit out and inserted new one. Genius engineering!

[Michael Mash]

Tour De Force.