A Mini Kit Review by Frank

MINI REVIEW BY FRANK T.

M4 SHERMAN (EARLY PRODUCTION)
TAMIYA 48TH SCALE

Every once in a while, for a change of pace, I build something in the armor category. Most often it is a wheeled vehicle of some kind because I don’t like dealing with tracks. If they are the old vinyl one piece “rubber band” tracks, I have trouble getting them on without bending or breaking some part of the model’s suspension. I haven’t used any of the great looking modern “build them up yourself” tracks because they seem too difficult for me as well as costing more than I want to spend.

Tamiya caught my attention when they released a group of 48th scale tanks, among which is the Sherman. I thought a 48th scale vehicle would look good on my shelf along with my 48th scale WWII aircraft. The fit of the parts is very good. There are somewhat fewer parts than in a 35th scale kit, so the main build goes very quickly. The tools are molded on the hull, but they have good definition and I found painting them to be no problem.

The suspension parts go together easily and Tamiya has engineered the kit so that it is easy to get the suspension system arranged symmetrically with all the road wheels sitting on the ground. This helps a great deal with the track installation.

The tracks, which I thought would be a problem, turned out to be easy to build. They are made of plastic, not vinyl. For each side of the vehicle there is a long run of track, top and bottom, along with two short runs which reach from the bottom run to the drive and return wheels. Then you get individual pieces to fit between the short runs and the top run to complete the track. Each of the short pieces fits nicely (almost a snap fit) into its neighboring piece. To summarize, building the tracks was no more of a problem than any other aspect of building the kit. Put the track part into place, a drop of crazy glue and add the next piece.

I will have to leave it to the experts as to whether or not this is an authentic representation of an early Sherman, although I will say that it looks good to me and reflects the pictures I saw in the “Sherman in Action” book by Squadron. It was a satisfying build and I look forward to modeling the Tiger I (early production) which is available in this series.

Frank's Sherman from the May Meeting.

Find more pics >HERE<