Well I just bought a Timiya M4 Sherman (early version). Can you guys tell me If I made the right choice or is it just a bad kit. Also tell me for what tricks or problems with the kit that I should look out for. Finally if you can tell me if the are any aftermarket parts out there. I don’t thimk I need intelior. I think that I will need lots of photoetched parts and possibly a metal barrel. If you have any other suggestions be free to say anything.
Why am I asking this, because this is going to be my first Sherman and I want it to be just perfect.
Thanks a lot. Hope to hear lots of things from you guys![:)][:D]
Yes,good choice you can do a lot with it.Verdinium makes and interior and engine for it if you want to go that way.Check Squadron.com for photo-etch parts from edruad and tom model works.You can build straight out of the box and it will still look good.I have built one for the sherman group build a while back and it was a fantastic kit to do.You won’t need a metal barrel for it as the kit barrel is tapered as the real one and needs just light sanding for mold lines.All the other stuff you can get some .020 brass rods and make handles and scope protectors or you can use streched styrene for this.You will have fun building this kit,I did.Digger
There were a whole lot of shermans built in real life, and there are a whole lot of
aftermarket add-ons for the Tamiya Shermans. You can pretty much build any sherman
type you want depending on how deep your pockets are, and the Tamiya kit is a good
base to build on.
As the guy in my club says, “You can open a Tamiya kit, cut open the bags, dump them
out, and you’ll have a pretty good kit already built for you.” I don’t think it is that easy, but
the Sherman is a good kit.
Both Sherman kits I have built so far were great builds. You may want to consider filling in the sponsons though since Tamiya decided to leave them wide open.
I’m building my first Italeri kit, I don’t know if it’s my kit and the fact it’s semi-old, but there’s fit problems and all my Tamiya kits are good, but they seem to be more expensive. That really had nothing to do with the Sherman, but…
LIke Chris has already mentioned, the only thing “wrong” with Tamiya Shermans is they leave the bottom of the sponsons (the part that sticks out over the track) open. The link to Archer is a good source for a template to fix the problem. As far as AM parts go, there is almost no limit, you can get hulls, turrets, tracks, suspensions, guns, name it. It’s really up to your wallet.
Wow thamks guys. I can see that my kit is really popular and that I can do lots of thing with it. By the way the kit was at my LHS for $25 and the original price of it is $40. So thats why I got this kit, basicly because I liked the price, the tank, the company, and the model looked good to me. Also I had a $20 off cupon and I got the kit for basicly $5.
Thanks very much for the help, I greatly appriciate it.
love the early sherman and verlinden makes an engine compartment/ engine kit for it. they also have a fighting compartment as well, i think ( you might want to look it up )
Aside from the open sponson bottom, you can’t go wrong with the Tamiya Sherman. They build pretty goon out of the box and would definitely be great as host to AM and PE modifications.
I have built 4 shermans now 2 from Dragon, 1 from Academy and 1 from Tamiya. The best one so far is the one from Tamiya.
Ya, you can’t go wrong with the Tamiya sherman. The sponson problem is an easyy fix. What the hell were they thinking? I’e built four of the kits and there are just so many things you can do with them. Lots of after market details to choose from. Semper Fi, Mud
Not sure about their Sherman, but in general Tamiya is regarded as the best, and I have not heard anything but good things about their Sherman as well. I remember Robert (ShermanFreak) strongly suggesting the Tamiya offering, especially if you’re interested in AM parts.
All in all it’s a good kit (aside from those stupid sponsons that Tamiya refuses to change!). I’m about 90% done with mine, and am very pleased with it. I just mounted the treads and am extremely pleased with the fact that they can be glued with regular cement. The kit has a lot of extra parts so you can customize things, such as doing a little mix and match between spoked and pressed road wheels which often occurred in the field.
For aftermarket parts, I used Eduard’s PE set. The front fenders were wrong, so I shaved the kit ones down to an acceptable thickness, but otherwise the PE is excellent. For decals, I used Archer Transfers for the lettering and painted the stars, small ones with Edurad masks and a large deck star with one I cut myself.
In addition to the references suggested, which are excellent and well worth studying, you might want to pick up Squadron’s Sherman in Action which has a ton of reference photos.