Hello everyone,
I temporarily stopped working on the Jagdpanzer IV A-0 while I wait for a bunch of PE tools I ordered - I didn’t want to tackle working springs, hinges and the like with nothing but the old ruler and pliers…no offense to them of course[:)]
I’ve been eying the Tasca Firefly for a while now, but the only problem was the price, which at $54.00 I thought was a bit steep. However, I won the kit in the raffle at the model show I was at last week, so I had no more excuses - I would build the Firefly.
Now be sure to get this, I am no Sherman freak. I really don’t build much Allied armor, so don’t expect all the weld beads and rear hull angles to be just exactly so. On the other hand, I’ve heard this kit is nearly perfect as far as dimensional and detail accuracy, so it might not be a problem to begin with.
Anyway, here goes:
Step 1: You start by assembling the tracks, which are the T62 steel tread type, cast in glueable vinyl and split into two sections per side. Before anybody with an Italeri kit fresh in their mind goes screaming out of the room, let me say that these are probably the best vinyl tracks I’ve seen, and they are glueable with normal plastic cement. Once dry, I picked them up for inspection and couldn’t even find the seams. The instructions are a bit confusing here, and while they intend to show you to cut off the excess plastic sprue left over from the injection process, it could easily be misinterpreted as cutting off three links per run, which is something you do not want to do! On the other hand, the instructions are in very good English, a rarity for a foreign kit[;)]
The road wheels come next. The included pressed steel wheels and idlers are correct for all four vehicles that the kit provides markings for, together with the set of sprockets. However, since the suspension parts in this kit are fully workable it would lead me to believe that this is the Tasca VVSS set? Be that as it may, both the spoked road wheels and idlers and two other types of sprockets are also included, allowing you to model a Firefly IC (or the suspension of a Firefly IC at least!) The spoked wheels were also very rarely seen on the M4A4/Firefly VC, so they could be used there as well. The sprockets have a very nice cast texture and well defined bolts/nuts.
The one part of the suspension I really dislike are the rivets on the inside face of the road wheels. These are provided as little bumps molded directly to the sprue with no gate, which you must shave off and glue into place on the road wheels. The clincher is that there are 144 of them and there are no spares!!! I tried doing a few which I promptly lost/melted/glued to myself. My Firefly will just have to do without them! They would have been much better as PE parts, although then you’d have to file each one…
The road wheels need an average amount of cleanup, considering how wide Sherman tires are. The seam lines are about the same as the recent Dragon kits and slightly worse than the newer Tamiya Shermans. It took me about 30 minutes with a file and knife to clean them up.
I started fiddling with the suspension arms and springs, and it is fully workable. But I haven’t done enough on that to be worthy of posting. So we’ll leave that for tomorrow, or the next day, or the next day…