Monday, 9 March 2015

Kitbashing - Making a US Armoured M4 (105)

After completing the build and paint on the M4A3 (76) last week I got to thinking about combining some of the spare parts in the Rubicon kit with a Warlord plastic M4 to create an M4 armed with a 105mm howitzer. I had a few reasons for this as adding a fifth Sherman to the four I have would;

a) give my collection a 'full' US Armoured Platoon 
b) give me more tactical options when gaming
c) allow me to keep building and painting tanks - it's gotten a little addicitive!

So this morning I went to my local Warlord plastic crack purveyor and picked up another M4 plastic kit (the last they had in stock, I think I've bought all three they had actually) and then sat down armed with 3 sprues and my tools:

The build for the chassis and hull was straight off of the Warlord Games instruction sheet so I shan't trouble you with the details of that. But once I got to the turret I assembled the Rubicon 105mm gun and fore-plate of the mantlet and then the turret and rear plate from the Warlord kit: 


After some dryfitting I was happy that despite the slight overlap on the mantlet plates the 105mm gun fitted the turret so started to use some scrap plasticard to help hold it in place:


Once the glue had had some time to cure I finished assembling the turret:


And then fitted the turret to the hull:


All in all I'm pretty happy with this simple wee kitbash and despite it not being perfect I think it looks pretty effective... now to get some paint on it!

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