Lengthening the hullAs I wrote before there are some serious issues with the Airfix Sherman Crab. One of the important ones is that the Airfix Sherman is an M4 (Sherman Mk.I) and the Crab in operational service always was an M4A4 (Sherman Mk.V). Now one of the main differences between the M4 and the M4A4 was a different engine that resulted in a longer hull. 15 cm longer. Not that much, but still visible, especially in the spacing between the road wheels. Now at first I decided to neglect this issue (who will notice?), but as I suffer chronically from AMS (Advanced Modeller Syndrome) in the end I decided to try and tackle the issue. As I couldn't find any precedent on the web I thought out my own approach. Let's see how this works out:
The lower hull parts were glued together. As a counterweight to the mine flail I glued a piece of lead in the back of the hull. I could have done this in a later stage, but at that moment I didn't know yet AMS was going to force me to cut the hull in half.
Then I marked were to cut the lower hull, using modellers tape. The cut is exactly on the vertical axle of the middle bogie, so wheel spacing will end up evenly distrubuted.
This is always the best moment in modelling: cutting your model in two! No way back now....
Then I inserted a 2mm shim of plastic, more or less approaching the 15cm extra length I need in 1/76 scale and glued the two halves together again.
In the mean time the upper hull was freed from most of its detail.
Now a 2mm shim was glued to the back plate. This is convenient, as the M4A4 has a different shape of backplate anyway, compared to the M4.
Then lots of filling and sanding, to get everything smooth again.
Job done!
From another perpective. Now there is a lot of work to recreate and add all that detail.
By the way:
AMS dilemma: If people notice this lengthening I did a bad job. If I do a good job, nobody will notice it.