8. The Postman Always Rings Twice

 My postman has actually delivered something nice for a change, normally he just spams me with junk mail, like an email account gone bad, but this time he shoved something useful through the letterbox, and to be a little more specific, the Flamenco Beach (Culebra Beach) masking set that I ordered for this build has turned up, and it seems on first inspection to be very good, which it has to be said shocks me a great deal because normally when I order aftermarket stuff from the big bad web it turns out to be a little bit...rubbish, rubbish is probably a little bit harsh, hit n miss, let's just say hit n miss, and it's even the right scale, which shocked me even more because they do a 1/48th version, and it didn't seem to specify on the website which scale you were actually buying.

 Pictures above and below, I have absolutely no idea who Uschi van der Rosten actually is, but I have however heard of Miracle Masks who it would seem produced the mask set, with old Uschi just being the designer I think? Not sure, he has a website which seems to have quite a large selection of masks and stencils, but maybe focused more on the aero side of things, the mask set contains everything for the most famous version of this Sherman, so yellow and green spiral graffiti for the hull, and fishbones for either side of the turret, plus a few other bits n bobs, and it has to be said that the instructions are living a little on the vague side of life, but who needs instructions! Blokes don't need instructions! (famous last words)

 In terms of actual work on the model I have made a start on sorting out the turret and the upper hull, both of which needed their chaos texture adding using Mr Surfacer Dissolved Putty and some very fine wood dust, I've used artistic license again for most of it, but not as crazy as the lower hull, this time I tried to keep things a little more restrained and follow pictures a teeny tiny little bit, the upper hull got a third pass with a Mini-craft tool and small rotary burs just to clean off some last sharp edges, and then the inside of the upper hull got absolutely murdered in a desperate attempt to remove all the Tamiya moulding marks/pin marks and stuff, because of the very open nature of the model it's very easy to see the inside of the hull, so it all need sorting out.

 Pictures below, the gun breech that I scratch built ages ago has been fitted at long last to the inside of the turret, It does quite a good job of just catching the eye through the open hatches to give the impression of at least something being inside the turret, then it all got stipple painted in the same way as the lower hull, and some slight dusting added as well, and on the right, the inside of the upper hull got the same stipple paint process as everything else has so far, plus this time I added the vague remains of the sponsons before I painted anything, so was able to blend them in better this time around.

 And that's about as far as I've got for now, though I'm working on it a lot more now, wheel and suspension work should really be next I think, I just got a little carried away with the turret, doing some stipple painting and stuff, and things just spiralled from there, the turret really needed sorting out now because I bodged it ages ago with fine grit/sand on the inside while experimenting with textures, and it ended up looking god awful, it doesn't look much better now to be honest, but it's a lot better than it was that's for sure.

 Picture above, If you think of this as a pre shade layer very much like spraying on a coat of black surface primer then it starts to make a little more sense, you just have to get past the fact that the turret is a horrible chocolate brown colour, well for now at least, wheels and suspension work is probably up next as it all badly needs to go back on sooner rather than later.

 Matt