SPA Modeler

This past year, I lost four good Forum friends; three of whom I wanted to meet in person. All were decorated veterans and overall outstanding modelers. Some of you may have known them from past Forums. They are:

Chad Lebo aka Zod
Cliff aka New Mex
Rich Durham
and Carl aka Shellback,

This is the model I am building as a tribute to them all. I chose this particular model because it is:

-> One of my all-time favorite tanks.

-> it fits in my SoCal AMPS chapter's Patton Group Build for the next West Coast IPMS Nationals.

and -> Carl himself did such an outstanding job on one of these models.


I can only hope to do as well.


Here is the kit:




Here is my progress on this model. All this work was done on both Hobby Days Friday and Saturday.

The first thing I did was to assemble the two drive sprockets and then match up all the roadwheels and assemble all the return rollers:



I'll paint the tires separately and add them before I install the roadwheels. I left everything on the sprue so I wouldn't lose them. That is a chronic problem I have...

Next was to add all these detail parts to the lower hull. I'm not quite sure exactly what they are, but they are all on there now:



After that, I added the return rollers to the upper hull, making this look like the wildest lowrider I have ever seen:



Letting that dry, I moved on to do the basic assembly on the turret:



Later on, I cemented the upper hull to the lower hull, adding the turret to this to see how it looked:



That does look really funky with the unfinished rear area. I just had to take this further by assembling the rear engine covers and louvers:



That's where I stopped in order to move forward on some of my other projects. You can see them in my usual thread.

Thanks for looking in, comments are welcome.

I will also be following along with this. After looking at the photos I had to go back up and look at the box again.... 1/35th I'm shocked to see you build out of 1/72. Can't wait to see what you do in this larger scale.

Very cool! That turret looks WAY to big for the chassis.

Medicman71 wrote:Very cool! That turret looks WAY to big for the chassis.

You should see a M103...

Thank you all for your awesome comments.

Bruce, I look forward to seeing what else you write.

Floki, yes, it is considerably outside my usual build; but with my club doing a Group Build of 1/35th scale tanks, I only decided to participate because they chose Patton tanks. Past AMPS Group Builds I passed on since I had no interest in having any of the previous tanks in 1/35th scale. I'm willing to build a 1/35 scale Patton because as mentioned, it is one of my favorite tanks. One of the guys I'm doing this tribute for (Carl) did such an incredibly magnificent job on this tank and that is another reason why. I hope I can do at least half as good as he did in justice for all these guys.

Medic, it does look too big, but once the fenders go on, it'll look more 'balanced'. As Carlos said, you should see the M-103!

Stay tuned, I hope to get more done on this in the coming week.

Mark, I gotta agree with you about the M48. It has such unique lines for an American tank between the hull and turret that it oozes a peculiar sort of armor charm. Almost a sort of bad ass heavily armed mechanical tortoise. A lethal combination of nature and mans’ invention.

Well spoken Carlos! I have to totally agree.

Thank you Bruce! I am thrilled that you are following along. I do hope to do this kit justice as this is somewhat a learning curve for me as well. After all, there are parts in this you don't find in a smaller kit!