Scrivsland: BlitzKreig Miniatures Sherman V

Sunday, 15 July 2012

BlitzKreig Miniatures Sherman V

I've had a slow burner Meiktila 1945 project on the go for quite some time now. I've already painted up 16 14th Army and 16 Japanese and was looking to add a Sherman tank to the collection, probably just because the front cover of the Osprey looks so good:

I've known Corky for quite some time and knew that he cast resin for several existing manufacturers but did not know that he had set up BlitzKreig Miniatures producing his own castings. I opted for a Sherman V, the 1/48 scale model is only £20.00 and if you buy three you get another one free, so four tanks for £60.00 bargain!

We arranged to meet up at Maelstrom Games so that we could catch up for a gas, and so that he could show me some of the other models in the range, including two as yet un-released Panzer III models. Of course, I took the opportunity of taking a few photos.

M4A4 with 75mm

M4A4 with 76mm

Sherman V (this is a painted version of the one I bought)

Sherman Firefly

Tiger 1E

Panther G

Valentine

Crusader MkII

Hot out of the mold a new PzIIIM model

Hot out of the mold a new PzIIIL model

Anyway, back onto my own Sherman.

The model ships in three resin parts, a single piece casting of the hull including tracks and some molded on stowage, the turret and a 75mm gun.

I'm really pleased with the model, not only is the level of detail on the insane for a one piece resin casting, there is nothing in the way of air bubbles on the visible surfaces and there is really very little cleaning up to do.

Here are some shots of the 'out of the box model':

Out of the box model

The hull, note the detail on the resin cast machine gun

The hull, again the detail around the headlight protectors is excellent.

The model took very little cleaning up at all. I had to remove a little excess flash from where the two halves of the mold joined on the glacis plate and a little from around the tracks and road wheels, literally only a couple of minutes work with a X-Acto knife. In order to get a good fit for the 75mm gun I used my rotary tool with a 3mm drill to drill out the hole in the gun mounting, I also at the same time drilled two 3mm holes in the tracks to allow me to fit some neolithium magnets and one each in the bottom of the turret and the top of the hull.I like to store my figures in Really Useful Boxes lined with steel paper and find it best to do this before painting. Finally I drilled a 1mm hole and added a brass rod aerial.