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Formations M4A2 Sherman Hull
by: Konrad Schreier III
As quarterscale armor continues to grow in popularity the scale is attracting more and more aftermarket manufacturers, latest among them Formations. Some may be familiar with this name, as Formations offers an extensive range of high quality resin conversions in 1/35 scale, focusing on the Sherman series. As its first offerings in 1/48 scale, Formations is offering an all welded M4A2 upper hull conversion for Tamiya’s Sherman, as well as a set of British stowage bins and fittings for this same kit and a set of headlights with individual lenses suitable for the Sherman and a variety of other US vehicles. Particularly for those interested in modeling Commonwealth Shermans, these are all good news.
Each of these formations products is neatly cast in generally bubble free cream coulored resin, and all feature finely rendered detail. In cleaning up the M4A2 upper hull I did find some casting flaws around the rear corners, but these were quickly corrected with a little super glue as filler. The accuracy of this part appears excellent, with nicely rendered weld detail and accurate outlines. Although some may quibble with the nearly vertical set of the front faces on the welded drivers hoods, this treatment is similar to that given by most manufactures regardless of scale. The M4A2 Sherman conversion includes the rear plate and exhaust detail, front fenders and separate appliqué armor, allowing the builder to complete the model as either an early or late version of the all welded dry hull tank. The remainder of the build will be supplied by the Tamiya M4A1 donor kit required, as it features the separately moulded tools needed for the project. Although I did not have an example to try it with, it might also be possible to complete the M4A2 conversion using a Hobby Boss early M4 kit, offering a way for those who have acquired that kit but are not happy with the hull outlines to make use of it. One aspect of the conversion not addressed by Formations is the means of attaching the conversion to the lower hull. Experimenting with this on a Tamiya lower hull, I discovered that making a single blanking plate out of 1mm styrene sheet to cover the entire bottom of the upper hull with a cut-out for the rear plate was the simplest and sturdiest approach, although one that prevents adding any interior detail. The drawing attached at the bottom of this review reflects the dimensions of this part, although some careful fitting may be required as I found that the overall width of my bottom plate had to be narrowed by about ½ mm on each side at the rear of the hull to precisely match the Formations casting, and some scraping was required on the attachment ledges of the Formations hull for a perfectly flush fit. For strength I did add doublers to the screw attachment points.
Using the mounting plate produced an excellent fit to the Tamiya lower hull, and as an added bonus completely filled the sponsons. This is an issue with the Tamiya upper hulls as well, and the same approach would work well to fill the sponsons on the kit hulls if, like most of us, you are not planning to add an interior.
The British fitting set includes two turret bustle stowage boxes, one in the earlier Crusader style and one in the later simplified pattern, as well as British pattern spare track stowage, antenna mounts, medical kit boxes, fire extinguishers and early pattern smoke bomb launchers. Some of the parts cast with fairly large attachment points to their pour blocks, so care in removing them will be required, and I did discover a bubbles in a couple of the smaller parts (however extras of these had been included in the set I purchased, apparently after the issue was discovered by the manufacturer). Assembling a pair of the smoke launchers revealed that carefully using a single edged razor blade to sever these small parts allowed me to easily free them from their casting blocks without losing detail despite the lack of any appreciable stand off. The headlight castings are very delicate (so delicate that I left them in the bag so as not to mess them up before I could use them), but the included reflective lenses offer a neat alternative to the dead look of the painted plastic kit parts.
Overall I give high marks to Formations first offerings in 1/48 scale, and hopefully this review will encourage some Track48’ers to give them a try and encourage even more offerings. All review samples used in this article were purchased from Formations by the author.
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