malvern_man
SMF Supporter
Sewing thread — anything else is far too thick for crews to have tied stuff down with.
Helmets were usually either laid on the turret roof, or hung from convenient brackets, lifting eyes, antennas, etc. from their chin strap. American tanks tended to not have that many helmets on the outside — British and German tanks frequently had them for each crewman, but they’re not that common in photos of American tanks.
With this kind of thing, it works best to think about what would have been used in the real world (looking at photos helps a lot with that ) so you can estimate the thickness, then multiply by your model’s scale and find something that will look good. Thin string is, what, maybe a few millimetres thick? So in 1:35 you quickly end up at a tenth of a millimetre or thereabouts, which you’re not going to find in scale (even fine fishing line is more like 0.2 mm already, and you can’t tie that down very well anyway) but sewing thread will easily look thin enough.
Same for things like tow cables: if you know the real thing was ⅞ inches (which, off the top of my head, Sherman tow cables were), that’s about 22 mm in the real world, so in 1:35 you get about 0.65 mm. Just find some nylon cord of about that thickness and it will look good.
I’ve built a couple of Asuka Shermans on here, if you’re looking for tips Number one is to not use the sponge for the suspension, IMHO.
Check your kit if it has the spacer sprues — all Asuka Sherman kits I’ve built had two of these:
View attachment 495388
The instructions likely won’t tell you what these are for, but the side of the box might, but they’re there to replace the sponge to create a non-workable, but more stable, suspension. A is 1.5 mm, B is 1.0 mm and C is 0.5 mm, off the top of my head: for a regular Sherman to sit normally, you need B (the middle thickness) in each of the bogies. For a lightly loaded (empty) tank, use A (the thickest), and for one that’s heavily loaded, has worn suspension, or is an M4A3E2, use C (thinnest).
Of course, if your kit doesn’t have these sprues, you can easily make up something from plastic card of the right thickness.
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