Plywood megachonkster

My friends, I think the hull is finished, although there are a couple of small details that I'll add as I'll be working on the turret. And then there's also some stowage and maybe a few sandbags which are visible in historical images. 

But all the main elements are now in place! And boy, the wooden planks and plywood were fun to construct. I've been recreating wood from actual wood for a few years now, be it balsa or oak veneer. But if you haven't tried making wood out of plastic, you're seriously missing out! Not only it's much easier to paint, which I've already learned on the two previous facades, but even damage and splinters are much easier to replicate! With balsa, you have to make countless incisions with a hobby blade and hope it'll snap in an interesting way, but you'll ruin the woodgrain with those cuts. With plastic, you also have to make those incisions, but you can actually adjust the shape of the damaged area, and integrate those rough cuts into the woodgrain. 

I'm also surprised how thick the hull became with the planks. One photo of the damaged side shows that the planks were spaced, and there was quite a distance between them and the armor. The upper edges have been shut with more planks, most likely as a safety measure - you wouldn't enjoy snapping your ankle if your foot slid down there, and a satchel charge tossed behind the planks wouldn't be much fun either. This planking from above makes the whole thing look like a solid block of plastic/wood, so I'm very glad with the decision to include the damaged side which not only adds quite a lot of visual texture, but also exposes some of the original contours of the tank, and shows how the wooden structure looked underneath. 

I still had some energy left in me the other night, so I decided to quickly assemble the Panzer Art figures. It seems that they were specifically designed for a Sherman because damn, the radio operator fits there perfectly! The driver sits on a small styrofoam contraption because neither of these figures have legs, and I have to fit him through the turret opening. The chief will be sitting in his turret commander's hatch, but first I have to build him the turret! Note how many molding flaws there are on the turret's surface - good thing that I'll be reworking the texture anyway! :) 

P.S. Originally I added the protective cages for periscopes on those hatches, but they were quite oversized (strange because the set is from Aber), and due to the addition of plywood on the front, and the massive periscope on the inner side of the hatch, I wouldn't be able to fit the leaning figure. So I decided to keep the periscopes without them. They're missing on some tanks, so IMO it's not that big of a deal :)