Scratchbuilt M50 turret

Looking good Greg!

Can only echo what everyone else has said. Stupendous work

Gary

Are you using Archer welds?

The turret is looking sharp

Schweet!
And what's the new garage toy?

I like it.
Sorry to go off-topic, but my daily flogger is now a '91 Miata, my weapon of choice to get back into Solo2, and the wife's daily driver is an '08 E550.
We may be gear-heads.

Will do. I wore out a series of Datsun 510s back in the mid 80's through the very early 90s, won a couple of Divisionals, then thrashed around in different cars until we went off-road. Now that we've sold the off-road business, I'm wanting back into autocross. No current club affiliations.
Back to M50s: I'm still undecided on doing the VVSS diesel M50. I'd like it to be historically accurate, but then again I think it would be a hoot to do even if it's not. Either way I'm holding until you get your turret available.

Ain't skeered.

So, it's been a while since I've worked on this...too busy playing with 1/1 scale stuff! But I'm back at it and dialing it in. Here's where we are now. The shape of the bustle has been further refined, since the overhead view still bothered me a bit. The back of the bustle wasn't quite symmetrical, and while I know that castings aren't perfect mine seemed a tad too off-center. So some more epoxy putty work and I'm happier with it. I've drilled some divots to locate rods for the build-it-yourself grab rail, and fabbed up a hatch lock for the oval hatch. The fit isn't perfect with the hatch open, but it's close enough to allow someone to tweak it as they wish. Placement of those wasn't standardized. I've also added casting marks underneath the bustle, and unseen here is the drawing for the aluminum barrel that will soon go to the machine shop for an estimate. I'm still fussing with the angles for the smoke dischargers, but I have one dialed in and the others roughed in. A couple of weeks at most now before I send it to Steve R. for evaluation & mold engineering. Separate parts will be the oval hatch, blade vane sight, hatch lock, ventilator dome, mantlet parts, pistol port, smoke dischargers, and muzzle brake. And I'm also back at work on the Repotenciado masters.

Well, this is finally the end of the line, I think. I am happy with this, now that there's a coat of primer on everything. These images show all the turret master parts: Turret shell, oval hatch, pistol port, blade vane sight, ventilator dome, oval hatch lock, smoke discharger bases and tube, muzzle brake, and mantlet parts. The slight imperfection on the front of one of the discharger bases is already puttied and drying. Once that's done and cleaned up I can pack all this up and send it to Steve at Celticwerks for evaluation and mold engineering, and get a quote from my machine shop on the turned aluminum barrels. When will it come to market? Just a few months, I hope. There's usually some tweaking that I need to do based on Steve's evaluation before we get to a production piece, and lead time for the machine shop is usually at least six weeks once I pull the trigger on that...and that won't happen until the resin is ready for production. But it's coming...






Next up is a deviation from Shermans: A conversion for the Chilean M24 Chaffee Repotenciado with 60mm HMGS gun.

Nice work and congrats on the finish Greg.

I'll keep you all posted here, Rod. Anybody who wants one should contact me off-board at gtbuechler@hotmail.com so that I can get my customer spreadsheet going and get an idea of aggregate demand. Note that doing so doesn't obligate you to buy it by any means, but it helps me decide on how large a batch to purchase. Previous history tells me that about 75% of people who say "I want one!" beforehand actually follow through, and others inquire after seeing the finished item in photos or at some club meet or a friend's modeling cave.

Good news