This being Canada Day, I thought I'd share a few more images of the Skink I built a few years ago. I bought the resin conversion at a vendor table at the Seattle IPMS show a few years ago for $15 and set it aside. It was eventually determined to be from Panzer Resin Models in Brazil. It was pretty crude; the hull was scrap and the turret, it turns out, needed lots of work. Fast forward a couple of years and I got some superb images of unfinished Skink turret castings recovered from a cadet rifle range in British Columbia, which revealed that the resin turret had some serious shape problems. Lots of added styrene strip & epoxy putty followed by sanding (in multiple sessions) got things where they needed to be. I made the late Grizzly hull from a Tasca M4A1 Intermediate kit, added RB Model Oerlikon barrels to scratchbuilt gun trays, and fitted Panda Plastics CDP tracks. Markings are for 1st Canadian Army and partly conjectural; I don't know for sure that the Army symbol was there since no photo shows the front of the tank. One tank was sent to the ETO in the spring of '45 for trials, and was used to blast roadblocks with concentrated 20mm automatic fire. Enjoy!
"You could probably use some armor. A Sherman can give you a very nice...edge!"
Thanks! Starting with a Tasca kit tilted things in my favor, as did those images of the turret shells recovered from the firing range. Those made it possible to discern where the PRM resin turret was lacking in detail and where the shape was off. Given that no complete Skink survives and the unfinished shells hadn't been discovered yet when the master pattern was made, the pattern maker did a fine job.
Would I build another if it came out in plastic? Of course...but I'm hoping for both early & late Ram kits to appear first!
"You could probably use some armor. A Sherman can give you a very nice...edge!"