Warlord/Shitaleri 1/56th Polish M18 Hellcat.

[jamesvalentine]

Not posted in a while.
Generally not bothered with Forums these days sorry.
But hey ho.







Hope it's ok to post. I've seen warlord stuff posted before so...

[ripley]

Turned out pretty good . Don't really get you beef with Italeri kits , sure it could use thinner light guards and those bins on the turret front could be a much more scale thickness ( sanding stick should work wonders ) , and a canvas cover on the mantle  should be a given , but that's stuff as a modeller you be able to do yourself ( plastruct 1mm rod for guards and greenstuff for mantle ) . Built out of the box it looks ok . No Polish M-18 during the war , sorry all used by the US except for a couple to Britain and 3 or 4 to the Russians for testing , they didn't like them ...

[jamesvalentine]

Just wait until the M8/M20. Absolutely horrible kit.
Should of bought the Rubicon one.

And that's not a problem at all. It's only for bolt action. So nothing historically has to be accurate.

[ripley]

I don't have the Warlord M-8 , but I have watched 4 unboxings and a couple of builds . It doesn't look too bad to me . What's the problem with it ?

[jamesvalentine]

The upper hull is an absolute pig.
Press the front down the back pops up.
Press back front pops.
Press left right pops.
Press right left pops.
The forward wheel arches are warped.
The M20 compartment has gaps all round.
The wheels don't fit on the pegs without allot of filing and widening.
The front left wheel is 2mm off the ground.
Hated it.

[ripley]

Sounds like you got a warped hull which was rmoved from the mold before it had cooled enough and set straight . It happens sometimes . I have 5 Warlord T-34/85s , four of which went together easy , and one which needed a lot of muscle to get the upper and lower hull to fit . Finally used the old hot water method and straightened it out , more or less .The other issues you mentioned , I would consider  just part of the  joys of plastic model building .  If  your $100 plus kits by Takom , Meng and Dragon have the odd issue , yor getting them in a $30 kit is a given IMO .

[Tracks]

To date I have built three of the Italeri  M8/M20 plastic kits, and I had no issues what-so-ever assembling them together. In fact, I think they are pretty good kits. Of the three, two were  produced for Warlord Games (black box), and one under their own name (green box). The plastic is exactly the same, but the decals are different.

To date I have built one of the M8 plastic kits from Rubicon Models, and this is also a good kit.

Which one is better? I'm only going to say that both are so much better than the resin piece of crap that was only available to us until plastic kits were released.

I said this in another post, but its worth repeating. I remember a time (not so long ago) that the only 1:56 scale vehicles available were resin! And even some of the worst plastic kits are better than most if not all of those old resin kits.
 

[ultravanillasmurf]

Interesting about the decals.

[Tracks]

Interesting about the decals.

Yes, and also the instructions. For the most part, the decals you get with the kits marketed by Italeri (green box) give you a better selection than those kits marketed by WLG (black box). As for quality, but Italeri and WLG decals are about equal. Those that Rubicon Models give you are I think better. At least for me they are better, but can be tricky for newbies since they are very thin (I like the thin decals).