Steps 5, 6, 7 and 1 one step back then a 1 step forward

I finished another whole page of instructions; I might actually finish this model in the near future. The Christmas holiday couldn’t come at a better time. Spend time with the family…nah…work on models….work on models. I know, I am getting a lump a coal this year.

Steps 5, 6 and 7 involve putting all the odds and ends on the front and back of the upper hull. It is a mix of plastic parts and PE parts, just read the instructions carefully and you shouldn’t have any problems (I wish I would have followed my own advice). The headlights are made of clear plastic which make painting them more difficult. I painted the back of them with silver and masked off the front with Bare-Metal foil.

It was real pain cleaning the mold lines off the tools. Some are real bad and need to be scrapped and sanded pretty heavy to get them off. This will give the tools more character and look like they have been used, at least that is the way I will justify it.

After I was done, I started looking at other builds of the M4A2 and noticed that all of them had PE headlight guards. Sure enough, Dragon included PE guards and do list this as an option in the instructions – for some reason I missed it. Dragon reminds me of Eduard, they give you a choice of using PE or Plastic parts, which is an excellent practice for people like me who are not totally comfortable working with PE.

Since the PE guards look more realistic I decided to rip off the plastic ones. Then I heated the PE guards over a candle until they were very, very hot and let them cool naturally. This allows the part to be bent without the springy effect. Then I bent them to match the plastic part and glued them on using 2 part epoxy. Presto, an easy fix and a huge upgrade.