Adding to my obsession with Egg Scale models (small cute cartoonish style) is this Meng M4A1 Sherman tank. Described as a snap together (or glueless) kit I found I had to use glue too much. It's glueless just like every plastic model kit can be but the parts don't stay put under handling. Plus it's not even trying to approach the engineering the Bandai puts in their truly glueless kits. There is a fair bit of flashing in this one to clean up and some poor placement of sprue runs causing visible whitening of plastic under stress. Since the plastic is moulded in pink plastic and purple rubber tracks some may want to paint anyway. My decal sheet had scratches on the surface (or cracking?) inside its sealed bag that was undamaged. This resulted in several decals splitting on the model immediately, and it took lots of softener to get decals to start to conform to slight surface curve.

Overall it's a cute and quick build. But really lacks quality control and modern production advantages possible. Stick to Bandai and Hasegawa until Meng learn the old corner cutting ways don't work in today's industry.

A few days ago I finally fully completed this project.A little background, Ronja is a German racing driver. She has enjoyed success in the Renault Clio Cup category and has progressed to GT3 with the Porsche Carrera Cup in 2017. I noticed her being interviewed in 2016 at the Nurburgring 24hr and was stunned by her enthusiasm as a driver and that has never wavered throughout the racing season. She genuinely loves to race and is proud of her accomplishments to date but shows no hint of the ego most racing drivers exhibit which makes them often people you don't want to see succeed. Her rarity in a challenging sport where she brings skill and positivity to often dreary races inspired me to try to see if I could find her car as a scale model to add to my collection. I couldn't find one, so I decided to try to make my own instead.

Ronja on the Lausitzring, May 2017Photo supplied by Ronja. — Ronja on the Lausitzring, May 2017
*Photo supplied by Ronja.*

This became a challenge to myself to see if I could even make something that was ok and not a mess. Having the use of only one arm and failing eyesight I knew I'd have to try different methods for different aspects of this project. The first race I watched Live of Ronja racing was in May 2017 at the Lausitzring and she was new to the category and car so it had a relatively simple livery on it so this was my target car to add to my collection. It took a lot of time to find a good base model car to start with that was as close to her race spec version as possible. Below is what I found which wasn't terribly different and seemed a realistic challenge for my lack of modelling skills. Several layers of clear cote and the whole car really popped so time to leave it be and paint a track surface for the paint. I couldnt paint my way out of a wet paper bag and its probably too light grey even though its that light in photos that'll be because they werent taken with a polariser filter properly. Still, i kept it as i had a background insert to put behind the car when i put the casing over the car so its in its natural setting.

The following day it was safely packed and on it way hopefully to Ronja. The car came out far better than I thought it would and its something I'm proud of. Ronja has impressed me with her achievements/entusiasm and gratious with her time with fans and so I wanted to give it to her as a show of support. Maybe it'll make her smile when times going rough and I hope she continues to succeed!

BEFORE: The starting base model Porsche I found to use.

I started with seeking out source reference material so I could hopefully see the real car from all angles to identify body differences and sponsorship and livery details I would have to tackle. There are air intakes on my source model that are not on the race car and vice versa. So I got to play with some air-drying modelling clay tofill in the largest holes and reshape the body lines accordingly. Porsches have nice bodies so this was easy and intuitive. It took several days each hole as i wanted the clay to set and see if it cracked or shrunk (it didn't), maybe do a little more if I hadn't used enough and go over with smooth sandpaper to try to get the bodyshape blended in smoothly. Tackling the livery details, I sourced good quality logos as best I could to match the ones on the car. I did a bunch of testing with printing my own as stickers to see how detailed and colourfast they were. Stickers I thought would be easy to place and remove if I messed up. Which i did, being so tiny they were hard to cut from backing sheet and keep flat to place back the often curled and preferred to stick to my finger instead :) So i had to remove and reprint them a few times before I was happy with the results.

Several layers of clear cote and the whole car really popped so time to leave it be and paint a track surface for the paint. I couldnt paint my way out of a wet paper bag and its probably too light grey even though its that light in photos that'll be because they werent taken with a polariser filter properly. Still, i kept it as i had a background insert to put behind the car when i put the casing over the car so its in its natural setting.

AFTER: Finally all done and reassembled, next day its in the post.