Since my last post I broke apart the gun cradle because the pivot side plate wasn't right. On the left was the part that was already glued in place, in the middle was the part I thought was correct and on the right is the final corrected part.

Here you can see the cradle in pieces. 

And hopefully this pic explains my reasoning. On the middle part I could have glued two fillets into the open areas but in the end I wouldn't have been happy with it.

A few more details have been added to the overall structure. The breech block looks rough still but will be sanded smoother when I get to it. 

A side view showing the additions of the elevation quadrant and the hand grip. 

A closeup view of the elevation gear and the hand grip which was shaped from a piece of aluminium extrusion. 

The inner view of the recoil guard, a bracket and tube have been glued in place on the left hand side of the actual mounting although they are not very evident.

I took these three pics showing the gun so far inside the tank. 

You can see the steering wheel as well as the two emergency steering levers. 

The inside will be festooned with nuts and bolts as well as the ammo containers.

Today I sanded and blended the ribs to achieve a smoother appearance. 

I added the reinforcing studs inside the attachment points, I still have to add the bolt heads. 

The guard clipped in place. 

And from a slightly different angle.

Here the breech guard is almost done, this is actually the second attempt at making this part. 

I remade it because there were certain subtleties that I had not seen before and needed to get right. I will trim the outer edges as well as the strengthening ribs when it has all dried overnight. 

Another view, I still have to add the detail inside the two mounting points.

Here you can see the progress of the recoil guard with some of the strengthening ribs being glued in place, they will be sanded down and correctly shaped when the glue has dried. 

Here it is clipped to the gun mount. 

From this view the two attachment points can be seen. 

With all the components dry fitted the assembly is starting to take shape. 

Looking from above, usually I start with the largest assemblies to define the shape then the finer details get added afterwards.

Right now that the glue has cured I blended the shape a bit more. 

Here are a few more bits added to the gun cradle. I never cut parts to size it's much easier to glue everything together then go back and sand down the bits sticking out afterwards. Once everthing is added I'll texture the whole mount which is cast.  

Here you can see how rough it all is still. 

So what is made so far pinned together for a more complete effect. 

Here it is fitted to the hull, there is still a lot of fine detail work to carry out.

To all my followers I must thank you for being so patient. I haven't been inspired until now to do some work on this model, it has been very frustrating because I want to get it finished but not for the sake of doing a rush job. So when one gets tired of working on one particular aspect of a model you move onto another part that would have to be built later on anyway. Here you can see the beginnings of the cradle for the hull mounted gun, I found out that if I lay the paper plans I have drawn upside down on the plastic and soak the paper with thinners then the ink sticks very nicely to the plastic it also leaves a nice definition. The portions that needed to be removed were done by drilling around the edges and chiseling out the scrap. 

Once the rough edges were dealt with the final shaping using files and sanding sticks took place, these are the strengthening ribs that make up the cradle. 

So the next step was to glue the ribs to another sheet thereby creating the ribbed effect, here the two pivot plates for want of a better word have already been glued to the armoured shield. You can also see the beginnings of the breech and mounting. 

This is the other side, some careful measuring took place to ensure that the pivot centre matched up perfectly otherwise the whole system would not elevate or depress cleanly. 

As seen from a different angle. 

Another view.