I'm trying to see how much of the Lewis guns was poking out of the sponsons and front of a Mk IV. Unfortunately I don't trust the details on the survivors - Grit's guns don't look quite right, Deborah and Liberty don't have any, and Flirt II and 245 were almost completely rebuilt so are unlikely to be authentic (in my opinion). I've been looking for photos of one of the Britannias on tour in USA or Canada on the Library of Congress site, because their photos are high resolution (almost all of mine are fuzzy), but no luck yet.
I've got to the stage on my Mk IV build where I need to replace the kit's Hotchkiss with Lewis. I tried Rob's idea of using the Lewis guns from Emhar's British Infantry set, but there is too much flash and the mould is misaligned, so I gave up with that. Now I have some thin plastic tube that I have beveled the end of with sandpaper, but I am not clear about how long I should make them.
Any photos, plans, suggestions and/or ideas gratefully received!
Hard to tell on the Grit picture... it doesn't quite look right. The outer cooling shroud has lots of what i'd describe as grooves all along the casing, running around the casing giving it a non-smooth finish (if that makes sense?) which would be impossible to reproduce in small scale so a smooth case would be preferable in a model, but does help differentiate the real thing as i'm not sure anyone's made a reproduction Lewis with the grooved casing.