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Showing results for tags '1/48 A7V Tank'.
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At the scene of a potential disaster, it probably isn't right to apportion blame, but it's all @SleeperService fault. After I asked the question 'Why no injection moulded WWI tanks', some fool mentioned that as most of them were quite angular, scratch-building might be an option. Which lead an even bigger fool to start thinking….. The biggest problem with scratch-building tanks is their tracks, so my decision about which one to build was based on which WWI tanks had less prominent tracks. That's the main reason I chose the German A7V tank: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A7V These scratch-building kits are a bit duff aren't they? Not even any panel lines! The instructions aren't much better: Using the internationally accepted unit of measure of one Swann-Morton, you can see that even in 1/48 it's quite a big beast: I've done a bit of scratch-building before, even when I was a kid I built three aircraft from scratch but nothing to this level of complexity. I just love to scratch (apparently you can get stuff for it these days) I love the 'How the hell am I going to do that' moment, it gives my grey matter a bit of a work out and I think there may be quite a few of those moments in this build. I don't know if I will be able to complete it (regardless of time-frame) but I intend to give it my best shot. The biggest problem, as I mentioned above, was the tracks, how the hell am I going to do those? As it was my biggest concern, I tackled them first. If I couldn't scratch the tracks there wouldn't be any point continuing, so time to experiment: My reasoning was that if 'Red bull give you wings', then Guinness might give me tracks, or at least the can might: Eeeerrrrr, okay'ish but too thin. Two more days of playing gave me something that I think looks better and it's a better scale thickness match: What a genius I hear you say, how on earth did you achieve that? I marked the tread pattern out on 0.5mm strip of styrene, and using a candle to heat something suitable (the end of a pair of reverse tweezers) and formed the shape using a very simple wooden die. If you are deranged enough to try this, experiment first because if the tweezers or whatever you're using, is too hot, it will just go straight through the plastic. I found about five seconds in the flame when the metal was cold and from then on just three seconds per tread. I just shaped the tread where it would be visible because taking the tread pattern over the full width of the track just resulted in the strip falling apart more often than not. It might be possible if you vacformed it, but that would obviously take a lot more work on the pattern you would need to vacform. Incidentally the photo above is after quite a lot of tidying up and cutting the leading edge of each individual link. Remember that the track for the other side is a mirror image. Here endeth the lesson. Tune in next time for another thrilling episode.