lancfans' 8th Army Grant Command Tank *** Finished ***

[JohnRatzenberger]

OK, I see that. How thin did your turret walls come out ? Maybe your resin is stronger than what I've worked with but I always have a horror of going at it with a hobby drill and finding some fault line ....

[lancfan]

John, there won't be a fault line because the resin is a liquid poured into a mould and not a cellular material. The watchword with this is to BE CAREFUL and not remove too much at once, if too much heat builds up you can burn the material and it will lose its strengh, the walls of the turret are very thin in places so care is important. I use polyester resin as sold in car accessory shops, it is cheap and strong but quite brittle and encasing the kit part inside both reduced the amount of resin I would have to remove and included a shaped air bubble in the middle, greatly reducing the risk to the part.

David.

[ShaunW]

I am very pleased to see some AFV's in this GB. As I've said in JRatz's ship build, lend-lease makes me think primarily of tanks and ships, not aircraft for some reason. Great work here David and I am always impressed with modellers who can carry out their own replacement resin mouldings!

[JohnRatzenberger]

John, there won't be a fault line because the resin is a liquid poured into a mould and not a cellular material. The watchword with this is to BE CAREFUL and not remove too much at once, if too much heat builds up you can burn the material and it will lose its strengh, the walls of the turret are very thin in places so care is important. I use polyester resin as sold in car accessory shops, it is cheap and strong but quite brittle and encasing the kit part inside both reduced the amount of resin I would have to remove and included a shaped air bubble in the middle, greatly reducing the risk to the part.

David.

Thanks, interesting. The last time I had to burrow out a resin piece it was with knife and file and a great deal of worry that I'd break the whole thing.

[lancfan]

Sorry for the lack of posts, have been furiously building models of a certain Hawker fighter to try to beat the GB end date.
Here is the Grant tank as it now is, a turret basket has been scratch built along with a little interior detail to reveal only that detail which is visible through the side hatch. Some details have also been added to the hollowed out resin turret which is now glued to the roof panel of the hull.



The following pictures shows front and rear 3/4 views of the tank with the roof/turret dry fitted in place.



David.

[Molly-new]

Ahhh, now it makes sense. Looking good (I was confused with all the resin work going on ).

[ShaunW]

Nice work on this old stager David. I didn't realise that the resin turret was going to be hollowed out - I obviously missed that along the way - great modelling!

[AndrewR]

Very impressive. I like the interior detailing

[JohnRatzenberger]

Glad to see this moving along ... Some very interesting work going on.

[lancfan]

The main bogies and drive sprockets are in place and before the gun is fitted the storage bin has been scratched from staples.


With the storage bin, front lights and main gun are in place and the roof was finally glued down.
Image Lost

The next task is to scratch build the track guards which will be glued in place after the tracks are fitted. The older rubbery tacks that Airfix used had some degree of stretch in them but this new material does not and the rear idlers will have to be fitted with the tracks to avoid damaging the suspension whilst trying to get uncooperative tracks over the complete wheel assemblies. The tracks have now been joined together but the new plastic is resistant to cyano (and polystyrene cement) and had to be melted together with a knife heated over a candle in the time honoured way, strangely enough this was not mentioned in the instructions but was part of the icon key at the start.

David.

[splash]

Nice work David, its looking great.

Regards Splash

[ShaunW]

That looks great David - I love the staples pressed into service for the stowage bin, very ingenious! As nearly always, the tracks are the bind with these old armour kits.

[JohnRatzenberger]

Track, heated knife .... not-mentioned ...

Of course, the fear of being sued when young Tommy burns down the house when the candle tips over .... why instruction books are 3-4 times the size they used to be, and contain a corresponding inverse oif useful information ... etc ....

[lancfan]

-and all this does is to create a new social ethic in which no one will accept responsibility for what they do.

David.

[ShaunW]

-and all this does is to create a new social ethic in which no one will accept responsibility for what they do.

Sadly, this is all too true. But on a lighter note, if you do burn down the house joining your tracks David (and I sincerely hope that doesn't happen!), don't forget none of it was your fault and get your legal team onto Airfix