Scratchbuilding C&Cs Mammoth Tank

[blimp]

Sorry to butt in guys , polycarbonate sheet is strong (aircraft canopies are made of the stuff) comes in large sheets / thicknesses and is certainly cheaper than styrene . many yonks ago i made some display stands out of it , using acetone as adhesive (you'll need to keep applying it until the material starts to melt/weld together) or just drill + bolt , pin , rivet etc the stuff onto a skeletal chassis oh , btw . when using power tools on plastics , keep the speed down or it begins to melt - this will be monster ! go for it mate .

[Wolftone]

Blimp. Genius thought on the polycarbonate...Hacksaw as opposed to dremel works better with this material. Although don't let that put anyone off buying a dremel. great little tool for drilling holes with etc. Epoxy adhesive works on it as well!!!

[Munty]

Seems this place has been busy while I've been away Thanks again for the help, checked out Plastruct and am immediately hit by the fact that they don't really have an online shop that I can see... Sure I can browse their catalogue and enter item codes but I don't know any of that and there doesn't seem to be any sort of way to browse the inventory. Please someone correct me if I'm wrong :s

The Polycarbonate has me stumped for different reasons. Firstly I can only find it clear anywhere and judging by it's uses I'd say that's the only way I will find it right? If that's the case, how does one go about painting it, will it still take? Also the sizes it's available in are so huge I'm having trouble figuring out just how much I'd need lol Because it's intended for greenhouses and conservatories and whatever else the sheets are huge!

Got a price of about £15 for a 2mm x 1020mm x 750mm sheet which is very reasonable but it doesn't relate to the A-paper sizes I know I need. It's somewhere between A0 which is 1189 x 841 mm and A1 at 841 x 594 mm. Given that I need 18 A3 and 2 A2 that equates to 11 A2 sheets or maybe just 5 A1 sheets. So I'd imagine 4 or 5 sheets of this stuff would easily do the job but I'm looking at around £60-70 then and I really want to spend about half of that Got a quote from elsewhere for plasticard and he quoted the full amount at about £80 delivered so it's not looking to be easy to find a cheap supply whatever I build...

What's the deal with the others I mentioned? Foamboad and expanded PVC foam board? I already know I can get both of those dead cheap (although no larger than A3 at the site I've found) so if wither of those would work then I could halve the cost immediately...

Oh just out of interest I decided to check my barrel dimensions this morning and I seem to be building a 19th century Ironclad The external barrel diameter is a touch over 1" in 1/16 scale so that's a 16" real-world diameter. Not sure what the necessary ratio of muzle diameter to barrel thickness would need to be but I figure even with 1" thick walls you're looking at a tank with a twin 14" main armament lol Rather hard to justify as that seems to be almost 3 times larger than any real-world equivalent and would make the Mammoth more of an artillery weapon than a tank. It would certainly be relying on HE shells rather than AP, lets be honest if your tank is hit by a 14" shell, it won't need to pierce the armour to mess you up

[blimp]

Have you tried Fleabay ? offcuts go cheap . or even your local signmakers , they chuck away binfuls of bits , and will often let you have it free if you grovel nicely could even help out with advise on adhesives and can cut out your patterns too . As for painting the stuff , it'll need keying with wet n' dry first . if not grab yourself a sheet of dural instead . simples

[Munty]

Thanks Blimp, the size of the pieces I'll need are big enough to make whole new signs from though so there's no way offcuts will do sadly Ebay is also very expensive and almost all limited to A3 sizes. I'm trying to figure out what the difference is between Integral skin foamboard and expanded foamboard as both are ridiculously cheap by comparison to anything else I've considered and it seems to be pretty strong stuff too.

This is the normal stuff which I imagine will be more flexible due to the softer core but the skins are pretty tough...
http://www.evilmushroomgames.com/foamboard%20copy.gif" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

And while I could put up an image of expanded foamboard it just looks like thick plasticard or polycarbonate or any other kind of pastic sheet material Difference being I can get 10 sheets of 5mm thick A3 foamboard for £15! Alternatively I can get 30 sheets of 3mm A2 board for £55 and I only need a third of that for the entire build AND spares! I wonder very much whether I could send them an email asking for 10 sheets at £20 delivered...

This is all the normal stuff though and I'm sure expanded would be best. A price for that is more like £30 from the website I found yesterday but it'd all be in A3 so my turret floor would have a big join running it's full width which is very bad as a lot of it will float I think. I'm still really unsure as to what the differences are between all these materials so it really sucks I can't get my hands on a sample of each possibility before I decide on what to use but I just can't... Will keep searching and please keep advising, I want to get building :p

[Von kraftwerk]

hi Munty,I ordered some plastruct a year ago I found a site and then ordered the stuff from my local model shop which stocks it but didnt have the items I wanted,I browsed took down stock codes and ordered,they are based in shepperton surrey for UK,there was a downloadable catologue available,I will try find web address,its essential stuff for scratchbuilds(no im not on commission) they also do this plastic coated wire rod in different sizes that bends and keeps its shape,really useful for mg mounts handles brackets etc

[Saxondog]

What you need is not wider tracks but wider track pins,creating a double row,then double the drive sprockets and you have your wider tracks.

Saxondog

[jdflute]

Given that scratch built project are abandoned due to the tracks issue it is goo to get it out of the way early on. I would suggest you contact intralox, a manufacturer of modular conveyor belts
http://www.intralox.com/ModularPlasticBeltingHome.aspx" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
They will have 70mm wide belts that look surprising good as tracks and are very strong, Kieren at the UK Tank Club has a lot of experience with them and I have found the company to be very friendly, I seem to remember that they will sell the belts to you as long as you promise to send photos of your finished project>
Jd

[Munty]

Wow thanks guys, that's 2 days in a row that everyone has come out of the woodwork the second I've switched off lol

I had a look at the Plastruct site VK but the downloadable 'catalogue' was simply a huge list of item numbers and not a single image (or even label) that I could see... The covered wire sounds perfect for some of the detail I'll need right near the end as I have a few bits and bobs like storage racks, antenna and ladders to make and it'd certainly be cheaper to make it from nothing!

Thanks for the advice SaxonDog, it's glaringly obvious now but hadn't even crossed my mind!!! Plastic tracks don't seem to be all that expensive to get hold of either so this may be a good way forward ( even if it's later replaced by something nicer) I've just measured the length of my 'ideal' track layout and it's 80cm per corner for a total of 320cm across the whole model. Double that up to 640cm if I double up some normal 1:16 track

Now I didn't take as much time to measure the tracks on my Tiger but a quick once over shows it as about 80cm per side... That means if I can find 4 people who have upgraded their HenLong Tigers to metal tracks (and maybe even drive wheels :p) then I could potentially solve this problem very quickly. Even better than that, I don't need to adjust the tracks at all so as and when I DO upgrade to something a bit more special I can sell them on again to fund it

Anyway back to material which is my primary concern... Still not got and cheap prices on plasticard which sucks BUT I did a quick Ebay for Foamboard and I found 10 sheets of A1(!) for £30 delivered. That's twice as much as I could possibly need in huge sheets for less than half the price of 'just enough' plasticard... Has anyone ever worked with this stuff? I'm told from every source I check that it's good for model-making and in fact the first palce I came across it was in a wargaming build of a very large tank and it came out amazingly.

I wonder if this might be my answer... £30 for sheet material, a proper stanley knife and long metal rule and ideally some tracks sourced from you wonderful guys here who all seem to have gone metal anyway

Edit : Forgot to acknowledge the Intralox link, it's a very good looking option but they don't have pics of all the variations which is a shame Some of them look very tanky though so I shall almost certainly be dropping them an email later! Thanks for the link

[blimp]

'Ere we go o.k. Lol . one pair of Tiggy tracks a'coming up , i 'spose you want some sprockets too . . . (+ plastic g'boxes?) - if you want 'em , P.M. me and i'll get them off to you ,Tim . Blimp.