RC Tank Warfare community hobby forum

Yea, crazy glue is just another name for super glue I believe. The commercials in the 70's used to show a guy with his hard hat glued to an I beam hanging. I can tell you this it isn't as strong as it was back then. If you got it on your fingers kiss 3 layers of skin goodbye!

Final camo colour added

Well, here are the last of the pics which brings 2 months of work up to date!

dgsselkirk wrote:I was going to open the hatches up but only ended up doing the engine hatch so I could relocate the power, smoke, volume switches from the bottom to the top for more access. I have a Panther waiting in the wings that I might do even more mods to but want to finish this KT up first! I saw the first couple of pics as I was first browsing through this site. Putty and a hacksaw blade eh? It had to be a pain in the butt doing it that way but the results look pretty nice! That is until you chopped it up! LOL!

I used the hatches up front so I could stop the tank with the turret facing forward, the rear deck hatch for power means you have to have the turret set to the side so you can open the hatch to shut down the tank..........

fantastic work, both your paint and model work are top notch.

yeah, i found that mustclime. lol love the paint work dg, whole model looks the dogs bud.
jeff

Thanks guys for the kind comments. After 25 years it is all coming back to me sort of! LOL!

Yea, in hindsight should have located the power switch somewhere else for that reason. Have to look at that again for sure. I did set up a switch position in the turret loaders hatch so maybe I put it there. Yep, should put it there.

Think I will work on wooden cleaning rods tonight. Got all the materials to scratch build and they should look bang on to Bovington tiger rods. And then, search for wire for tow cables begins next week. The idea I have for that is to cut off the original plastic ends, drill out below the loop and then insert real wire as close to the plastic as I can get. I just find the real stuff hangs better. bought a couple of spools of picture wire which is good for the light cables but haven't found right stuff for the heavier cable.

let us know how you do the cleaning rods dg,doing mine and it's getting to be a real head sctatcher for me.
jeff

Hey Jeff, had something come up but I will get to them this week and I think they will look good. Will send pics as soon as I get to them probably Tues and you can critique.

First thanks to Hatakashi for his great pictures and close ups of the Bovington KT tanks. They have been invaluable in this build so far. Yhis time I thought I would save a step and write the commentary instead of putting it on the pics. Much faster!

O.K.......... Put on some Pink Floyd The Wall and went at the cleaning rods. I bought 100 bamboo skewers at the dollar store. I went by the plastic ones that come with the tank for the scale and length. The bamboo are a little too thick which is good because I sanded them down a little and that gives them a rough enough surface to absorb the umber oil paint which I put on like you would stain wood. Put it on fairly heavy let it sit for 1/2 an hour and then gently wipe off. Repeat it as often as you like to darken. The final example here was done 3 times. I have been keeping old small electronics to rip apart and steal the little screws and bits. This particular bag was an old cheap DVD player. So sliced/sanded off the heads and just crazy glued them to the ends of the sticks. I think there are the 2 types of rods with 3 different ends. One has threaded rod one one end and threaded receptacle on the other end. The other rod has a tapered end with smaller threaded rod and a larger threaded rod at the other end. Since I had a good variety of screws I used 3 different sizes to represent these. LET ME KNOW IF I DID THE ENDS RIGHT!!!

I thought I would wrap it in brass but that proved to be a pain to tack down. Then it hit me why not lust use invisble tape? This gives you precise control of the thickness and so I wrapped tape tightly around and then used a new Xacto blade to slice though to make it the right length and volia!, I had my tips! For the tapered end I just did the tape straight and added a little line of putty and then shaped it to taper. I like to start off with the part as it would appear pristine from the factory and then weather so here I just did them like the Bovington rods but I think once I weather and detail they should look pretty good.

I will wait on some opinions on the looks of these before making the rest and weathering. Want to make sure I didn't make a huge error before I proceed with the rest! Are they as good as some of the PE kits out there? Nope. Are they better than stock? I think so AND the best part all they really cost is the time to make. It took me about an hour to kinda figure it out so I estimate it would take about 2 hours to make all of them.

Here are the other 5 of the cleaning rods.....