100% Scratch-Built Angry Slug – A7V in 1/48!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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. The scratch-building instructions aren’t very good are they? 😄 

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. I tackled them first. If I couldn't scratch the tracks there wouldn't be any point continuing, so time to experiment:
I used 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 three seconds in the candle flame per tread worked well. 

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. Remember that the track for the other side is a mirror image. 

I have no idea what it's called, but the centre link part of the tracks I decided wouldn't be feasible to do as individual links.
I made a simple former as a guide and used that to cut out four shapes from 1mm plastic card for the bottom half of the tracks (as the top of the tracks aren't visible). Then I cut quite a few capsule shaped bits to make it look from the front that they were individual links.
This is what they look like with all three layers together. 

The tracks were clamped and glued to the snakie thing.
Now just the simple job of building a tank to go in the middle (glup). How hard can it be? 

One of the reason that I rarely built a tanks is the thought of doing all those road wheels, and the next step in the build is to make twelve of the bloody things. This tank had thirty road wheels in total, but fortunately only twelve are visible. The biggest problem is that the wheels each have six spokes – how the hell am I going to do that?
Now to the spoke problem. The internal diameter of the tube is 5mm so I punched fifteen discs (I often build more than I need and then just choose the best ones). Then used a curved scalpel to make snow and mini trivial-pursuit cheese wedges. They are far from perfect, but only part of each wheel will be visible, so I'll just choose the best part when I fit them. 

I'm not normally one to buy myself out of trouble (there isn't enough money in existence to do that) but I couldn't find anything the correct diameter, why make life even more complicated than it already is, so I ordered some 6mm plastic tube.
The finished wheels together with an enormous coin to make them look even smaller than they really are. Don't they look duff blown-up to this scale? 

The tank had four drive wheels, but as only half of each is visible (in fact, less than half), I only need to do two – yay! And even better than that, only a few teeth will be visible, so not all of them need to be perfect – double yay! Having said that, this is the second attempt for both of them:
The coin is a 1917 farthing - the date the first A7V's were built.  

I won't test your patience with a blow by blow account of doing the side bits only to add that smaller blobs, I wanted to look like bolt heads. I bought some 0.8mm hexagonal rod, but with the naked eye you can't see that they are hexagonal. Even up close it looks like the tiny amount of glue used to fit them has melted most of the detail.  

Easy bit!? This things got more angles than Kryten's genitals (it's probably not advisable to Google that).
Originally I had the silly idea about pretending to be terribly, terribly, terribly clever and do scale thickness armour, what I didn't realise how ludicrously thin the armour was on this thing:
Front of the hull – 30mm (scale thickness = 0.6mm)
Rear & sides – 15mm (scale thickness = 0.3mm)
Top – 6mm (scale thickness = 0.125mm)
That would be like building it mostly out of paper. I used 0.8mm throughout.
The front and back ends are made up of very weird shapes. It didn't help that two views on the plan I printed were contradictory, one view showed this measurement as 4.5mm and another showed it as 9mm – a huge amount at this scale.
This is my solution:
The lower point is fixed as I was pretty sure that was correct. The upper point was movable. Obviously if one point and one side is fixed, and if the panel was flat, it would show where the mystery point was – it was 9mm. 

I don't do impulsive. In the past when I have been spontaneous, it was only after weeks of careful consideration and planning. Completely out of character I was overwhelmed with the urge to fit the end pieces, “But they aren't ready”, my sensible side screamed – but I went ahead and did it anyway. That's what scratch-building does to you. It turns you into a wild, impetuous fool, laughing at danger, throwing caution to the wind. I'm a rebel now. If that's not too much trouble, hope you don't mind. 

How to make 1/48 scale rivets?
I've been busy riveting. Don't believe anyone who tells you riveting is riveting. Riveting isn't riveting, riveting is dead boring. It was probably on rivet 872 that I started wonder what the hell I was doing with my life. This morning I woke up at 1:30 and immediately thought “Rivet rivet. Rivet rivet.” It almost as if I'm channelling another life form. I wonder what it might be? Probably something fearless and wondrous to behold. It's even causing me discomfort (a bit like pain, but more manly) my hand has gained a stigmata and I'm pretty sure I wasn't a hunchback before.
Every external panel gained an extra panel of 0.25mm which each rivet was laboriously pushed from the rear using a round rat-tail file. Then each skin panel had to be stuck on using double-sided carpet tape as glue just melts the rivets. 

On average each panel has taken about half an hour, and there are twenty riveted panels. This gives and idea of the marking out required (on the rear of course) before any dimple pushing can start: 

In the unlikely event of this contraption ever survived long enough to cause any damage, it was armed to the teeth – six machine guns and a big bangy bit at the front. The armour was so feeble a well aimed cough could take out the whole tank and as it's cross county speed was 3mph, the crew ran the risk of dying of old age before they reached the front.
Who needs after-market when you have sprue?
The canon tapers from 4mm to 3mm – easy in theory, but how do I do it as perfectly as it needs to be? After cleaning up some 4mm sprue (not easy to find – most of the sprue I had was a smaller diameter) I glued a 3mm disk to the end, as close to the centre as possible and filed lengthways along the barrel.
As I have a mental age of 12 (on a good day) I thought it would be cooooool to see if I could make the front bangy bit move. Turned out to be dead easy using a bit hacked from a drop-tank. 

Why is there a couple of cheese graters on the roof? I could understand it if it was a French tank, but I thought the Germans were more into sausages.
I've not been looking forward to making these, not just because of the excessive amount of very accurate cutting required without responsible adult supervision, but also because of all the dreary measuring and marking out. Then a short cut occurred to me – what if I could print the shape to enable me to skip the marking out bit? Better still, buy a 3D printer and print the whole bloody tank. Oh, I forgot, I'm too tight.
Lightly sanding (for the ink to get a grip) a sheet of 0.25 styrene, it printed quite well. 

After using some 400 grit to sharpen a scalpel (I can't understand why so many perfectly good blades get thrown away – are you lot made of money (I definitely am turning into my dad (Note to self: stop nesting brackets))) I did some careful cutting out. I didn't want to have to do any more than two, so I did my best impression of something competent and concentrated on what I was doing for a change - with my tongue sticking out the side of mouth and everything. 

Then it needed a frame to both give it the correct thickness and give it some stiffness. 

There should be a few more rivets on and around the frame of the grater, but you'll just have to imagine them. If this omission offends you, feel free to insert some rivets in whatever orifice is the least comfortable. 

Now, onto the top bit, the thing that looks like a heavy duty, steampunk bird-watch hut. 

To a casual observer (that's you that is) it looks almost done, but there's still quite a lot of details to be added. I'm about 98% through the riveting! Incidentally, on most of this model the rivets are spaced every two millimetres, which is about thirteen to the inch to those who are struggling to keep up with the passing centuries.
The lids were glued on using elastic bands. I won't show a photo as you probably know what elastic bands look like. I apologise if elastic is the thing that floats your boat and this was the point in the build you've been looking forward to, but life isn't fair at times. 

Although it was looking nearly done, there is a vast amount of external details, like very visible hinges (50 off), panels, handles, step, hooks, bolt heads (about 200)…… with all that and a couple of truck loads of rivets, in braille it would probably be classed as a smutty novel.
Why did they bother making the effort to camouflage these things? It not as if, paint them green and they disappear. They must have been as loud as Concord with a megaphone and as blatant as a brass band in a graveyard. If they just wanted to hide them when parked, it would have been more effective to paint them to resemble a block of flats or a small town or Luxembourg.
Typically, I ended up choosing the most complicated scheme that I could find (how do I hate myself, let me count the ways) a tank called 'Faust'. Admittedly, it's not at all like me to base my model on something historically accurate, but I managed to redeem myself by making my depiction so loose it was likely to hang around on street corners looking for punters. In my defence, I found many colour images of Faust, but no two were the same, so who's to know mine isn't the most accurate of all of them. Prove it isn't!
Obviously I had to use home-made stencils for the markings (how short-sighted of the decals companies not producing decals for non existent kits) but one of the advantages of this scheme is that it has simple crosses rather than those awkward fancy 1970's flared-trouser crosses. They're a real pain to cut stencils for. The most difficult stencil to cut was the scull and cross bones which ended up with four separate parts. Decals don't like me and the feeling is entirely mutual, so I'd much rather cut stencils. 

It was finally time to stick the last bits on (including the running gear), sit back and think about how you could have done almost every stage better. I'm a perfectionist. That doesn't mean that I make things that are perfect, it means that's I'm pee'd off when I don't.  

The base I made by stabbing blindly at a chunk of foam insulation…. 

...liberally smeared with brown stuff from the garden (it was a tiny bit more complicated than that). 

Were there’s a will there’s a way. These are my home made corrugated sheet makers. Obviously I had to order an Indian to get some suitably thick foil. 🙂 

Everything in the dio is scratch built as well – mostly from free stuff. 🙂