Linking tracks!!

Some more progress on the MiniArt T34 Egyptian tank with one side of the tracks nearly done. I say nearly as whilst the kit makers envisage you constructing everything to completion and then painting it, most modellers of military armour will build sub assemblies and paint these before bringing the kit together as one. This is especially true of tracks and wheels. Tamiya and many other manufacturers supply a poly cap that goes in the wheel assembly and allows you to pop the wheel on and off the chassis. This is great for building as you can ensure the wheels line up whilst building the kit and then take the wheels off for painting and allowing the hull behind to also be painted. MiniArt however do not follow that method so a bit of improvisation is required. The wheels are attached with a wing and a prayer as well as some BluTac and this at least allows the tracks to be built around them and once complete removed along with the wheels for painting. That is the theory! 

I used my usual method of constructing track links be attaching them to a strip of masking tape as I glued each link. This holds the links together whilst the glue sets but allows some flexibility so that the tracks can be posed over the various wheels with the correct sag. I then inserted a large set of tweezers into the gap between the top of the track and the hull fender which in effect forced the track links to take the correct sag over the wheels that the real tank had. 

Once the glur started to harden I took the tweezers out and I have now left this first set of tracks to dry over night. Hopefully they have set correctly once I remove the masking tape. Then again it could be a contribution to the swear jar tomorrow then!

Sentinels under repair.

A day at Rocks by Rail Museum today with me reunited with the lawn mower for most of the day making the place look neat for Sunday's Driver for a Fiver day. It will be one of the diesel Sentinel locomotives on duty and we have a choice of two. Either Betty or Jean. However it is feasible that Graham who has been off duty with various issues for some months now will be back in operation as well. 

The guys who maintain and repair these locomotives certainly have a challenge so it is a good job they know what they are doing. It is one thing working on the engine but when you start with wiring that is another thing. Take Betty for example.

This is what her cab looks like with a clear operating control panel which looks reasonably simple.

This is Graham.

Graham's control panel is undergoing maintenance and with the cosmetic covers removed and things opened up, it shows the real complexity of what makes these locomotives work. Rather the guys dealing with this then me! It just looks like a mass of spaghetti to my untrained eye! Hopefully though it will be up and running this Sunday.

Tankers take their places.

Having completed the so far headless quartet of Egyptian tankers I have posed them around the tank. They appear to be in poses that compliment the tank which also means I will be modelling the turret hatches open - unless something unforeseen happens! Always leave yourself a little wriggle room in case something does go wrong and knowing my luck it will!

Different types of water!

Not an experiment but this morning I had to unfortunately join the Sunday Car Washing Club which seems to prevail in the UK. Mrs. Woody had decreed that her car needed cleaning and today was the day to do it and who am I to disagree? So it was the soapy water type that saw use and several hours later the car had not only been washed but waxed as well! 

With several other things going on today as well that did not leave much model making time but I made the most of it by examining the resin water I had poured into the river on the 009 narrow gauge layout a few days ago. Having waited literally months for it to dry when I poured the first layer back in January, I was pleased to find it dry and solid after just three days - Result!. So another type of water in my life today as I poured the third and probably last layer of resin water into the river. Hopefully dry in three days time too.

Not water related was the assembly of the second Egyptian tanker for the T34 MiniArt kit. A nice pose and one where he looks at ease on the tank itself - well he would do if he had his head but as I explained yesterday I will probably paint the heads before mounting them on the bodies.

Finally something that could get me into the type of water that is very hot if Mrs. Woody finds out about it is the arrival of this which I have not had a chance to sit down with the time to properly unpack and set up. The reviews are good and it appears that Accurascale have indeed produced the ultimate Deltic locomotive - I just need the time to find out myself!

Having completed this blog it is time for the final type of water for today - the washing up type of water as I have the job of doing the dishes after dinner!

Headless?

I have spent some time putting the drive sprockets and idler wheels together as well as preparing some more track links ready to be assembled once I have enough to do a full track run. The tank has an unusual sprocket drive in that unlike most tans where the drive wheels have teeth that engage in holes in the track, the T34 has a toothless drive wheel but the triangular guide teeth on the tracks are pushed by rods that are between the two faces of the drive wheel. It obviously worked!

Nothing too exciting with the work above but I have started to assemble the four figures provided with the kit. They are nicely detailed and come in a harder plastic than the tank kiy so are a little more robust when it comes to cleaning them up as they come off the sprue.

The first figure has been put together minus his head! I am thinking of leaving his head off whilst painting the figure as it might be easier to paint the face. Figure painting is not my strongest skill. In fact to use the word skill in relation to my attempts at this art is perhaps a major injustice to the word itself! Anyway I will see how this one goes once he and his three mates are in the WMD HQ paint shop. In the meantime here we have the headless tanker - for the moment anyway!

Making tracks!

I woke up at 4am this morning. By 5am I knew I was not going back to sleep so I thought I would leave Mrs. Woody deep in sleep dreaming about handbags or her list of jobs for me being completed! May be that was a nightmare? Anyway, the cats got an early breakfast, which they seemed to appreciate even if they were a bit shocked and the greenhouse plants got an early watering and by 6am I was making tracks on my bike for an early morning ride. Lovely, with few cars or people about and nature still doing things you don't normally see like these two swans and their seven signets making tracks through the green algae along the local canal. Makes a great start to the day!

Back at WMD HQ I am also making more tracks. This time for the Egyptian T34 tank. The tracks are made up of individual links which have to be cut from the sprue and then cleaned up. If that was not boring enough the joints also have to be opened up slightly with a file other wise they do not fit.

I need to assemble 144 track links in total and so far I have done 52! A long way to go and with all the work they need it will keep me amused making these tracks for many hours yet!

Heating up and pouring more water!

Out for my daily cycle ride this morning to avoid the heat of the day I passed the service station that I have kept an eye on with their fuel price. They went past £2 a litre a two weeks ago as I blogged here on the 8th June. Although the latest price has not risen as fast as previously it is still heating up with another 3 pence a litre.

Back at WMD HQ I mulled over the heat issue of fuel price and the weather and suddenly realised I needed to take advantage of the heat. The river on my 009 narrow gauge layout is created using a resin. I foolishly put the first layer down on the last day in a particularly unseasonable warm spell at the start of the year. I think I blogged the equally foolish words 'What could go wrong?'. Click here to see that post. Well what went wrong was it took about 2 months rather then the advertised 72 hours on the bottle for the resin to set as the cold weather returned the next day and continued, as you would expect it would in the Winter, unless of course you are Woody! Doh! Anyway I did vow that the next layer would be poured once warmer weather arrived. Despite the warmth of the past few months, in my usual way, I have put pouring the next layer to the back of my mind but sense and taking advantage of the heat has prevailed and so I have now poured another layer of the Jarvis Simulated Countryside Water into the river bed. I did firstly take the precaution of putting a spirit level on the baseboard just to make sure it was still level - no use in having a sloping river unless it is a rapids!

The spirit level almost makes it look like I know what I am doing!

A steady hand is required when pouring to avoid bubbles - pity my camera hand was as steady!

With the resin poured, a hot environment and the weather heating up what could go wrong? Why did I say that????

Back with the MiniArt Egyptian T34 tank I have done some more track work but more on that another day as progress is slow with all those individual track links to assemble.

Fragile parts!

In the heat of my Man Cave I have managed to finish the turret of the MiniArt T34 Egyptian tank. Amazing! However it was not a straight forward job! That would not be the Woody way! Apart from the photo etched parts that remained to be fitted =, there was a radio aerial to fit. Located on the sprue I knew it was going to be a problem!

Taking care to remove it from the sprue I did manage to get it off in one part. I then tried to clean up the various mounting points and the whole thing just broke up into four parts! It was just too fragile!

Rather than trying to glue it together I cut my loses and got into my 'working smarter not harder' mindset and found some thin plastic rod in my stock of materials. Some fiddly work with super glue but certainly easier than gluing the original and I have a new aerial. Result!

With that and the other parts fitted the turret is there and making the whole tank look ....well more tank like! I quite like that shovel although the photoetch mountings were horrible to do!

Hopefully once painted all the parts will fade together but I still have the tracks and a few other, hopefully not fragile, parts to do. More on that and whether the swear jar receives further contributions from me another time!

Moving on and turret progress.

We all have to move on from distressing events in life and sometimes just doing something different helps in that process. So today I took Mrs. Woody out into the depths of the Lincolnshire fens where is is so flat that if your dog runs away you can still see it two days later. This is big sky country though you do wonder if sea levels continue to rise will it be bid sea country in the not to distant future? 

Putting those thoughts to the back of our minds we ended up near to Fosdyke which is next to the River Welland close to where it enters The Wash. There is a small copse and a nice set of walks along the flood defenses which we walked part of after eating our £4 CoOp Lunch Deal (other lunch deals are available, etc!). It used to be a £3.50 Lunch Deal but that is inflation for you! On the walk we came across an Environment Agency compound which was certainly secure. .

The EA appear to drag abandoned boats to this location which I guess makes it a boat graveyard. Looking at the condition of them I can see why they were abandoned. I certainly would not be taking to the water in one of these

Back at WMD HQ, an hour with the T34 Egyptian tank turret saw a few more parts added including some lifting points and grab handles. I must be getting better with the etched parts as the six handles on the back of the turret only took about 20 minutes to do. I did not even bother with the three plastic grab handles on the two sides and rear of the turret. With the previous experience of similar parts on the tank hull I just made the parts out of brass wire and used these instead. Again this only took another 20 minutes. There are a few more etch handles to add and a couple of other parts and then the turret should be complete.

The World still rotates!

If you have read my previous two posts you will understand that Mrs. Woody and her siblings have lost their mother and me my mother-in-law. I did say that no matter what affects us, the World continues to rotate and life continues although somewhat differently for those affected by a loss. 

With the above in mind I did take a short break out in my Man Cave which allowed me to reflect on matters and do this whilst making some progress on the MiniArt T34 Egyptian tank. Nothing too taxing but the main components of the turret are now together and with the main gun barrel added it suddenly looks like what it should do. There are still a number of smaller parts to add including the dreaded photo etched parts so that will give me something to look forward to. 

At the moment the hatches are not glued down as I will wait and see if the figures supplied with the kit are in suitable poses to use open hatches.