Jagdpanzering 13-14

Thirteenth and fourteenth sessions

13

For this wagon I started the track assembly process the same way as one of the previous individual link tracks: with the straight track parts that were located under the roadwheels. I measured the ballpark length with the 1cm grid of my cutting mat.

With a pretty simple test I got a value of three track links for about a centimeter of track. 13 * 3 = 39 per side for just this part (the whole track was supposedly about 33cm, meaning about 99 links per side). Getting more than three of these links stay dry-fitted together at a time on this cutting mat was foul, so I ended up laying together three at a time, gluing them, and after a bit gluing those three-link subchunks together.

Tedious as something very tedious? Yes.

During one session I got these two thirteen-centimeter pieces done. But because the remainder was longer and had to be bent around, I didn't think I could get them both ready in one go, so the other one would have to wait for the following session.

As you may have noticed from these photos, all the wheels were still loose while I was laying tracks. I had this delusional idea of being able to build the tracks so that I could take them and the wheelsets out and put them back without swearing.

14

The left/right edge of the mudguard thing was just so much on the way that I wasn't quite able to move the tracks in and out the way I had thought I could, and every time I tried anything the return rollers were falling all around. Shockingly I got fed up with it and glued them all in place. In the photo below I had set up the front loop, and was gathering my thoughts.

At this point I remembered that using some masking tape to get the track links to stay in line, and I'd get things done much more rapidly. I tried with the masking tape I first saw (crappy tape that usually didn't stick even onto itself) and it worked pretty well. As a twist ending getting that cheap tape off my track was difficult, so for the next track I quickly fetched my Tamiya masking tape.

The left track

Now that I got the right track done I had the time to take some more in progress photos. Here I was measuring the actual lenght of the remaining track instead of guesstimating. Had I remembered this on the right side, all of this would've gotten built noticeably faster.

My basic failure struck here. I had some but not a lot of time left, and I kinda wanted to get the left track done in the same session as well, instead of waiting for the next opportunity.

And what has been said time and time again about rushing?

Laying the track links in was quick, the gluing didn't seem to be problematic. Maybe I allowed my glue to set a while longer than I needed to, because I was somewhat worried of my connections failing due to wet glue and weak bonding. The result was that bending the track to follow the curves cracked a couple of connections a bit. While tweaking one I was poking around too much and the failure snowballed around the area of the frontmost return roller.

Just a tad annoyed I raised my hands and stopped touching the tracks completely right that moment. Maybe I'd return to it after a few days, maybe I'd just leave it as it was.

I spent a couple of extra minutes by gluing all the hubcaps to the sixteen roadwheels. This way the model was ready for my next step, whether it was a fixing or a priming session.