@CapnMac82 - thanks a lot for your comment and for your kind words! I’ll paint the worn-off paint the way you described. The handles and knobs too.
And I’ve got another update - I didn’t write for a long time and the work has been going on - slowly but surely.
I painted up the dials:
The hood will also have some instruction placards and the hood numbers - I’m holding off the installation of the hood until I have those markings.
I’m also working on the blade:
I’ve been trying to replace some of the resin pins with metal ones. Unfortunately the parts fixing the blade to the D-frame are all crooked and straightening them proved problematic - they can be straightened after dipping them in hot water, but then they tend to bend back after a day or two. I’ll probably sctarchbuild the upper, thinner parts, because they are not very correct nor detailed anyway.
And finally - lots of additional work. The “house” in the kit is a late model also called “extreme heavy duty”. The earlier model was a lot more popular in Vietnam and so I decided to scratchbuild one like this. I started with the front brackets:
They are installed here:
The vertical pipes rest on them. I made them out of sprue sanded smooth:
As you can see I also detailed the hinges of the battery boxes. In case of the later model “house” they would be covered, but here they will be exposed. I also started to build my own roof.
Dry-fitting looks OK to me:
Everything is a little wobbly, like I said - a dry fit.
But now it would be probably the time to start glueing everything…
Hello everybody!
Thanks a lot for your comments and for your kind words! @S.Hollowell , @Toimi_Tom - thanks a lot! @CapnMac82 - thanks for the hints and for the recommendation! I actually watched most of the D8 series videos from Diesel Creek. I came across them when I was researching that decelerator pedal ad the footrests. In the meantime, since starting this project I learned a lot about construction equipment and tracked tractors. Just goes to show how educational this hobby tends to be! @mustang1989 - thanks a lot for your kind words! No need to feel sorry here, it’s good to have you on my WIP thread! About that scratchbuilding - I don’t think its a big deal this time. I’d almost say a “house” like this would be a good “first scratchbuilding project” for somebody that didn’t try anything like it yet - you know, most sides are flat, dimensions easy to pin down, parts are relatively big. On a side note - looking at the photos almost every such “house” in Vietnam looked a little different and was modified and repaired many times, also because they took a heavy punishment. Using a “stock” house just doesn’t feel right in such a case
Thanks for reading and have a nice day
Paweł
Small update - I’ve also given up on straightening the crooked 3D parts for the blade attachment and instead built my own parts - I like them better:
Instead of 3D printed pins I went with metal and styrene pins - I don’t want them cracking on me some day. I also started to apply my custom printed decals:
And on the hood:
And that’d be it for now, let’s see how it goes from here…
Hello everybody!
Thanks a lot for your comments and for your kind words - they mean a lot to me!
For the outside of the tracks I used a paint from a company called “Citadel” and the colour has a funny name “Leadbelcher”. I put it on in several very thin coats on top of the dirt colour (Humbrol 113), so that the dirt shows through in places where it would tend to accumulate instead of being ground down.
Here’s another update. I’ve finally used the kit-supplied thread and installed the hook:
After painting it up I could install the winch:
I was also working on the “house”:
The vertical bars are from my take on rebar - I made it by tightly twisting together thin copper wire and then soaking it with CA. The twisting was done with a power tool.
There is also the brush guard for the front, that I also had to rework to match the altered house and my references:
I cut off the part in the right side of the photo. I have also scratchbuilt the fittings that will fasten the brush guard to the roof.
I was also working on the hydraulic cylinders. The kit gives you armored and unarmored cylinders. I went with the unarmored ones, because they matched my references better, but unfortunately they were also a little crooked.:
I made new rams from styrene stock and I also cut off the faulty portions of the cylinders and replaced them with lengths of 4mm sprue. The hydraulic lines wer meade out of 0.8mm copper wire:
Looks good. Fresh wire rope will have globs of cosmoline and grease on it. The Cosmoline is a medium brown product with hints of grimy black. The grease combo will pick up the local dirt and clump up in clods. Where it’s wiped away, the cable surface will have middle-bright surface rust on it. The grooves in the cable stay dark as they tend to retain the grease.
In use, the cables were well-worked as the “Plows” were used in pairs towing a heavy chain (picture 1" or 2" wire gauge stud-link chain here) or cable between them to rip vegetation out by the roots.
Hello @CapnMac82 !
Thanks a lot for your comment and for your kind words. Maybe some day I’ll build a dio of a pair of tractors pulling that chain, but then I’d like it to be 1:72, otherwise the dio would be prohibitively large…
And today I’ve got another update:
On the hydraulic cylinders - I made the hydraulic line out of automotive wire, 0.35 square mm cross section:
After painting them up I installed them on the tractor. The bladeis dry-fitted and the rams are painted with Alclad:
Looks like the blade could be practically left movable on the finished model!
I also worked on the “house”. The roof was painted white and then I used rolls of Patafix to lay out the tractor number:
Here’s the effect I got after painting and weathering:
My custom decals are also there. Here’s the side with the graffiti on:
Now I think I’ll install the hood and the “house”. That would only leave the blade and the branch guard to paint and install.
This is gorgeous mate! You have a real talent for capturing the red soil of Vietnam and its effects on vehicles… Just wondering, is there anything you’re doing differently when you’re trying to render rust as opposed to residual soil on the blade?
Excellent paint job, replicates the real thing precisely.
I’m wondering why it only has the one corner ripper (even though the rust & dirt is exactly right).
@pr154 - thanks a lot for your kind words!
The red pigment in the Vietnamese soil is iron oxide anyway, so there is not so much difference, and that makes it challenging when trying to show parts that are rally rusted, like in the example below:
In case of the exhaust manifold I tried to mix in some gun metal and go a little darker, and also adding some small dots of lolour to show the pitting. It’s challenging!
@CapnMac82 - thanks a lot! Now this is a speciality blade, a treedozer, supposed to be heavily tilted to one side, a bit like a snow plow to put the cleared material on one side, and then the corner ripper would be in the way. Does that answer your question?
