Long time winged-thing modeller, but a total newbie when it comes to tracky things. I know, I know, but before you say it - NO - this isn’t one of those “once you convert you will never go back” deals . . .
I’m working on a Dragon 1/72 scale Sherman with vinyl tracks (at least I think they’re vinyl)
Wondering what the best kindof adhesive is for joining the ends of this material (?) A Cyanoacrylate (Superglue) ? Elmers ? A Stapler ?
I’m thinkin’ that my preferred styrene adhesive - Ambroid Pro-Weld - will eat vinyl for lunch, leaving me with nuthin but a putrid puddle of polymer puke and a wheeled Sherman that can only go downhill.
Anything you can suggest to save me from this sticky situation would be greatly appreciated.
The tan soft tracks from Dragon are supposed to be their own special DS styrene and work with various standard liquid cement type model glues. One of the guys in our AMPS chapter raves how they work well with standard glues to hold together end to end.
Cannot help myself “once you go armor you’ll never go back” and welcome to the dark side. Sorry just in one of those moods. Let us know how the tracks turn out please. Also wingy thing are cool too.
i use Testor glue. i put them together off the vehicle, glue and clamp for 24 hours. i pout the road wheels, support rollers, and sprocket on the tank, then fit the track over all that, put the compensating idler in the track and stretch to fit the idler on its axle.
Yes, use regular model glue on the tan Dragon Styrene tracks, but be careful, there seems to have been a bad batch of Dragon Braille scale tracks where they crack and split into pieces. It’s happened on untouched tracks in the box, painted and installed tracks, tracks painted with enamels, tracks painted with acrylics.
As a backup, save this site, they sell resin replacement tracks in 1/72 scale in case you got a bad batch.
Dragon still hasn’t fully cracked the code on 1/72 scale armor; while they make one of the more detailed and affordable lines on the market, their black vinyl tracks were terrible and took no type of paint. Their DS tracks have the problems I stated earlier, and when they released a good number of kits with diecast hulls, many of the hulls crumbled after time. The metal hulls crumbled whether painted and installed, or crumbled in the box untouched. I have one built kit that is literally crumbling to pieces in a display cabinet and another unbuilt in the box that looks like a car ran over the hull piece.
Just an update on this one in case anyone searches this topic and wonders what the end result was. . . I usdd ambroid pro-weld as the adhesive and everything turned out fine. Its been almost a year and everythings holding together fine. No problems at all.