Some here may recall that I am returning to the hobby after a 20 year absence with the Dragon 1/35 E-100.
I plan to model an operational or nearly operational specimen, the kit has no tools or other interesting stuff to hang on the huge hull.
So I ordered some generic tools, shovels, axes, etc. Then I saw a set of 1/35 German tow cables from Royal Model Acessories.
It arrived today, it’s basically kite string with resin cast heads, S hooks, and a couple clevis (clevi?). $18.00, plus shipping. Wow, they saw me coming.
Is there any reason I can’t use thin wire and make my own cables, maybe guitar string, or picture wire? Then I could use the molded ends.
This crowd is so inventive, I cannot be the first to come up with this, so, please, any hints and specs on what you used and how it came out would be great.
I have always used picture wire for my tow cables . You will find some who like the string , but i have never used it before . I have seen more kits that come with the string then the plastic ones . Home Depot , Target , and stores like those are your best bet for wire . Home depot i found 3 different sizes for different weights for pictures . You will just have to remove the coating aroud them . Some do come without that though . One problem with the wire is the ends sometimes fray and it makes it harder to get in the hooks . Not much of a problem though with a little work .
A Panther G tow cables are 32mm in diameter, or 1.26 inches. In 1/35th scale this would be .036 inches. Given that the E-100 would have weighted in at a staggering 140 tons, roughly 3 times more than a Panther, it would have needed a considerably thicker cable. No guesses what that would have been…
I find that coppe electrical cable of a suitbale thickness, stripped and twisted, works pretty well. You can see it in use here:
on a Dragon 1/35 Nashorn. for an E100, several standard-thickness ropes for, say, a Tiger II, would probably have been twisted together. Not immediately clear what would have been used to tow a broken -down E100 anyway, especially one that had got stuck on the mud. Three more E100s? A regiment of FAMOs?
Tow cables are a misnomer… They’re more correctly called “self-recovery” cables. It takes a number of cables recover a mired tank. To tow a 60-ton tank, you need four cables and two vehicles, one to tow, the other a “hold-back” vehicle…
For instance, If a vehicle gets high-centered on like a stump or rock, you can run the cable from one track to the other and use the tracks to pull the cable back to the stump or rock which will grab the rock or stump and allow the tank to move forward or backwards off the obstruction…
For towing vehcles of any size for any real distance, a towbar is used…
For the basic stuff, I use 14 or 16 gauge automotive electrical wire. For a 4 inch or so long cable, I put around one complete twist on it after stripping the insulation off. Cables of a larger nature can be made the same way, but watch the size of the individual strands. For some, speaker wire is more accurate. This is the only pic I’ve got of something made as described:
The ends aren’t great but the cables themselves look right.
Seriously? Oh, man, something else to remember. Pretty soon, I’m gonna need a map on the dashboard to get home from work. The human brain is only so big, after all.[:-^]
