Hi all,
Just wanted to let you what I’ve beenworking on lately. From the first time I saw this picture (from: Groundwar Vietnam vol. 2 by Jim Mesko) I wanted to build such a raft
It took some time and research to find out what this raft was made of. It consist of M4T6 floating bridge pontoons and a 27 ft. bridge erection boat used for propulsion. This bridge erection boat looks like this
Funny thing is there seem to be ‘floating’ quite a few of these boats in the Dutch canals and rivers (lucky me!).
Since there’s no kit available, this had to be my first scratchbuilding-project. Here’s my attempt at the bridge erection boat:
Great build! I trust you took your measurements from the prototypes as they floated by. Scratchbuilds are hard work but so worth the efforts.
If you need rivets or bolt heads on the seams, a great little tool I recently bought works great. They’re called Beading Tools. A jeweller uses them to make recesses for precious stones in rings etc. They work great an you can hammer out a lot of rivets in little time.
I will try and post a picture of mine and some of the various sizes of rivets it makes.
“I trust you took your measurements from the prototypes as they floated by” [:D][:D] Indeed I did [;)] Luckily there were more then one [:o)]
I’m glad you like it! And it’s true I do need a lot of rivets on this boat (and also on the pontoons) I’m still experimenting with these (having quite nice results with superglue)
