Well the wife saw me working on my Abrams the other day, cursing because it fell off the stand and dented one of the wooden panels, cracked the bondo/fiberglass and ruined my day.
She asked me why I built it so damn heavy, I told her that the framing made it heavy and that the wooden panels are just bothering me. Again, nothing turned out the way I wanted to on this tank. I made the suspension mounts too weak, made the transmission wrong, Main mistake was that I did not measure it from a scale model but instead made most of the dimensions up from internet blue prints. I was finally about to give up. She then asked me why I don't just build one out of sheet steel like I always wanted to. I told her that I don't have the proper tooling to be doing that. She asked what I needed. I told her and showed her. Well sure enough I come home today and see a bit dirty wooden box not even wrapped up under the tree with the words "36" metal brake" on the side in military style block lettering. If it wasn't for the lettering, you'd swear that there's an RPG launcher inside packed with hay like in the movies. Ok so I finally got the tool I have wanted for a long time now. I began to do some thinking and decided to scrap my current Abrams project, took off anything that was useful and that I'm able to reuse, like nuts, bolts, bearings, gears, shafts and so on. A part of me still wanted to build a WWII tank this whole time while working on the Abrams. Dont get me wrong, I'm a fan of modern tanks but something about the old ones tickles my fancy. I decided to go with the King Tiger (Henschel turret) This is a very nice looking tank and was based on one of the most feared tanks of WWII the tiger I. It will be big enough in 6th or 5th scale to fit my 6.5 horse briggs and transmission based on a Honda Civic differential and braking system. I went to a hobby store and picked up a 1/35th scale King Tiger by Dragon. Currently I am measuring it and designing all of the paneling in sketch up. The entire tank will be bent out of 16-20 gauge sheet metal. Riveted together with countersunk rivets. For now I am in the design stage and don't plan to make any actual tank parts till late January. But I'm doing it right and taking no short cuts this time, Wasted too much money doing that before. Sorry about the big post guys. Just wanted to share my frustrations with my previous tank failures. Happy and safe holidays to all of you and have a great new year! --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You are currently subscribed to the "R/C Tank Combat" group. To post a message, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe, send email to [email protected] Visit the group at http://groups.google.com/group/rctankcombat -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
