Sunday, March 27, 2011

Modeling Treads and My ant problems

In modelling, there are three types of treads that come with a kit: Rubber ones, solid ones, and chain ones.

Rubber ones make up most of my model tanks, and can be divided into 2 more catagories: Fix together and link together. Both are long, rubbery strips that resemble treads. Link together ones are rare, but are very straight forwards; they work like one of those tag rings, the ones you find on ski passes, except they only have one *click* thing, and are very rubbery and don't make a *click*. The fix together ones are annoying, they are composed of a rubber peg/hook thing at one end, and a hole at the other. The peg/hook thing goes into the hole, but is too shallow, and so one must glue/melt one end into the other. This is very annoying when one doesn't have immediate access to a melting thing, and the glue doesn't stick to the rubber.

The solid ones, I only have one of. They provide a lot more detail, and aren't very difficult, but are rare. They come in sections of treads, one piece for each straight section.

The third type, chain ones, are extremely rare, and consist of each tread being linked with a metal rod to the next one individually. Although this means that it can theoretically move its treads, I would not advise trying, as the would probably break. I have none of these.


So, onto my story:
I went outside this morning, trying to get a good picture of a squirrel sleeping on a shed. It got away before I got a good picture, but I discovered something else: the snow was almost done melting! I could finally set up my Michael Wittmann Diorama! But first, I had to put the rubber treads on all my tanks, all six of them.

So, I went to my modelling desk, and started gluing the treads into the right shae, as they are all rubber hook style treads. After gluing them all, I tried putting the first set onto a Tiger I. The first one went on easlily. The second one, however, didn't go so well: while gluing, I thought I saw an ant on my shirt looked down at it, saw nothing, but when I looked back up, I realized I had broken the glue between the ends of the treads.

That was very annoying; and I realized glue wouldn't be enough. At about that time, I realized that the Tiger I's treads are about the width of a staple.

After putting a staple around each hook-hole joint on each Tiger's treads, I tried to fit each them on their tanks. It worked well. And, the staples are barely visible, but did no immediate damage to the treads, so I could do it properly later with a melting thing.

While finishing my last tread on the last tank, I saw the ant again. But I learned! I finished putting the tread on, then looked down. I found a very confused ant, crawling on my shirt. Then I realized that I couldn't really kill the ant while it's on me. So I brushed it off, and thought about how I could punish it for making me mess up. I could drown it in glue, I could stab it with a modelling knife, I could put it into my ant-trap-killer-thing. But no, I ended up just squishing it and tossing it in the trash.

So now all I need to do is set up the diorama and take some pictures. I will probably also post my picture of the squirrel on my next post.

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