Bitsrecycling With Instant-Sil

In my next post I am going to take a closer look at the M163/M901 tank expansion for "TANKS The Modern Age". But in this posting I will jump directly to the recycling of the leftover bits.

Instead of the 3D printer this time some stuff called "Oyumaru Instant Mold", repacked by pk-pro, was used.

If you are not familar with this thermoplastic stuff, you can watch this video to see how to use it. The only thing I would like to add is, that if you wear 2 or 3 pairs of rubber gloves you can handle the very hot stuff much better.
I used some cheap and pretty fast hardening epoxy, you can see it on the right of the first picture. Milliput and Greenstuff would also work fine but would need more time to get hard.

As a first step I made the mould, my mate Olli made a video of another mold I made to demonstrate how I used the silicone:



The following pictures show what I did after the mould was ready to use.

After the epoxy was pressed in the mould, it was hardened after approximately 30 minutes. Then I took the dublicated part from its mould.

A pair of selfmade tank tracks.

A first testfit shows that the new tracks fit fine.

I also dublicated the front hatch but then I mentioned that I could use the original part from the kit.

The sideskirts were also cloned, the new parts are pretty fragile but almost as thin as the original part.

Now it is getting advanced, I tried to copy a full tank hull. Since the M163/M901 have different tops, I temporarely glued the top of the M901, the version I wanted to recreate, with whiteglue, then I repeated the steps to build a new mould:

When the mould was hardened I had to cut it on both ends to get the kit out of the mould. On the first look the mould looked alright but a closer inspection showed that the temporarely fixed top part of the tank had seperated from the tank hull, what caused a slight deformation of the mould.

But anyway...

I filled the new mould with the epoxy, since I did not have not enough of it, I added a dice into the mass to compensate this.

The part fresh released from the mould compared to the original part. You can see, thanks to the defect mould, one of the edges of the new tank was sunk in.

But that did not stop me, Istill had the original top part which otherwise would not be used.

 

A first dryfit shows that I would have to sand down a big part of the top.

The first layers of the hull were sanded down, one step closer to success.

The top part was glued on the hull, using cyanoacrylic gel glue. The tracks were dry fitted on the new tank, after some sanding they fit almost perfect. Also their thickness was after some sanding just like the original.

The new parts are ready to get glued to the tankhull.

The remaining gap between hull and top was closed with Milliput. Then I attached the tracks and sideskirts. The last part to build was the TOW launcher which was magnetised.

Compared to the original model the dublicated model does not look too bad, you may compare it to a garage kit made from worn out moulds made by an absolute beginner. The quality is not perfect but I like this thing very much, not only because I found a new way to recycle some leftover bits.
When I get a second M163/M901 "TANKS The Modern Age" expansion, I definitely will try this again.

But take a look at the result for yourself.

The only greater fault is one of the tracks. Idid not glue it straight on the hull. When I noticed it and tried to remove fix this, the trackpart broke. Because of that I kept it as it was.

Last but not least, a picture of both finished tanks. The dublicate does not look too bad or does it ? In the next post I will give this kit a closer look.

TANKS The Modern Age: Custom Unit #1

While I was browsing through the units of "TANKS The Modern Age", I noticed that the French army is the only one which can use artillery units. This brought up the idea to create a custom artillery unit, based on the values from the French unit, for the other armies of the game.

For the new custom unit I choosed a kit of Zvezdas "Hot War - Battle For Oil" range which offers some nice potential gaming pieces. The American side will get the M109 selfpropelled Howitzer, on which I took a closer look in this post. 

I found this template but decided against it and made my own template card from scratch. Of course I used a picture of the kit which I built. Even for an low experienced software user like me it was possible to do, using only MS Paint and Paint.net. The only problem was to find a fonttype which is readable at lower sizes.

The other minor problem was the scaling of the card. The template I created while I wrote this post was too big, because I mismatched the lenght of the card. But this was fixed.
The final card as seen on the picture is a little too small, but this happened because I forgot the autosizing of the printing software which my local copyshop uses. The card itself is in the right measurement.

The M109 with its comrades, I hope it will meet its expectations.

Now no more words, here are the new custom cards for "TANKS The Modern Age". At the moment I will offer them as uncompressed bitmap only, just rightclick and save them.

UPDATE:
A remade card is now available in PDF, just follow this link:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1XVljlYe99oMufFm9zYUMShzp3MgoXtnP/view?usp=sharing


This is Version 1.0
The final version will be released as PDF file.

There are 3 possible ways to print the cards, you can use your homeprinter if you own one. If you choose to print the files at home, you may setup a textdocument with the files and export it as PDF before.

The second method is to go to the local copyshop and let them get printed there, that is what I did.

The third method is to go to your local drugstore, it may offer to make prints from your digital photos. This was tried also, I have to change one or two things on the card, and then I can try to print them on glossy or matte photopaper.
On the second picture of the post, prints fom the copyshop (2,4) and photoprints (1,3) are shown, I prefer the photographs.

I never thought about the possibilities of photo printing services, this may get a seperate post in the future, maybe when I will design the next custom unit, this time the Soviets will get their artillery unit.

1:100 US Tanks For TANKS The Modern Age

I recently build and painted my first tank platoon for "TANKS The Modern Age". It is made of two Abrams from Battlefront Miniatures and one M60 from the Plastic Soldier Company, all in 15mm scale.

The Abrams tanks from the Starterbox and the expansion pack. The upper model was build as the IPM1 Abrams while the other kit was build as the M1 Abrams. Ingame I will use them for all available Abrams variants for the game.

The M60E3 by the PSC. I took a closer look at this model in this post. I thought the tracks were wrong but after a quick internet search I found out they were accurate, at least for that scale.

Except for the primer I used only Revell Aquacolor paints and Vallejo washes on these. After the models got primed, I used Olivegreen for a basecolor, drybrushed with Feldgrau. The camouflage pattern was painted with Leatherbrown and Tar Black. Then a thinned black wash was applied. A last step was to paint the machine guns black, the I added graphite via a pencil for its metallic look.

Before I sealed the kits with matte varnish, the tracks were painted  with Olivegreen and Steel, followed by a first wash of thinned black, followed by some spots of Vallejo Rust wash.

No decals were used, but I may add them later.

No I will only have to finish the Cobra helicopter, it is already built and basecoated, and this time I tried something new, but more on this in a later post. Maybe this weekend, but before I will do this, it is time to continue the work on the Meng Tiger I showed in a previous post.

Zvezda 1:100 U.S. 155mm Self-propelled Howitzer M109 A2

A closer look at the self-propelled howitzer M109 produced by Russian manufacturer Zvezda for their game "Hot War - Battle for Oil". This kit comes in 1:100 scale as all Zvezda "Art of Tactic" and "Hot War" tank kits.

The kit is casted very sharp, with great details, neither flash nor sinkholes can be found. The plastic used for this kit feels different to the plastic of other Zvezda kits I already built, almost like "real" modelkit polystyrene, and can be glued with normal modelglue like the Revell glue I use.

Also included is a decalsheet with generic tank numbers and markings. Their quality should be good if they are produced in the same quality than other Zvezda decal sets from their "Art of Tactic" and "Hot War" ranges.

The constructed kit next to a M1 Abrams produced by Battlefront Models on which I have taken a closer look some days ago.

The construction went fast and was pretty simple, and the instructions are clear and understandable. Only the muzzlebreak needs to be drilled. If you have never build a Zvezda 1:100 kit, you would not have to use glue to finish it. A quick dirty measurement shows that this tank comes in scale, if you include the machine gun and the barrel.

I built it almost out of the box, only the .50cal machine gun was replaced by a part from the bitsbox, the gun included in this kit seems to be too small.

Plastic Soldier Company 1:100 M60E3 Tank

A closer look at the M60E3 1:100 model by the Plastic Soldier Company. You can see this kit in another post. Here you can see the sprues containig all parts to build this tank:

The kit is casted very sharp, with great details and no flash. No sinkholes can be found on the sprue, except for two, the first on the main hull and the second in an inner part of the turret but they will not be seen when this kit is completed. I bought a single sprue of this kit without instructions, but you can find them on the web and they are clear and easy to understand.

A very nice extra is the inclusion of two crew members.

The construction went without any issues and the finished kit looks fine. The only thing I did not like are the tracks, I think the gaps (not pictured) are not on the original but I may try fix this. And I messed up one of the smokelaunchers, but this should be fixed with no big problems.

There a some small parts that need some sanding, maybe the barrel will be drilled out.

This will be a nice proxy unit for "TANKS The Modern Age" games, but I think that I will get the M-60 expansion for the game in the future.

Oh, and there will be no useless bits leftover, what I like.

M1 Abrams Tank Expansion For TANKS The Modern Age

Another close look at anonther tank expansion for Galeforce 9's new game "TANKS The Modern Age". This time I will show the content of the M1 Abrams tank expansion.

This box contains a tank model kit and some cards for the game.

The tank kit is the same as in the starterbox. Neither sinkholes nor flash can be found on the sprue, but there are two ejectormarks that will be seen if you build the M1 version of the Abrams tank.

The building instruction are way better than the poor instructions included in the starterbox but in case of emergency you can look at the Team Yankee website. I built two of them in different versions and had no problems while construction.

Then, there are the cards:

First there are three cards for the different variant which you can build from this expansion, all based on the Abrams tank.  While the M1 Abrams and the IPM1Abrams have an Attack of 4 dice, the M1A1 Abrams has 5 attack dice and compared to the other tank 1 or 2 more hitpoints. This version is on par with the Germa Leopard 2, which in my opinion is the strongest tank in the game.

All 3 tanks have an Advanced Stabilizer, which may let you re-roll 2 attack dice.

As in all other expansions for the game some crew and equipment cards are included:

"William 'Buck' Taylor"

This is the American hero unit. He may seem pretty expensive with 6 points but he gives the tank which he commands an additional attack dice. Also all other Abrams tanks in the platoon get an additional initiative point.

For 6 Points I would take him in every battle.

"Cunning Commander"
Usable for all nations. For one point he adds an additional initiative point.

"Adaptive",
This doctrine seems pretty nice, +2 initiative for only one point, usable for all nations and all tanks, but only if the tanks has three or more crew cards.This would be a nice addition for an Abrams with the Alpha 66 crew, but also for every other tank with three or more crew members.

"True Boy Scout",
US tanks only. This crew member gives you +1 initiative while movement phase, for only one point. But that is not all, you gain the possibility to use two different equipment parts.

and "Silver Bullet"
US Abrams tanks only, this card gives an extra attack dice for a single attack. It may be useful but there is better stuff to equip.

This expansion offers not only 3 strong tanks to choose from, the crew and equipment card which are included offer some great advantages, but a first game will show the strenghts and weaknesses of this expansion.