Spare track link

Tim Bowman · Post by **Tim Bowman** » Wed Jul 09, 2008 3:53 pm

Hello fellow Panther owners

This is something I've been wanting to do for some time and since I was running some other parts for my deck, I thought I'd get it going as well. I drew a Panther track link based off research of drawings and images, as well as visual inspection, of the real thing. Thank you Kent for supplying detail photos of his original link as well as input along the way.

I should have first parts back in a few days and will be doing the final finishing work before molding.

I hope to make them available for everyone as "dummy" spare links for hull side and turret.

Metal or resin? I will be making resin ones for my self but hope to experiment with casing metal as well.

Will they ever be made to work as replacement to Armortek's functional tracks? Sorry, no. They are for visual only.

I will post images as soon as I have something to photo. Also, for Tiger owners, the Tiger track link will follow soon.

Kind regards

Tim

cedric meyer · Post by **cedric meyer** » Wed Jul 09, 2008 5:21 pm

WOW..... I want a couple of.... That's a brilliant idea....

willie leonard · Post by **willie leonard** » Thu Jul 10, 2008 5:34 am

Hey Tim, count me in. On the question of metal or resin I say metal.

Dale jordan · Post by **Dale jordan** » Thu Jul 10, 2008 6:02 am

Good idea Tim with the tracks !!! These will be more to scale then the others ones . Tim I have done lots of mould making and casting in resin . One thing I would suggest is to use a product call TC 808 . You should be able to find one similar over there . It is a thermoplastic resin . I mix in a couple of tea spoons of alloy power from the same people .. It turns the resin dark grey and makes it stronger .. The good thing about it being grey is that once its painted and you scratch it grey will show through not white . Dale

Tim Bowman · Post by **Tim Bowman** » Thu Jul 10, 2008 7:21 am

Thanks Dale

We do a lot of molding/casting in our line of work and I have worked with the 800 series urethanes for years. Haven't needed to do much metal-powder adding for our stuff but I did do some years ago. Great tip as far as a dark base color to start with..

It's the white metal casting that will be totally new to me. I am confident I can get a nice finished, resilient resin part. Not so confident in my ability with white metal casting. My deck parts seem like they would be easy in metal and I've seen metal cast 1:35 scale track links so It's gotta be do-able. It's just I have zero experience with that. I'm willing to give it a go though.

As always, will post progress pictures on the parts.

Best regards

Tim

Mike Stannard (toyrific) · Thu Jul 10, 2008 4:59 pm

Tim

Problems with metal casting, give me a call.

Mike

Tim Bowman · Post by **Tim Bowman** » Thu Jul 10, 2008 9:23 pm

Thanks Mike

Tim Bowman · Post by **Tim Bowman** » Fri Jul 18, 2008 8:06 am

I spent today working on the first stage of clean up on some of my track link patterns. Unfortunately, much of the smaller details were lost during the printing process and I had to add them back in by hand.
Much to do still.

I will complete the fine tuning and then add a light texturing and will take better pictures then.

As always, my impatience got the best of me and I couldn't wait to see how they looked on the side of my Panther.

kind regards

Tim

Robert E Morey · Post by **Robert E Morey** » Sat Jul 19, 2008 5:56 am

They look like the real thing Tim. Can't wait to get my hands on some of those!

Great work!
Bob

Adrian Harris · Post by **Adrian Harris** » Sat Jul 19, 2008 9:10 am

Truly awesome parts Tim

Adrian.

Tim Bowman · Post by **Tim Bowman** » Sun Jul 20, 2008 4:15 am

Thanks Everybody for the kind words.

This afternoon I continued cleaning up all six some more and added a very subtle cast texture to see how it looked. May be too subtle. Two of the six links have cast numbers in them to add some random character, the rest will be plain. Hope you like them. Back to working on my deck tomorrow.

Regards

Tim

Pierluigi Patri · Post by **Pierluigi Patri** » Sun Jul 20, 2008 10:37 am

They look like the 1/1 track link.

A very, very good work.

cedric meyer · Post by **cedric meyer** » Sun Jul 20, 2008 12:34 pm

They look D..... real!!!!

Tim Bowman · Post by **Tim Bowman** » Wed Sep 24, 2008 4:51 pm

Thanks Pierluigi and Cedric. They are starting to come out of the mold en-mass. I'll get some better photos when I have the pins and enough to replace my temporary ones that are in all my older pictures. It's amazing how much the detail on the links brings the appearance of the model up to scale. Making it appear more 1:1.

Cheers

Tim

Tim Bowman · Post by **Tim Bowman** » Tue Oct 21, 2008 7:42 pm

Well, I finally had a break from work to clean up some of the cast links and see how they look. Still have to do the pins but, as usual, I couldn't wait.

Tim