Armortek

Does any one know what the diameter of the waste disposal hatch is please?

There you go John.

Fantastic service Stephen.

Is that Chieftain in your back yard?

We could be forgiven for thinking Stephen has a Chieftain parked on the drive - I suspect he's been quietly stockpiling photo's for his own build...…..

Just to pass the time made a 3D drawing of the hatch.
Could easily be 3D printed and glued in place.

Vince

That's a lovely job Vince.

But no disrespect, (I'll just have to go and have a little cry in the corner ) where's the fun in that?

I've just spent 3 hours fashioning this

(Bloody robots, now I know how the Tolpuddle martyrs felt like )

Nice one Vince. Your metal version is great also John. Just proves there is more than one way to skin a cat.

Wouldn’t mind betting that .stl file is soon in Mr Woollard’s inbox

Kevin

Wouldn’t mind betting that .stl file is soon in Mr Woollard’s inbox

Phil did not ask for it. I just made it to pass the time. One thing I'm still not sure about my drawing is the thickness of the material. I had to use an educated guess.

John what thickness are you using for that round hatch? I used 3mm material in my drawing.

Vince

Other than the kind sizes that Stephen has provided, the rest is guess work, like the rest of the dimensions I'm having to deal with on the model.

The plate is 2.5 mm thick with a plug diameter 20 mm x 8 mm depth.

The tricky bit is, where exactly does it fit on the side.

Where indeed, since the bogies are not quite to scale and I'm not sure of the hull height under the mud guards.

It's going to be pin the tail on the donkey time.

I've fashioned a hinge, and step drill cutter is at the ready.

I made the waste hatch inside diameter 20mm and reckoned to use the 20mm and 22mm step on the cutter as my guide for the through hole. I end up with a nice little rebate too.

I have been dreading drilling a 22mm hole in the side hull for some time, but if I want the hatch to work and try and keep one step in front of the 3d printers of this world, an idiot's got to do what an idiot's got to do.

It's all guess work, you make a scale part and it either works or it doesn't. The hatch has been set a little high on the hull side to align with original tank bogie position, but this makes it slightly high from the bottom of the model hull. But any lower it would wrong with the bogie. Hummm, It should look better when I add the guard and latch, I hope.

Better still when obscured by the road wheels, even better when the Bazooka plates are fitted. Virtually hidden from view.

It's mirror Time! Richard G

It's mirror Time!

My mirror is telling me you're 2mm too low!

Seriously. Jokes apart. One can't beat a well made metal part.

Vince

Looks very good John just the rain guard now then, incidentally you do realize why the inside of the waste disposal tube was a tube? ......ever noticed the shape of a George the III ?

Vincent, I'm sure it's 3mm high give or take an inch.
I'd be no good at cad I have a habit of missing out decimal places, words, symbols, that and falling a sleep in front of a screen if I loose interest. Zzzzz
And Phil
If the George the lll's get that big it would be understandable why Nuke suits were worn buttoned up.
I have worried about the BV in the past, though it could be a warm place on a cold winters night.

The inner part was not a solid tube but a tube shaped bag with a zip. Normally retained against the hull wall to stop it getting caught and ripped off when traversing ( being eaten by the turret monster was a generally used term for such damage, especially when it was body parts that were caught ).
When needed, release from position, unzip, fill with waste, do zip up, undo hatch and push / squeeze the contents out.

Mark

Sounds lovely Mark

Last thing to make is the weather guard. To give some strength cut it out with pins for easy mounting.
Bent it round a socket out of the tool box.

It'll look better cleaned up and painted.