Modelling Tip : How to fit Chimera and Leman Russ tracks

(versión en Español)

A lot of modelers have the same problem when facing a Chimera or Leman Russ kit: The tracks does not fit. No matter how much you try or how much you read the instructions, those tracks will not fit properly.

Of course, this is a well known problem, but until Games Workshop develops an alternative track sprue we need to find some solution. There are people that simply leave some missing links in the lower part, where they would not be seen, or that leave them in the upper part, covered by track guards.

As a fellow modeler asked me what I did to solve the problem, I did this quick walkthrough.

First of all, I use polystyrene cement. It allows the pieces to be adjusted after being glued. Cyanoacrylate (superglue) sets too fast for that.

I only add six road wheels, preferring to save the rest and glue the tracks to the sides.

I use the handy sanding pads from Rhino for removing sprue marks. This is important if you want the tracks to be glued to the sides.

Let's start with those links.

I start from the upper front of the track set. As I said before, I glue the tracks mainly to the sides. If a link lies on a wheel, I obviously apply glue to it. But I want the track to be parallel to the sides (If you look closely at the pic below, you would see that the end of the long track section is not in contact with the wheel, but parallel to the side).

We continue adding links with the same idea in mind.

Now it's nearly complete, we only need one of those big tracks sections.

Well, we knew it would not fit, isn't it?

And this is the trick, it is most probable that there are a lot of people already doing it, but some other would probably find it useful

Just cut the end of the track section like this:

You will end with a reduced track link.

Sand the end a little to give it a rounded shape.

And that is. A shorter link at the bottom part of your tracks. Once painted, I assure you that even if you flip your model upside down, you'll need to closely inspect the link to notice that something is wrong.

Death Korps of Krieg Trench Digger

(versión en Español)

That was to be my entry at the Lt. Walke's WIP contest. Unfortunately, Real Life issues prevented me to finish on time. Not that this represents a problem for me, as I can now concentrate on the kind of detailing I prefer.

When Lt. Walke asked for support vehicles, I immediately thought on the DKOK and their bias to large maze-like trench systems. I thought that being this the future, and with all those techpriests and engineseers to help, they would have probably developed an autonomous trench-digging engine.

As it was to be set on 40K, it's clear that it would have to had some characteristics like hugeness, "clankyness", armor and firepower (being 40K I imagine that the grim Korps would dig their trenches in the middle of heavy assaults from hordes of xenos, making some last stands on their way and so)(and THIS is exactly what I really like of Warhammer 40000, mates...).

Having said that, I picked a really old and bad industrial scraper kit a bought for 5€ ages ago (I knew I would someday use it, BWAHAHAHA!) and recycled the bucket for my sacred and revered engine of construction.

I used chimera sides for the digging part and resin sides for my Ragnarok-like set. The hulls are scratchbuilt from plasticard, throwing some styrene parts from bargain 1/35 kits I hunted on eBay. As some fellow WIP pointed me, the chimera tracks looked too small and close to the sides of the freshly dug trench, so I added some extra pieces to add a winterketten-like feeling to the rear part.

The most interesting thing is that, incidentally, the front part works really well by itself, so I am planning to make some magnetized add-ons to use it as an independent engineers vehicle.

This is still a WIP, thought, a lot of work remains to be done on the rear part.

Ultrawerke is now in Spanish!

Not a lot of work to show lately (although the DKOK trench digger is taking shape), but I have some important news (from my point of view).

After many mails asking me to do it, I finally decided to translate the blog to my mother tonge: Spanish.

So, if you feel more comfortable reading in Spanish just visit Ultrawerke Spanish. I hope I can translate everything in about 30 days, then the two blogs will run in parallel.

Hope you enjoy it:

Ultrawerke