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Vietnam Raft

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  • Member since
    February 2003
Vietnam Raft
Posted by Mark Meuleman on Monday, December 19, 2005 3:05 AM

Hi all,
Just wanted to let you what I’ve beenworking on lately. From the first time I saw this picture (from: Groundwar Vietnam vol. 2 by Jim Mesko) I wanted to build such a raft


It took some time and research to find out what this raft was made of. It consist of M4T6 floating bridge pontoons and a 27 ft. bridge erection boat used for propulsion. This bridge erection boat  looks like this

Funny thing is there seem to be ‘floating’ quite a few of these boats in the Dutch canals and rivers (lucky me!).
Since there’s no kit available, this had to be my first scratchbuilding-project. Here’s my attempt at the bridge erection boat:





any tip or comment is welcome

Kind regards
Mark Big Smile [:D]

  • Member since
    January 2003
  • From: Burlington, Ontario Canada
Posted by gburdon on Monday, December 19, 2005 8:44 PM

Mark;

Great build! I trust you took your measurements from the prototypes as they floated by. Scratchbuilds are hard work but so worth the efforts.

If you need rivets or bolt heads on the seams, a great little tool I recently bought works great. They're called Beading Tools. A jeweller uses them to make recesses for precious stones in rings etc. They work great an you can hammer out a lot of rivets in little time.

I will try and post a picture of mine and some of the various sizes of rivets it makes.

Keep posting as the build progress continues.

Cheers;

Gregory 

VETERAN - (Noun) - Definition - One who signed a blank cheque as: “Payable to The People of Canada, Up To and Including My Life."
  • Member since
    February 2003
Posted by Mark Meuleman on Tuesday, December 20, 2005 12:42 AM

"I trust you took your measurements from the prototypes as they floated by" Big Smile [:D]Big Smile [:D] Indeed I did Wink [;)] Luckily there were more then one Clown [:o)]

I'm glad you like it! And it's true I do need a lot of rivets on this boat (and also on the pontoons) I'm still experimenting with these (having quite nice results with superglue)

 

I will keep you posted

Mark Thumbs Up [tup]

  • Member since
    July 2003
  • From: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Posted by zokissima on Wednesday, December 21, 2005 8:23 AM

Wow, excellent scratchbuild. Keep us posted on this one.

 

gburdon, where does one go about getting these tools you speak of?

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