Armour sratch building

Copious amounts of plasticstruct in all shapes and sizes, but as I build mainly German, I do a lot of kit bashing. I save most everything I didn't use on a kit when I build it including the metal detail sets and verlinden update sets I might buy. There are a lot of common parts in building tanks. Tankers are a bunch of pack-rats (why do you think we need such huge vehicles) so stock up on junk!

I agree. A glass surface to work on is essential as well. Although mine is not as large as your plate. ( about 8"x8" ) I mainly use mine to cut on.

My 2 cents worth. One of my most important tools for scratchbuilding is a flat piece of plate glass. The one I use is about a 24" square (60.96cm for the metric folks) It insures I have a FLAT surface to work from and can be used to true up hulls, torsion bars, boxes and all kinds of stuff.

Tracy

I agree with the others. Plastic stock in all shapes and sizes are extreamely helpful. They will save you ALOT of time. Brass tubing is an essential as well as wire of all diameters. One thing that the other two guys did not mention is the tools to help you. A motor tool is a must have as well as a good set of calipers. I could not even think about scratchbuilding without at least those two items...Oh ya...get plenty of sand paper. ;)

I tend to use Plastic stock from Evergreen &Plastruct.com
I also use Brass & Aluminum From ksmetals.com
Gap Filling Super glue, epoxy, epoxy putty, tube putty And Kit / Aftermarket parts as needed.

My main material is sheets of plastic (Evergreen do them in various thickness). I use anything between .05 tp .80 thou. Evergreen rods, strips,.. are of a great help, but it's mostly a time-saving thing. My next main thing is Milliput (two-part epoxy putty) that helps me getting rounded, compound shapes. All this would be useless without tools and glues of course, and again, I use some tools such as the minidrill that saves up a lot of time, but really most of what I have is very basic such as knives, files, sand paper, liquid glue, super glue and accelerator. Check out my website to see some of the masters I produced recently (see in my profile for the link). I'd like to add that reference is of the upmost importance!

Ask if you have very specific enquires!

Hmm, it really depends on the extent of the conversion that you are doing. If at all possible i buy my kitbashing equipment but in lieu of that there is always the old standbys. Of course there is strait stock plastic card, in every kind of different guage. There are I beams, L beams, tubes, halfmoons, and just about everything else you could ask for from plastristruct. I also do basic casting by using a piece of SulptyPutty to do the mold, heat it to set the mold and then cast away. Most Dragon kits contain a wealth of excess parts for scratchbuilding later. ANd the Tamiya Panzer 4 on vechical equipment set is first rate. As for where to start it depends on what you are doing. Shep Paine did a major scratch building job when he back dated a monogram panzer 4 to an earlier Aufs E model. I've found it usefull to think of every subassembly as it's own little model. If each one is as perfect as you can make it then your overall effect should be rather convincing. Good Luck, Bill