This weekend was kind of a slow model-building weekend...I guess that's appropriate considering how much got done last weekend! I did make progress on the detail front with the first order of business being to paint up all the tools and get them installed. This followed my usual pattern with the metal portions painted with Non-buffing Metalizer Gunmetal and lightly dry brushed with Steel. The wood portions were painted first with my custom "wood" color and then given a light wash of Leather followed by a strategic dusting of Burnt Umber artist pastels. The jack block was also counter dry brushed with the "wood" color to give it more variety. The wire cutters had their Bakelite handles painted with Italian Dark Brown and the rubber end caps painted with enamel Gunmetal. The tools were then installed to both fenders.
Next up was the final hurdle, the tracks! This is what the instruction diagram looks like back in Step 4.
This process turned out to be longer than I thought it would be. All of the links and lengths sections were removed from the sprues and cleaned up. Since the contact surfaces are so small due to the small size of the Pz II links, I went ahead and formed the curved parts first. To do this, I used the sprockets and idlers as, well, formers, and glued the curved sections together and then left them to dry overnight resting on their respective surfaces.
Once those had set up, I attached the sprocket curved portion to the angled length portion and glued that into the long base piece. This was done for both sides so that they would form as a single piece that could still be removed for painting. This was possible due to the fact that the sprocket could remain movable courtesy of the polycap.
The different sections were then base coated with Non-buffing Metalizer Gunmetal, heavily dry brushed with Steel, and then given a wash of Burnt Umber to prepare them for installation.
The final steps involved getting the remaining lengths to join up into a single track run. To accomplish this, I first positioned the top run and then glued the idlers into place but didn't yet glue the top run onto the idlers. A little bit of slack is needed to play around with to get the front and rear portions lined up, so it's best to do this last. Once the top run had set for about 1 hour, I then joined the bottom run up at the idler to the top. At this stage it was no longer desirable that the sprockets and idlers be able to rotate as they kept putting a little bit of "play" into the way the tracks were setting, so I applied some liquid glue to their inner contact surfaces with the mount arms and they are now fixed firmly into position. Then, using some strategic toothpicks to hold it down and prevent floating, the top run was glued down to the return rollers.
Process was repeated for the other side and after several hours (much of it spent waiting for glue to set up), both tracks were finally installed.
Next up will be adding the markings and then onto the weathering stage!