11 April 2011

Other Peoples wheels


It has been a building weekend once everything settled
down, the joys of single parenthood...

Anyways, the sort through the lead drawer on the organiser washed up the rest of the large wheels I special ordered from GZGs in December. Jon has produced some nice models with these wheels. Notably the Bulldog series of Trucks, but I have used the cab and bodies of that line with the tread unit provided with the Surveyor2, for
a "army" that infantry is the the Sons of Thunder from Rebel Minis (I figured "space" Dwarves would want something a little more mechanically complex than wheels).

I bought the wheels, now it is time to use them, figured I would get my hand back scratch-building with store bought wheels. I am starting out with simple structures of laminated card. In which one builds up the structure with card cut to shape. I use Plastruct's Plastic Weld as it is fairly forgiving in bonding disparate types of plastics. The wheels themselves are secured to a bit of brass tube which is glued into the structure with a bit of Cyanoacrylate glue.

This the base Chasis with the wheels attached. Four layers of pre-scored, I tend to use Evergreen's "sidewalk" which is v-scored into a grid pattern for my base building, as I can rapidly build up the hidden layers with minmal cutting. "Sidewalk" comes in grid sizes from 1/8th of an inch to 1/2 inch.
Next is the start of a model I am calling "Wrecker" thematically based on the large tow-trucks used for recovering Semi-Trucks. The perfect sort of vehicle for salvaging the ruins with. In that most tow-trucks have one or two winches and plenty of stowage for tools etc. etc...
Lastly, we have the Bus. This based on a fusion of a Art Decco streetcarand a large mid-door bus, generally used to ferry people around airports local. While the base shape is done there is a lot of detail still required (Headlights, mirrors, etc... Considering things like expanded metal covered windows, roof-top bagage racks, an extended engine compartment and the like).These are all separate chassis, all built to identical specs. The Idea is these are all bigger vehicles based on truck chassis. Physically the finished models will be approximately 30mm wide by 60 to 85mm long. Due the the width of the wheels I have discarded the need for tandem rear wheels, I will explore them in later models.
I also have a large number of GZGs smaller wheels, the ones from the 6 wheeled mule and the NAC reverse trike. These are more in scale with automotive uses, and hopefully will get to them later this week.
This is one of the Ideas I have been kicking around for a jeep scaled vehicle. As well as some more traditional designs.

2 comments:

  1. Wow, that's very cool. I like the way the bus is coming along, and that concept jeep is very interesting. I'm enjoying seeing your process.

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  2. The details are killing me, kinda. I want to put a roof rack on, and a ladder, but there other areas those cover I want to detail 1st. Just haven't had that bright spark yet.

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