Why on Earth would you scratchbuild an M113 in 1:35 scale?

[Guest]

Tip: make sure you read your ruler correctly I measured up the AFV Club hull bottom and subtracted the width of the sides to arrive at 41 mm for the floor plate. After cutting it, it was obviously too narrow. Re-measuring told me the hull was 4.8 cm wide, not 4.3 as I had read off … A new floor plate was duly cut:

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I then cut notches out of the front corners, and corresponding ones in the nose plate, for the covers over the final drive housings:

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I’ll have to find a way to make those housings, though, as the sides are awkward shapes to cut from plastic card.

And then …

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I whacked the floor with the rounded side of a ball-peen hammer

Well, to be honest it was a fairly soft blow, with the floor plate resting on polyethylene foam, but it deformed the plate nicely.

[Guest]

For the final drive housings, I found some AFV Club parts, from a sprue from their M548 that’s also included in the YPR-765 kit, leaving these bits spare (among others):

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However, there is a thick bit on the back that’s used to locate them in the M548 hull, but of course I didn’t make any holes in my M113 hull for these. Luckily, it was easy enough to saw those bits off:

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Don’t go all the way through in one go, but saw to the middle from all sides, as that gives much less risk of ending up at an angle. All that remained was a little clean-up with a file, after which I could glue them to the lower hull sides:

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The drive sprocket is Tamiya, from the spares box, which, surprisingly, fits perfectly in the AFV Club final drive housing.

I glued the cut-off bit to the inside, but had to fill the big hole in it with a Hasegawa 1:72 scale Panzer IV roadwheel, which required opening up the hole a bit more.

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I then put a piece of plastic card, of the same thickness as the lower hull sides, to fit between the two sides of the final drive housing, but larger than necessary. That allowed me to mark around the outside of it with a pencil, remove the card and cut it approximately to size. I then re-inserted the pastic and filed it to fit the housing (you can see this in the photo above). Repeat three times, so I had four pieces: two to put between the two halves, and two as the sides of the bulged bits of the nose plate.

Next, the nose plate itself. I had already cut this (see above) but it looked crooked, and turned out to be: 1.5 mm different in height between left and right. As the short side was too low, the part wasn’t salvageable, so I cut a new plate for it. I then glued on the two curved pieces I’d made:

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When this had dried, I re-cut the “notches” for the final drive covers to match the curved plates, attached the nose plate to the hull floor and also waited for that to dry:

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Then, I took some plastic strip of the right width (cut from 1 mm plate) and curved it, then stuck it in the opening:

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This way, the strip is braced against the plates, preventing it from opening and pulling away from the plates. After drying, all that remained as to cut off the excess bits.

[scottie3158]

Jakko,
Lovely work but I have no clue as to why you are scratching it. But it must have something to do with hitting it with a ball peen hammer.

[Guest]

In retrospect, I’m now quite certain that buying a cheap kit, like from Italeri (rather than a good one from AFV Club, as I actually did) would have been the more sensible approach to what I’m trying to do here However, at the point I’ve gotten to by now, it’s also simpler to continue with what I have.

All will become clear as this goes on, I assure you

[Gary MacKenzie]

I now reckon it ran over a mine

[Guest]

No, but you’re getting warm

[Guest]

M113s had a number of strengthening ribs on the floor, and these will be visible on my model, so I had to replicate them. Unfortunately, they each have four rounded holes in them, so the top is flat but the underside is only welded to the floor in five places. That poses some headaches, and when I tried filing gaps into a length of plastic strip, I just couldn’t get it to look right, aside from that being a lot of effort.

After pondering on it, I mentioned the problem to my father, who came to the rescue by making a punch for me on his lathe plus a few offcut bits:

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The small thing on the right is a fastener from some exposition material, with its outside turned town to 10 mm; the gap was already in it, and the centre is hollow. The large round thing is a piece of steel with a 10 mm hole drilled in, plus a bit of angle aluminium and a little spacer (not visible) to get the distance right.

I put the things into a vice:

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I put pencil marks at the centre points of the gaps, and also made one on the aluminium, aligned with the centre of the hole. The plastic strip is against the aluminium and goes through the slot, and then it was just a matter of whacking it with something to ounch out a semi-circular bit from the strip. After doing that four times and cutting it to length, I ended up with:

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Then all I had to do was make four more and glue them all to the floor:

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[Guest]

I’ve not done much on the model in recent weeks, but I did make a base for it:

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This is just some 6 mm MDF with decorative edging around it and some spacers underneath to keep the board up:

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There isn’t one on the fourth side because my hobby is not woodworking That is, I had cut four pieces but I couldn’t get them all to fit together around the board, so I glued three on and cut a new fourth piece. That was also too short, so I had to cut one more still, which was about the right length, but I still had to file some material off the board to get it all to fit more or less properly. I decided to not bother with a spacer on that side, as the rest is solidly glued together.

[Jim R]

Hi Jakko
When you hit the floor pan I thought, like Gary, it ran over a mine. Ribs looks good thanks to Dad's help. Drive housing & sprocket is well done. A real mix from Hasegawa, AFV and Tamiya. All you need now is some Italeri and Airfix bits to have a real Frankenstein :tongue-out3:
Jim

[Guest]

When you hit the floor pan I thought, like Gary, it ran over a mine.

I am making this after a photograph, but I don’t think the real one in that ran over a mine.

Ribs looks good thanks to Dad's help.

It’s quite handy that he learned metalworking in school and then went on to be an engineer, I must say

Drive housing & sprocket is well done. A real mix from Hasegawa, AFV and Tamiya. All you need now is some Italeri and Airfix bits to have a real Frankenstein :tongue-out3:

I’ve got Italeri roadwheels and Academy idler wheels ready, all I need to get round to is making mounts for them …

[Guest]

After about two months, I finally got round to some modelling again.

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The AFV Club M113 kit has some spare suspension arms, because it’s clearly designed to cater for different variants that have two or three shock absorbers per side. This left me with six arms, four with shock absorbers mountings and two without. I put the former at the front and rear stations and added shock absorbers from a punched disc and a bit of plastic rod, then added the other two arms on one side. The wheels are the Italeri ones I mentioned, used inside out because the detail is better on the outside, and I made simple axles for the four wheels that I had no suspension arms for before gluing them to the hull.

The drive wheels are Tamiya, so now all I need to add here is mountings for the idler wheels (to be patterned after the AFV Club parts) plus those wheels, and the tracks.

[Guest]

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Now with idler wheels! I made their mountings from plastic card and some sprue, with the adjustment cylinder from more rod and some punched discs and bolts, which I also added to the shock absorbers. The wheels themselves are from Academy, again used inside-out. (The Tamiya idler wheels are useless, they are obviously designed for motorisation and therefore have a very strong inner half, that looks only like the real thing in that it’s circular. Academy has put spokes on both halves, at least.)

[Guest]

Tracks on:

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These are from an Academy M113, but I only needed half a full set (one sprue instead of the two supplied in the kit) for what you can see here.

[Jim R]

Hi Jakko
Nice to see this back. A most enjoyable project to follow.
It's really looking good and all the scratching, planning and mixing and matching is paying off.
Jim

[Guest]

Thanks Next, with a bit of luck tomorrow, I’ll have to start on the ground work, but I’m not overly looking forward to that because it’s kind of critical to having everything look right and I’m not all that confident about how to do that yet. OTOH, actually doing it is probably going to provide the necessary insights in itself, so it’ll probably turn out fine after all