Dear Colleagues,

Last February I bought several different photoeched brass kits from Eduard Model and, having holidays I decided to start with the T34/76 kit (for Tamiya).
This is the first time I work with photo etched brass and I'm experiencing some problems when gluing two brass parts together. I use super glue (games workshop brand) and it takes a long time to glue these two parts together! And even in some cases I wasn't able to glue them at all! :-(
On the other hand when gluing a brass part to a plastic part, the super glue I use, seems to work fine.
What's the problem? The brand I use of superglue? Shall I change it and then, which is the best brand?
Or, it's me doing something wrong?? Too much glue???
Any help will be greatly appreciated because I feel very disappointed!

My second questions is related to the original rubber tracks (awful!) from the T-34 , as I read in this forum there are better tracks that can be bought to "Baquete"? Where can I found the link of this seller or other sellers?


Thanks in advance,

Lluís (Barcelona)

Make sure that the PE is clean first.

Use an alcohol wipe and keep grease of fingers off or you are not going to be able to glue them together.

Have you tired soldering them?

You are looking for Maquette tracks. Very inexpensive link to link styrene tracks, available in late and early versions, but sometimes hard to find (I think they've been out of production for a while, so few suppliers have them--I got a couple of sets last year from AlangerUSA). More expensive workable tracks are available from Friul (metal pinned tracks) or Model Kasten (styrene plastic links with styrene pins). However. these cost more than the Tamiya kit itself, and you might as well buy a Dragon kit, which has link to link track and brass parts in the box.
If you having trouble gluing brass to brass, try five-minute epoxy glue instead of cyanoacrylate.

For brass to brass, solder works best. It will take some practice to get it right though. Otherwise, be sure there is no oil on the brass. Oil from your hands will prevent a good bond. You can clean the brass and it should hold.

I agree with these guys although soldering can be a rather fine art and can still take ALOT of cleaup especially soldering small detail parts to each other. I've had this issue before and one thing that helped is try sanding the surfaces to be mated as well, to brighten them up a bit. Don't use a polishing cloth, 400-600 grit out to do it nicely. Thinner superglue also helps to get this stuff to stick. For model building, especially PE, I usually stick with Zap or Jet Brands. Although there is another brand out there that allows shops to put their own name on it so it's kind of an in store brand and it works pretty good as well. Just be careful with the thin stuff, while it works REALLY well on PE, it also works REALLY well bonding brass to skin. Ask me how I know. Lets just say I got quite a few funny looks running around for a week with brass glued to my fingertips.

Michael