Hello All,

presently driving myself insane assembling the slat armour for the Leo2A6M. Since I am an Electrical technician, I thought I would use soldering methods. Good thing I have 2 sets, because CA glue is the way to go. I have found that since the PE is so thin, the heat of the soldering iron really distresses the brass. I have had some good joints, but I don't think this is the way to go.
This is a PE set that will test your resolve, with such small pieces.
Any comments on other peoples experiences

I just used solder for the main pieces, i.e., the large slat sections themselves. For the smaller support arms etc, I just CA'ed it. Right now I've got all the slat built and labeled, I just need to figure out where all the support arms go on the hull. I find the instructions useless and using photos is difficult too. The barracuda cam is throwing a wrench into things too! This is by far the most involved model project I've ever started.

I have to agree about this being a difficult subject, but i will persevere. As for photos, I have plenty of reference material. I was lucky to be on ROTO 4 when the Leo 2 arrived and was on the same FOB for most of my tour, so i managed to get alot of photo shoots in, about 200 pics of the slat armour and brackets alone. I am sending LeoCmdr a cd for his critique. I will be burning a cd for anyone that wishes one but will have to charge a small fee for postage, the disc, my time etc. Unfortunately I was gone before the barracuda armour was instlled.

Good Luck

I have been soldering mine ( and this is my first attempt at soldering btw ),and I haven't had any problems with heat distortion. I have, however, been using a set of machinist's 1-2-3 blocks to keep the pieces square while I solder them up. I find this is ESPECIALLY important on the longer pieces such as the ones that go to the rear of the engine deck and also pieces that don't have the middle reenforcing bars in the center and are prone to twisting.

I glue only first slat for Stryker. For next slat for Stryker and Leo 2 I used soldering.
here is WiP photos
http://www.realmodel.cz/index.php?option=com_phocagallery&view=category&id=28:cdn-leopard-2a6m-wslat-armor&Itemid=49

Absolutely gorgeous, Miloslav; I hope mine turns out half as good as yours. I'm doing pretty good working with the actual slat sections once I got the hang of the order in which I needed to bend everything and how the solder behaves; any tips on doing the actual mounting brackets? That seems like it's going to be the biggest challenge due to their small size and the number of folds in such a small size.

Did you have a method for figuring out where to put the support arms?

If I can manage to eventually assemble the support arms successfully,I plan on using the diagrams in the Tankograd Canadian Leo book as references.