¹⁄35

Technique for building Allied style 3 piece Individual Track Links

Mission Statement

This article is aimed at beginners to individual track links like me and my explanations may seem fairly basic at times, but I'm trying to explain what I've learned in simple and easy to understand directions to help others around the world. And who knows maybe some of you more advanced builders out there will pick up a tip or two

Recently I've been working on a Sherman Firefly Vc by DML. This kit comes with individual track links that have been driving me batty. After several false starts trying a couple of different techniques, I finally hit upon a way to build them that was fairly easy for me. 

This method should work on most 3 piece track link styles, such as those found on Sherman's, Grants, Lee's, and many other Allied AFV's. These track links have a single piece for the tread and two connectors for either side to hold the links together, such as the diagram below.

Part 1 the beginning:

Materials Needed. 

- A pair of self-locking tweezers
- A few Popsicle sticks
- A pair of pliers 
- Superglue or your favorite modeling glue
- A glue applicator

The first step is to remove the parts from the spruces and clean them up. I keep my parts in small containers that have lids, such as film containers. I'm not going into detail on this part of the job as its really not what I'm writing about, so from here on I'll assume you have your parts ready for assembly.

A few notes: I use 5 to 15 second gap filling super glue for this project because it is thick enough to stay where I put it and gives me enough time to work with it before it dries, yet still dries fairly fast so I can keep working away at the tracks. Also since I'm using a glue applicator to place the glue on the parts, I keep a bit of cloth on the table to wipe the tool off after every application of super glue, otherwise the dried glue will start to build up on it.