Andy,
what is the metal you used for the frame on the pic 7?

I did mine the same way you did - cut out the template and bent pieces of wire to form the frames. Then using luquid flux and fine solder carefully assembled the whole thing. It sure takes some time - but its doable.

Andy

I used some brass wire from work. For the side bustle I am using fine brass wire.

Tanks
Andy

Still amazing. I can't wait seeing it with some paint on it.

Andy, where do you find your hexagonal rods ? It's impossible to find such in France and would help a lot in many of my on the list projects.

WoW!! Much work, but it looks very good.

Andy this is truely inspirational work.

That much PE is really, really, scarey !!

I'm following this thread with great interest. Thanks for posting the detailed updates.

Paul

Hi Andy. Fantastic build. Could you be more specific with your problem relating to the bustle rack. Is the problem with the soldering itself?

Matt

My problem is getting the brass rod and the mesh heated enough to get the solder to run without melting the mesh grill. I've tried propane based tip as well as a regular soldering iron. I've cleaned the parts and added a little flux.

Tanks
Andy

Hello All,
My day 12, 13, 14 and 15 all dealt with trying build the rear and side stowage bins. I got really frustrated with all my attempts at trying to build the rear bustle rack. Then in utter frustration I remembered that I had a Trumpeter LAV kit sitting on the shelf. I opened the box to find a virtually complete bustle rack. Figure 1 shows the donated bustle rack attached to the rear of the turret.



Figure 1, Rear Turret Bustle.

Now, I was beside myself in trying to learn the fine art of soldering since I still needed to build the two side bustle racks and to my knowledge there are none readily available in plastic (hello Eduard opportunity knocking here) . Figure 2 shows my attempt at soldering the side bustle. Be warned it's not pretty.



Figure 2 Turret Side Bustle Rack

I know it looks a little rough but if your going to show a vehicle with a little wear and tear this should fit in nicely. My eventual succes came once I got the right type of soldering Iron. I had one that was propane operated (not the big kind but the kind that fits in your hand) but the tip was just a little to big and the heat inconsistant. I then rand to Home Despot (Home Depot) and bought a smaller battery operated unit with a very fine tip. This and the use of a little bit of flux saw some serious progress being made. There are some additional supports that I still need to add to the bottom of the bustle racks ( they are (L) shaped metal supports). I simulated this by using evergreen L stock. Now for the bolts I thought I used evergreen hex rod but it was really Plastruct .030 and .040 hexrod. I haven't glued the mesh into the back of the bustle rack yet. It was left like that after I did my test fit. I also want to apologize for the picture quality.

The following images show the build todate. The stowage bin in the back is just sitting on its supports. I need to add the additional tie down loops that was 1 short of on the photoetch. By the looks of whats left on the photo etch, I should have enough remaining tiedowns to replace the one run that was missing (I mentioned this earlier in my blog). I'm hoping to do some additional cleane up on the hull and get my primer coat onto the vehicle hull this weekend. For those of you that don't know, the vehicles leave the factory in London Canada painted green (can't remember the FS color off the top of my head), but the primer is actually white.









Tanks
Andy

Andy,

Very nice update...keep it going.

Mouse House Enterprises do make resin side turret baskets for their ASLAV 25 conversion....I do believe they are the same as on the LAV III and Coyote.

With Trumpeter's LAV III and ASLAV 25.....hopefully eventually coming down and out of the pipe.....there should be some opportunites for plastic turret baskets.

Looking good Andy, it's taking shape nicely.
I've not worked on the turret yet, but the donated bustle basket looks to be the way to go.

Maybe a tip to help for your side racks : I often use electrical fuse wire, it's soft metal easy to bend, easy to glue with CA BUT the bad side it's fragile and must be handled very carefully.

HTH
Olivier

Thanks for the tip, I will give it a try.

Tanks
Andy

Hello All,
I know that I've been a little remiss in getting this blog updated. Since my last post I've essentially finished building the turret. My main struggle has been in getting the side bustle racks done. I finally gave up and decided to use a set made Mouse House. They will do in a pinch. They are rough and required lots of cleaning. I decided to use them for now so that I could get this build done on time. My plan is to replace them a little later. (ONCE I TEACH MY SELF THE FINER ART OF SOLDERING). My struggle with them was getting the lengths right.
Getting back into the swing of the build wasn't too hard. I poured over a few hundred pictures as well as the instruction to make sure I didn't miss any major parts. There is tons of photo etch left over with no clear instructions on where to put it. I know some of it is tiedown points and straps for you to use as you see fit. Once again the instructions fail to tell you to put some of these tiedown points on the bustles or turret, you only discover this by closely scrutinizing the instructions. Once I had the basic hull and turret built I hit them with some white primer. I then improved the look of the Non-Slip texture by using the fine cast-a-coat poweder. If you look closely at the images you will see that it dramatically improves what's there. As you can see, I've gotten the basic coat of paint onto the hull and will start on the hull tomorrow. I'm still out there looking for crew stowage.

Clicking on the first image below will take you to a slide show.



















Tanks
Andy

Look really good Congrats
Seb

Ok,
This is Day 17+, the painting was straight foreward. I was busily painting legends Stryker Stowage set to include in this build until disaster struck. I managed to spill a bottle of windex across the kit so I spent the past two days repainting and just now only managed to finish the basic kit... I've placed some of the stowage where I intend to tie it down, but I though that this would at least give everyone an idea of what I had in mind. So, for this campaign the build is done, I will spend the next week touching up the legends stowage and attaching it to the kit before I add it to a basic base. I would like to say that Real Models has a series of winners on their hands especially if you are into Light Armored Vehicles. Click on the image below to see the slideshow.



Tanks
Andy

Andy,

Good for you for finishing even with the Windex "incident".

The link to the slide show doesn't appear to be working.

Jason,
I updated the link and it seems to be working at the moment. I do however need to learn how to take better pictures.

Tanks
Andy

Wow, I'm really impressed, the weathering looks great too. How did you make the concertina wire?

Really Nice piece of work Andy
congrats
Seb

Very nice finish, only please make off photo without flash.
Miloslav

Miloslav,
I'm learning the tricks of the trade when it comes to taking photo's. The problem is that I need some sort of back lighting to get the images to turn out better. I will take some more images tomorrow and see if I can get them to turn out better.

Tanks
Andy

Andy
I make off photos with minimum sunshine but good light.
I try many base color and for green, sand and NATO camo better is pale blue base paper.
Miloslav

Good looking model there Andy, well done sir!!

cheers

Bob

Bob,
Thanks for the kind words. I will post one more photo showing all of the stowage items attached to the kit. I will then move on to the Wheels and Tracks campaign building the LAV III TUA.

Tanks
Andy