Canadian LAV III Afghanistan - Update February 14, 2014

Photo Etch - daunting yes, working OK so far? Yeah, but let's not jinx it!

If I thought there was going to be one huge challenge to this build, it would be the turret baskets. I have no idea how to go about it, the conversion kit did not have any instructions, but I did see a lot of reference photos of other builds and Prime Portal has an excellent Walk Around.

I figured I would try to tackle it now, instead of get further down the road and abandon it after I put a lot of work into it.

So looking at finished products, I worked backwards. I started with the rear basket, it looked the easiest, relatively speaking. After a lot of tweaking, cutting, filing, bending (Thanks to the Etch Mate!), ripping apart and rebuilding (CA Glue and Photo Etch CAN be unbuilt without too much damage).

All I had was no reference to what should be some photo etch (200 pieces on 5 sprues) for the frame supports and mesh sides and bottoms, and some lengths of 1 mm brass wire. And a resin template for the wire bends. So looking at the pictures, and looking and dry fitting a hundred times, and 4 hours, I got the rear basket completed and attached. Not perfect, but looks good to me. I have lots of accessories to fill that basket.

Today was a vacation day, so with me feeling pretty good about myself and the new rear basket, I attempted the side baskets. Using the same methodology and building both at the same time, again, I amazed myself and did what I thought was an acceptable job. Again, lots of things to put in those baskets to cover up any glaring flubs.

Taking a break... If you are keeping track, I never glued my fingers together yet.

Here are some progress pics.
Yes, some tie downs from the other night...  SMALL...patience! Those squares on the cutting mat are 1/2 inch (12 cm).

Foreground left, Resin template for basket tube frames.. Thanks Miroslav!

I set up the top rail first with the photo etch supports as a guide. The rest had to fit that to remain square. The bottom of the basket has Photo etch mesh as the floor and lower sides so the rations and water didn't fall out. Spare photo etch sprue frames acted as basket supports and mesh reinforcement. Its on the real thing!

There!

Side basket construction.

More of the same but doubles. This is a redo, had to take the frame supports off, one of the rails stuck out too far.. didn.t dry fit enough :(

Et Voila!

Another Angle .. Basket Weaver!!!!!!!!!!!

Canadian LAV III Afghanistan - Update February 10, 2014

I have been carefully preparing this for build, my most ambitious to date. As I mentioned, I did about 2 weeks of research and was, and still am, sure of what I want to do.

I started working on the resin pieces getting rid of the mold blocks and sanding where required. I wanted to get that out of the way first off so I could go right to dry fitting. All while wearing my trusty respirator. (Resin baaaad!))

The first fit I went after was the rear bulkhead, which was a donor kit piece which glues to the rear of the vehicle. The top half of the hull is resin, the bottom half of the hulk is plastic. So the bulkhead mates the two on the rear.

The fit is not exact. The AFV rear bulkhead needs to be trimmed on the top edges to match the contour of the top of the LAV hull, which is not the same as a Stryker. The Stryker is squared edges, the LAV has bevelled edges. The resin hull sides do not go back far enough, so I had to use some Evergreen 40 thou by 10 thou strips to extend the upper sides, which you can see in white, with white Squadron putty filling the seams. This took a few days of careful dry fitting and trimming.

I am using Testors tube cement and liquid cement on the styrene to styrene fits, and using thick CA glue for the resin to plastic fits (and everything else as well, like metal photo etch to resin or plastic).

The next big step was to articulate the front wheels to pose it as if making a turn. The undercarriage for the AFV kit is fixed forward, but I wanted a turned look for this one. Both front wheels turn so I have to do the same operation twice. The wheels mounts are posts set into the roof of the wheel well. The swing arms hold the posts to the chassis, and the posts can turn until they are glued. The challenging part was to cut the steering linkage apart to make it articulate like the real one. I used a razor saw for this. I carefully cut off the pitman arms from the tie rods and center link. I then used a small drill to drill out the ends of each. I glued Evergreen rod in to the pitman arm holes and let it dry. I dry fitted the tie rods and pitman arms to the model, and put the center link in place. I did the rear first, in an understated turn, then did the same for the front, using a slightly increased turn, just like the real thing. When everything looked right I glued everything in pace, all the ends of the tie rods to the pitman arms and wheel posts, and the center links to the pitman arms. While the glue was setting, I posed the wheel posts exactly where I wanted, then I glued the swing arms to the posts with liquid glue. All of this set over night.

The next day I dry fitted wheels to the wheel posts to check to make sure it was right. I think it looks OK.

After that it was some plastic handles, and other parts from the donor kit. The instructions are very busy and it took a lot of focus to see which little parts were needed and what were resin. I will go over it again to see if there are any parts missing but I have the rest of them in a bin and will put them on before painting. It takes a while to remove sprue marks and mold seams. Very tiny parts, AFV is getting like Dragon in the detail. I will be doing a lot on handling as I put on the photo-etch, so I will be leaving those parts off for now, and there is a lot of photo-etch!

So the next step was to start laying in some photo-etch. I am sure that photo-etch gives most modellers the creeps every now and then, and if the pieces are large enough to work with that is fine. There are some VERY small pieces in this set. I cringe when I think of the little attachments for tie down straps. I have to put the maximum magnification on my goggles. Try doing this with Super Glue and not sticking your fingers together! Keep the debonder close by!

So this is pretty much where I am now, the front drivers hatch is on, with a nifty black plastic/rubber cover over the rear so garbage, water and hot casings don't drop on the drivers neck as he opens his hatch. A start tot he photo-etch pieces but will let is sit for a day or so to dry and bond completely.

Stay tuned.