A New Vehicle to go with the Monotreads

Inspiration

Some of you may have seen my Monotreads, and know that I make them from tape hubs.  I still have a lot of the hubs, so I have to make more vehicles.

Materials

For this project, I will be using the widest of my tape hubs, which is two inches in width.  I am also using the same treads from a Tamiya 1/35th scale SGT York, some sheet plastic, the side sponsons from a Games Workshop Leman Russ tank and some bits from my bits boxes.

The Vehicle

Here are two tape hubs, only one of which I will be using for this project, but I wanted to show the diameter and width of this particular hub.  Also shown is the tread from the Tamiya 1/35th scale SGT York.








This is a picture of the hub after I have prepared the treads and glued them on.  Notice that I have only put the tracks halfway around the hub, and that there is a gap between the two treads.  Obviously, this is not going to be a monotread.  A note about the placement of the treads: the treads extend beyond the edge of the hub a little, or, in other words, the treads are not flush with the edge of the hub.  I will be adding a superstructure over the hub, so only half of the hub needs to have the treads since the other half will not be seen.

This picture shows the placement of the tread on the plastic hub.  You can glue it on flush, but I prefer having the tread extend beyond the edge of the hub.












The Blade

 I had to make a larger blade for this project and I wanted to make it look similar to the blade on the monotruck.  I thought about it for almost a week, looking at various materials that gave me a curve at the bottom, and eventually decided on using the lower wing assembly from the Osprey.  If you follow my projects, you will know that I have already used part of the fuselage from the Osprey to make a cab for a Mech.  If you look closely at the comlete lower wing, you can see some blue lines which are the cuts I made to create the blade.  Below the complete wing are the parts that remained after I made the four cuts to make the blade.

The teeth in the front and the parts of the blade that did not come from the wing were made with scrap plastic sheet and plastic rods.

I am fairly pleased with how the blade turned out, but it took about three days of my spare time to create.  I wish that I could have done it quicker, but because so many components were made from plastic sheet and rod, cutting and shaping was time consuming.

The Hub, Sides, and Blade

Here are the hub with tracks, the two sides (you can see the two sponsons, and the blade.  I still have to fabricate the front, top, back, and the turret.









The Front, Top, and Rear Pieces

At this point, I have glued on the two side pieces to the vehicle, and made the parts that will connect the two sides.  I cut these pieces from scrap plastic except for the piece on the left - I cut it from a 1/35th scale Tamiya vehicle of some sort.  The tube you can see attached to the piece on the right is for crew to exit the vehicle.

Here is the assembled tank so far.  I still need to add a driver's cab and a turret.  Then I will do some weathering so that it doesn't like a box on a tape spool.  This is the front view.

Here is the side view of the same vehicle.














The Somewhat Finished Tank

This is the right side view of the tank.  I haven't done any weathering on the tank yet, so it isn't really finished...but almost.

This is the front view of the tank.  I had done the damage and some weathering on the blade when I painted it, but the tank has been a real problem.  I just used two GW sponsons with heavy bolters for the sides and the turret is made from a part off of a 1/35th scale Tamiya SGT York.  The two barrels are GW autocannons.






This is the left side view of the tank.  The small tube at the bottom right is an escape hatch for the crew.