Side Sponson for the Trench on Treads

The Side Sponsons

Inspiration

While making the side sponsons for the Trench on Treads, I realized that they would require a separate post from the vehicle itself because they require a little clarification.

Materials

To make the side sponsons, I used the skirts from a Tamiya 1/35th scale Bradley AFV, a hexagonal plastic piece that I acquired somewhere, and some plastic sheet.  I first had to cut the hexagonal plastic piece in half in order to give me the two sponsons.  I then had to shorten each half by about a quarter of an inch to give me the height I wanted.  I have drawn blue lines on the skirts where I made the cuts to glue to the hexagonal piece.  I then cut other rounded parts of the shorter piece to give me a rounded effect on the entire sponson.  I had to make the roof of the sponson thicker, so I glued additional plastic to the backside of the skirt.  In the end, the hexagonal piece ended up being the lower part of the sponson and the outer skirt ended up being the top of the sponson.

The Sponsons

This is the front view of the sponson.  You can see that I have taken the sections that I have outlined in blue from the photo above and glued them to the sides of the plastic hexagonal piece.  I decided to leave the two foot rails in place to give it a more interesting look.  I also cut slots for machine guns which I have not made yet, but I do have them designed already.

This is an upper right side view of the sponson.  You can see on of the hinges still on the roof, which I will have to remove later. The thick black area at the bottom of the roof is the sheet plastic I used to thicken it.








This is an upper left side view of the sponson.