My weekend work schedule didn’t go quite as expected. One of the casting projects took longer that I had hoped for, so I didn’t get to as much mold making as I had wanted to.

So let’s talk about what I did get to work on…

Since the casting project I was working had long spin times, I had some extra time for small projects while I was killing time (at some point you get ahead with cleaning and packing out when casting multi-part models). Well, I needed to assemble a few tanks (been on my list for a while, but they area pain to assemble (well, only if you don’t want them to fall apart if dropped). So, I popped down to the basement and grabbed my soldering iron and jar of soldering paste. After properly preparing the castings I set to the task of soldering the tracks to the hull (I was assembling some Bloodaxe T-34 tanks). Since this solder is in paste form, I spread it on like glue or paste. It set the pieces in place and then applied heat with the tip of my soldering iron. A quick pass down the visible seam was enough to hold the track in place. Next I flipped the model over and soldered the seams you can’t see (under the model). Here I was more aggressive with the application of heat. The results were very nice. All solder joints turned out to be nice and clean. I was even able to fill a few of the larger gaps with solder (no more sanding/filing than if I had used putty). These came out so well, that I thought I would give them the ultimate test…

I made one more tank and went upstairs, opened the window and dropped it (the tank, not the window) onto the patio. The result was that the tracks remained attached. The tank was a bit ‘mushed’ from the drop (as expected) but my solder joints held…

All in all, way better results than I could ever achieve or expect with glue.

Well, anyhow, that was my fun and exciting modeling task this weekend.