I have big fingers. Not surprising given my nickname is BigLee but still, it has to be mentioned. I don't think my hands are fat (it's all in a tire around my waist) but I'd never describe myself as 'dexterous'. So when it comes to the fiddly bits of model construction I guess I'm at a disadvantage, and boy have I met my nemesis recently.
I'm working on the Panzer IV platoon I mentioned last week and I still haven't reached the stage of priming the models. There's a significant amount of construction in these models so its taking a long time to prep them. Each Tank has a separate coaxial gun turret, driver/hatch cover, tracks, mud guards and (the bit I'm struggling with now) the Schürzen plates. 
The Flames of War website has a whole article about attaching the plastic schurzen plates to the model. It's very detailed and quite useful... but doesn't mention anything about handling the tini-tiny parts with great big stubby fingers. I sat down last night intending on attaching the rails & plates to all five models but managed to get just one completed. Very frustrating.
Those Schurtzen were not only a pain to assemble, but I find that they don't have enough support in the lower half - I'm always snapping them when I pick my tanks up!
ReplyDeleteI think I'm going to reinforce the plates on my next platoon somehow...
I found this problem as well. While the original configuration may look historically accurate there needs to be some concession to durability. In the end I removed the rails and glued the Schurtzen directly to the tracks. The other alternative would have been to construct some sort of support for the bottom of the plates.
ReplyDeleteyeah, I think a small piece of plasticard pipe should do the trick. The only challenge will be if I want to have some "missing plates" to represent battle damage.
ReplyDeleteCan probably get around that by adding 2 pipes on either side of the resulting gap, and taking care to tuck them back far enough not to be seen.