Scratch Built & Conversions

Along the lines of, common disposable materials, in @PzAufkl 's style

BIC pen tube was a perfect size for the muffler in 1/24

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Any info as to the “specialist equipment”?

I see a grounding post and some telephone cable reels.

Also appears they used all that extra open space for equipment storage rather than extra seating.

I have been trying to find out for years…

On the theme re-purposing, SWMBO sacrificed one of her disused purses to the god of Authenticity during my conversion of ICM’s Merc 320 sedan to Heydrich’s “assassination” 320 Convertible B. You could call it re-purseposing…

The seats looked way too ordinary for a limo…

Don’t ever try thinning pieces of leather without the proper tools…whatever they are, I didn’t have them. Several years later, I was ready to soak the thinned leather strips and bind each piece with fishing line using hi-tech garotting methods until dry…

Happy New Year to all :clinking_glasses: (yes I fixed the wonky window)

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Tim, That is very nice ‘Corinthian Leather.’ Ricardo would be very happy.

Now do the right thing and treat SWMBO to a shopping-spree at the GUCCI store. … Or, you can surprise her with one of these cheap knock-offs made from only the finest, most supple Balsa Wood, Evergreen Styrene and Tamiya Tape. :shopping:

—mike :upside_down_face:

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Some more reference on the Fernsprechkraftwagen (Kfz. 23):

http://www.kfzderwehrmacht.de/Homepage_english/Motor_Vehicles/Germany/Einheits-Fahrgestelle/s__Einheits-Pkw/Kfz__23_Fspr__Kw_/kfz__23_fspr__kw_.html


and

https://ipmsdeutschland.de/archiv/Militaer/Schirmer/Kfz_23.html


Anyone care to guess what might be carried in that long central box that would be telephone related??? There is a single hatch/door in the rear of the body to access this area.

MGM80-317

Kfz23_09

s_E-Pkw_Kfz_23-_Hoppe

Horch-108-Kfz23ADJ
Access door in rear of vehicle.

These photos immediately above were found online and are used here for discussion and research purposes ONLY.

A minor detail that just barely qualifies as either scratch work or a conversion:

Must we ALWAYS pose these field cars with ALL their spare tires? If they didn’t have flats once in a while there would be no need for them to carry spares!

c3c74aabf610cee06fad6aef2a4256a3501b6957CROP

HorchSpareTireMount
The spare tire mount would only require 3 mounting bolts/studs as the spare only occasionally carried the weight of the car when going over high obstacles. The spare tire mount was also a rotating bearing so the spare could “roll” over those same high obstacles.

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II believe the cable cart was stored inside a compartment where the rear door was. This is what it looks like:
image
image
image

In the model above, they have added the wheels for the cart to the rear. They are a tad oversized.

I guess the long box would hold the 2 long Drahtgabel (Cable Fork) sections (the rods in the cable cart pic), and maybe the smaller 3 part ones for light field cable guys. These were long poles with a fitting on the end designed to lift and position cables on poles, in trees, etc:


https://www.der-fernmelder.de/feldkabelbau/drahtgabeln/

…as well as a lot of equipment like climbing harness, spike boots (for climbing poles and trees), backpacks including the folding reel backpacks, testing equipment, phones, etc, etc.

Then there are the heavy connectors for cables, etc, like this guy is holding:

I just do not know how the box was accessed (a long top door, or side doors like that model seems to have next to the central seat, or hatches on top, etc. I’d guess there may be drawers behind those side doors, and boxed spares, etc.

This site may interest you:
https://www.der-fernmelder.de/zubehoer-nachrichtentechnik/rueckentrage/
The site is in German, but Google translates well enough.

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GREAT WEBSITE!

Tons of information on German technik equipment of the era.

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FYI ~ Reposting a photo shown earlier:

The long central compartment was accessed through a door in the center rear of the extended body Horch.
I think that rear door is too small to accept the entire cable cart, though the bicycle wheels were removable and could be hung on the outside rear of the vehicle. You can just make out the two curved support shelves for the bicycle wheels on either side of the green rectangle below. (Marked here in red.)

98dd51fe99922e5f28a0GreenRed

It is reasonable to think the Drahtgable (Hot sticks in modern electrical parlance = insulated cable manipulators) where kept here. Depending on their length, they broke down into either two or thee separate section pieces. Given the various sharp ended tools seen here it might have been best to travel with then in an enclosed cupboard.

Makes me think of frog gigging. Would not want to meet the business end of one of those sticks in an auto accident, explosion or rollover!

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Post deleted by author

HTH.

The T handle is removable and the cart frames fold down. Take out the reels and it packs down quite small. Look at the pic with the guy pushing the cart, then look at the joints in the cart pic.

I switched web browsers and still nothing shows on my end.

Happy New Year, everybody!
Another object for recycling everyday materials into model parts are small ball pens:


Their threaded joints can be made into very realistic “interrupted screw breeches” of artillery pieces. AFV Club’s M40, for example, offers a breech screw, but no threads inside the breech. Dissecting the “nut” part of the ball pen into narrow strips and sanding them to different thicknesses will solve this problem:


Treating the screw part correspondingly also allows building a complete interrupted screw breech, e.g. for Italeri’s M107.
Peter

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Amazing job on that breech.
I am truly impressed by the amount
of work put into this masterpiece.
I am too lazy, I just glue the breech shut :innocent:

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Yes, Kudos on the gun breech!
Extremely nice work!

Great thinking as to repourposing those threaded pen parts!

The complete build report (which includes my solution for the correct diameter of the breech) is here:
http://panzer-modell.de/berichte/m40/m40e.php

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Just as kosprueone was saying, sometimes you are faced with fabricating a missing or broken part, or simply a detail part you wish twas present in your model.

The local hobbyshop had a G Scale reefer that was in perfectly sellable condition except that it was missing its underbody airbrake cylinder. I volunteer there sometimes and they asked me to see what I could do. (The weathering came sometime later.)

Reference photo found online:

Fabricated part using Evergreen tubing of various telescoping sizes and some plastic rod:

Installed:

Finished & weathered railcar:

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Wow, that airbrake that you fabricated looks great. You have a lathe? It looks turned