This brings us to the point where I, a 35 year old father of 2, am building a ~1/12 scale Panther tank out of K’nex.
Last week, Cal asked to build “A TANK”. I asked if he wanted to make a Tiger or Sherman M4E8, but he didn’t really have the background in WWII armored vehicles to make the call.
I called in my friend, a WWII reenactor and fellow jaded imperial stormtrooper veteran. He gave us the waffenamt of the Wehrmacht.
We spent about a day making it, and it’s a regognizable piece of Krupp polyoxymethylene. I posted a photo, and figured we’d scrap it and make something else soon after.
I’ve been having rough sleep for the past week, less than an hour a night no matter what I try. While I’ve been up, I started a new project. A few print-outs of tanks, and I’m putting together a rough hull design for a bigger vehicle. I’ll post up more about the design and building later, it’s still very much a work in progress.
I am trying to be faithful to the real tank when it’s fun or interesting. It has a torsion bar suspension, overlapped road wheels, a turret basket with stabilized gearing, an elevation-limited adjustable main gun, and a lot of dark-colored pieces to intimidate the Reds. But it also has fabulous rainbow tracks, courtesy of Magic Tracks.
