Day Twenty-one

I'm getting there.

Model - check. Glue - check. Forceps - check.

I went through hell to make these hooks. Now I enter a new hell - gluing them on.  I lose all but six of my precious hooks in the first round of gluing. The glue evaporates while I am conveying the parts to the model in the forceps. Or, there is too much glue and the vapor attacks the hooks so that they open up and go all soft. I was close to tears yesterday. I accept counsel to the effect that I should not give up LOL. I make more hooks and have another go. I learn. I learn that one must use a glue that has intermediate viscosity - my Mr Hobby Mr Cement is slightly viscous, in between old-style glue and modern liquid - to glue one foot at a time. Not both at once. Once the hook is attached by one foot with Mr Hobby, the other foot can be glued with my normal cement (Tamiya Extra Thin Cement). 

To attach tiny little hooks made from sprue: do them one foot at a time.

These hooks are not quite a disaster but close to. I know they are a little big, and a little thick, not square and not consistent, a bare pass, but by now I have reached a special state of acceptance. By the time I come to glue the last ones on the front I'm almost on top of the process but next time I'm going to have to spend more time making those hooks. Live and learn. Into every model a little rain must fall.

A few more pieces go on then it's time to set up for painting! So I set up a *spray booth* i.e. a cardboard box.

I try out my brand new Aztek A470 airbrush (with just thinners). The fucking thing doesn't work, at all. Yes, I followed the instructions. I think here is probably a good place to mention that the special Aztek connector I bought to use this expensive professional tool with canned propellant also does not work. It is not airtight. The hose screws into a metal ferrule which is fitted to the plastic body of the valve with just splines so it pops out when I try to tighten the connection by hand. Unbelievable. Along the way I've been happy to mention all sorts of good products that I use. Aztek, you need not apply for sponsorship of my blog; I just became an Iwata man.

So I pull out my old trusty, a basic model Revell/Badger airbrush that thirty years ago cost $15 and now costs about $40 and which has served me well for all that time. These basic airbrush kits are actually pretty good value although you cannot do anything fancy with them, only basic coverage. The poor old thing works briefly then packs it in. I'll soak it in thinners overnight; maybe it's just blocked.

But this is a delay, not a setback. Stay calm Nath. While I am waiting for the universe to send a new airbrush down my chute I suppose I can work on the accessories, damnit.

Day Twenty

So this is how they look after a few hours. I am not correcting them, just letting them sit. I will square each one up just before I glue it.

Nearly all attempts are failures like these. The first bend is assured but the three after that are challenges.






































I go shopping. I buy the very fine rod with the hooks in mind and whilst the material is softer than the copper rod it's still too hard to direct with the forceps, with which I can only deliver so much force. I buy the micro tube as an option for the antenna-securing tubes.

Every once in a while I make an OK hook.






































I have ten 'candidate' hooks. I intend to make as many as I have to to have twenty that are each one better than the last. It doesn't bother me that they have opened up. Every once in a while I stop what I am doing and make a hook or two. I expect to have my twenty by the end of the weekend.

Day Nineteen

I was not in the ball park, hook-wise. I was in many ways deluded and misguided. I made a proper review. Firstly I got a proper working surface. The back of my mirror, neutral grey, is matte. It is not variegated, pitted, and soft like my cutting mat. The mirror is hard and flat. Why did I persist for not hours but days with a totally inadequate tool?

Much better.



























Have I ever shown you my tweezers collection?

I use these two exclusively; they were very expensive but they were presents. The points meet properly, they are sharp and precise.



















I do some testing. This was bent perfectly to ninety degrees and then left overnight. Look at how much it's given, must be at least five degrees.

I think properly about what I am doing, in detached fashion. Sometimes it can take me quite a while to get to this point. I see that I am holding the part with the forceps any old how. I realise that I must hold the part in such a way that when I make a bend, existing bends are not stressed by the operation. So, for example, when I put the next bend in this part above, to make a U shape, I must hold the part on the inside, the top of the U, so the stress of bending is stemmed by the tweezers and not communicated to the bends I have already made. I work out the best order in which to do the bends, and for each one the best side to come from. I even determine that, what with the sections of sprue all having their inherent slight curve, I should bend against that curve to 'pre-compensate' for the material's springiness, rather than aiding and abetting it such that my hooks' straight sections come out extra-bowed. Finally I somehow see that my material is not fine enough; I go down a few notches diameter-wise.

I start producing much better hooks. This one, whilst not perfect, is actually good - the first really good hook - and I would be happy to have another nineteen just the same. This is good enough to be my standard reference hook. There has to be such a thing, a reference.



























I will leave this hook for a few hours then we'll take a photo, that will show how much it has opened up.

But still I have qualms, reason to question. This one scaled up is about 35mm long. From all my photos I am guessing they were no more than 30mm. I do not consider inches; I must only think metric. It would be a mistake to look at the photo and think 'that looks like it's probably around an inch'. It was conceived in millimeters and the last thing I want is my hooks scaling up to exactly an inch long. I refer with great care to the brass parts but then dismiss this activity as misleading. I have photographs of those hooks, of the vehicle itself. I look through my book carefully and make what is known of reality my reference. Duh.

I want the next size down, meaning a thinner diameter.

That said, I do just make the comparison. Eduard and I seem to be nearing some accord. The Eduard hooks are based, I am sure, on the rows along the top of the hull side that we know were basic and standard, common to and present on all versions of the vehicle, early through late. What I have made is in between the putative 'standard' that Eduard chose and some of the photos I have which show a 'squarer' shape, the hooks' legs not so short.

The Eduard hooks are over 35mm; I have already established that this is too long, at least I think I have. Hooks almost always are shorter than they are tall, as a matter of function. These Eduard hooks are stylised, are approximations; is that what's happening here?

Day Eighteen

I have given up on the wire; it's too difficult to work with at this scale. I cannot deliver enough force or precision and with my best effort the hooks' sections are all bowed. It's a shame because the copper wire gives me the constant diameter I want.

So I fall back on old trusty. It's virtually impossible to stretch sprue so that its diameter is constant but I get little sections that are quite good enough to fool the naked eye. Each hook is only a few millimeters long straight, and over such a short distance one really cannot detect the minscule tapering.

Before I start bending, knowing that only about one in ten attempts will succeed, I have to make up a decent pile of stock. I stretch sprue for an hour or so, cut out the good sections, and grade them for thickness. The nearest pile is *about right*, then there is *too thin*, and *too thick* there at the back.

Getting there. Starting to feel optimistic. I need about twenty of these.

Good luck to me. As you can see, still only one of these hooks is any good.












I have discovered the best way to bend these by hand though. I put my steel ruler down on the cutting mat such that I can with forceps bend the little sections up against its edge. This works better as I am providing myself with reference surfaces such that the bends won't also be twists. Easier working in 2D than 3D, if that makes any sense.











Note that the finished hooks, in addition to being wildly inaccurate, are opening up; I have not used enough force to pass the material's yield point to the right degree. All the bends need to be just a little acute, something like 87 degrees, as the material will want to return to its original form - to straighten out - and we have to compensate for that.

If I want these twenty or so tiny hooks I am going to have to make a hundred or more. Practice makes perfect, yep. This blog is going to be very dull for the next few days - sorry!


So I've been at it all afternoon and my hook-making skills are improving. I'll put it down for today, and hopefully in the morning my hands will have learned something. It's like anything; if I want to get good at this I'm going to have to practise, practise, practise and there isn't any other way. I know I will, eventually, have twenty of these that are good enough. I intend to win this one; it's just going to take time.

Sticking them on should be comparatively easy. For the ones along the hull sides I plan to use a bit of masking tape with little marks measured on it as a guide. Cross that bridge when we come to it, I guess. I'm feeling quite positive all in all. Once I get these hooks on, and a few other little bits and pieces, I'm ready to start painting.

Day Seventeen

Tubey things, it is time.

Good old stretched sprue. Is there anything stretched sprue cannot do? I make myself as many 'blanks' as I can; I'm going to have to make a fair number and take the best two.










Before I even think about drilling I try to square up the sections by dragging them over an old file. Actually, I held it up the other way so I could see what I was doing. The object here is to square up the ends as well as possible, so I can see where to put the point to make the start of the hole, and so the point doesn't want to slip off to one side or other, as it will if the cut is at an angle.

The hardest part of the operation is putting a tiny starter hole dead centre. You can use a needle or something like but I was given a whole lot of these probe/point things by a science lab.

Holding them in a pin-vice seems to help a little. This is a first attempt. It's a little rough but that's okay. To get the slightly flared lip that we see in the photographs hmmm. I can bully it a little with the next drill size up, but it's likely the wall will split. What I might do is dip the ends very carefully in model cement - I have one glue which is of an in-between consistency, not too thick, not too watery. The glue will dissolve away any roughness and hopefully form a lip. Maybe I could use Aquadhere to get this effect. Maybe it won't work at all and I'll have to content myself with just the best drilling job I can do. We shall see.

Day Seventeen is a long day. I've used too big a drill bit here.

















More stretching and cutting. The one at the top is a pass. Failures on the right, blanks on the left. If I can get two that are neat and clean I don't know if I'll push it with those fancy ideas I was talking about above.

I abandon the fancy ideas. I'm just glad I finally got two that are good enough.












And on they go.















Hook time. As mentioned earlier this vehicle had, in addition to the handhold-type hooks, many smaller hooks for general attachment. From this picture we can conjecture that steel rod was just cut and bent up and welded on, and that quality control was not an issue. You can see they are crude, not even the same size. Still that does not give me much licence as if I don't get them all pretty regular it will just look like sloppiness on my part. So I have to be better than even the workers in the factory.

Behind the gun mount we see the second type of hook, more of a loop.

Eduard's brass set attempts both but I can't really use either of them, because they are flat. They would of course look terrific if one did not know what the real thing looks like. At least the loop-type hook will be easy to make; I can just wind wire around something of the right diameter to make these. Still thinking how to make the littlies though. 

From the photos I have, there was no small variation in hook shape and placement. There are very few genuine Hetzers around and most in museums are actually post-war G13's that have been 'retro-fitted' to be as close as possible to the WWII machine. I am certain about some of the hooks' shape and place but not all. I'll just do my best from the photos and not fuss too much.

I have made some messes along the way, highly visible ones. The things I did well will have to serve as distractions from the things I did badly. There is not a lot I can do to save that machine gun mount; hopefully people will be looking at the muffler, which is bloody good if I do say so myself.

I can pile on accessories, miscellaneous stowage, to hide a few other problems like the front trackguard not meeting the hull properly. But these hooks are an essential detail; they are very, very important. If I get these right then all my other slip-ups will be somewhat redeemed.

I am in hook HELL.