Irrational Number Line Games, LLC
Japanese eXofauna Self Defense Force
I have a ton of 15mm US Special Forces figures (No figure count on the website
so I over ordered. No big, I thought it was a reasonable price for the number of figure I thought I was getting, so I ended up with an extra, free, project.) and some kaiju. Two great things that go great together.
I also have some extra cheap tanks. They're too small for 28mm, and as you
can see, they're a bit too big for 15mm.
However, with a bit of tread reduction, I think we can make them work. At
arm's length, you'd never notice this. Even fairly close up, I think it will
still just look like the tread's sunk in the ground a bit.
Also, you can't fight kaijy with just regular tanks. Since these come with
removable turrets, I will make some turrets of my own. I start with green
stuffing a piece of 22 gauge copper wire on the bottom of a bottle cap. The
wire is just the right size to serve as a peg into the turret hole on the
tanks. And the bottle cap is just the right size to be a turret base.
I'm thinking missile launcher for the turret. Every box launcher starts with
a box. In this case, I am going to use a five-sided box (no bottom), built
from this channel.
Yes, I have sacrificed my house flipping opportunity to make this template.
It is a template. The ticket is too thin to make a for-use launcher, but
just maliable enough to work with when designing the final product.
The first bit is to make a diagonal notch in the side. This is how the box
will rest on the cap, at a slight angle.
I test fit the angle to make sure it isn't too low (no visual effect) or too
high (dorky looking). Seems I guessed about right.
Now, I just draw a box template around the notch.
If you noticed that I have a straightedge and used the side of a thin piece
of paper to draw the lines, well I just noticed that I did that when I was editing the pics.
So I have the five-sided box design. For some reason, I accidentally cut
the upper left corner out. I knew that was wrong right as I did it.
Because I need those corners to be fold under tabs to hold the box together.
It's OK. This is just the template. I didn't wase good construction material.
One last test fit to check size and positioning of the box before I start
working with the more rigid material.
Here I have repeated the pattern four times on some thick card stock. The
measuring and fitting and futzing would have been too fiddly to do with this
material. I will use a ball point to score the folds.
And here is the box on the cap. I added four paper dots you get from the
reservoir of a three hole punch. They were just the right size for this
project.
That wasn't really planned. But I've done this quite a bit, so I tend to
have a feel for the size of things I need to make them work with other bits
I have lying around. You should probably use those dots in the sizing process
for the template.
There are certainly many other times where I got to this point and thought,
Aw, man, if I had just made that a couple mm larger, this bit would fit in
just perfectly.
And, of course, the JXSDF would not have a job without this guy hanging
around! I think the size and style of the tank works well with this set
up.
Since the turrets aren't glued on (I did glue the treads in place), I have
the option to fit out two different kits on one tank body. That could come
in handy to have two different types of armour support.
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