Tank Combat: Back To Building

Its been a while but I'm finally back working on the StuG!

Box of parts I picked up from the laser cutter! The majority of the parts are 2mm mild steel, the airvent cover plate and the splash guards on either side of the gun mantle are 5mm mild steel and the rear of the gun mantle itself is 8mm plate steel! heavy little sucker

For the welding I'm using a WIA 175 gasless mig (courtesy of SignStyle). I run it on a medium setting 80 or so amps with a .9 flux core wire. At 80amps you don't have time to dose off as you'll burn through, I find it easiest to make very fast small welds, 10-15mm long at a time.

The is the superstructure tacked together. You have to be very careful to tack everything perfectly square, if your out of square its a simple matter of breaking the tack and re aligning.

A spare piece of 1.6mm steel sheet comes in very handy as a work bench, you can earth the sheet and anything you place on it can be welded without the need to ground each part. It also allows you to use magnets to hold things in position, as well as allowing you to tack the parts to the bench to hold them in place. Time saver all round.

Here is the rear engine deck, the hatches sit on a small lip that runs the perimeter of each hole.

Hatches in place to check the fit (perfect)

The inside of the superstructure after final welding. There is no need to seem weld the entire part, a few small stitches is more then enough to hold it together. It also generates less heat so the parts don't warp.

Exterior shot. All the welds are done on inside so the outside is perfectly flat and smooth, no grinding required. A small amount of filler will be added to all the seems then sanded flush before painting.