Rubber band Tracks

Grrr :-)

A lot of our modern kits still have 'em and they can be a battle to get painted and fixed. Here's how I tackle the pesky things.

They divide rather neatly into two groups:

- Glueable with modelling glues

- Resistant to all forms of fixing...

There are other kinds of rubberband tracks of course - AFV Club for example make replacement rubberband type tracks that are intended to replace the kit rubbers. In general they are intended to produce a type of track pattern not usually found in commercial kits, or that you'd want for a conversion.

They do fall into the replacement track category as they are additional to the original kit box and are often much more detailed than the older type of rubberbands in the kit boxes. They often incorporate a better end connection method - they are certainly faster to build than individual track links... :-)

I've only seen their Sherman rubber block tracks so far - these are nice and are worth investigating whether or not you intend replacing the kit tracks - they just might convince you to investigate further...

Kit supplied rubberband tracks also divide - but not so neatly - into two main sizes.

In the first group I put 1/35 and 1/24th (though I don't think that rubberbands are still available for the bigger kits...)

In the second group I put all smaller kits like the 1/72nd kits. I also include 1/48th here as a lot of the scale problems are present in both these smaller scales.

Here's my victim:

Italeri/Zvezda's generic rubber band tracks for the T-34 models they produce. These are now produced in two pieces per side which makes it very difficult to actually hide the seams. Plus which of course the tracks are a little on the tight side - and don't we all glue that adjustable front idler before we fit the tracks. Well I do anyway.