Piranha PWI-GR

[zenrat]

I got one of these for cheap because a couple of the punches were AWOL.  It's the mutts nuts.



https://www.hobbytools.com.au/disc-cutter-with-14-punch-set/

[Wardukw]

I got one of these for cheap because a couple of the punches were AWOL.  It's the mutts nuts.



https://www.hobbytools.com.au/disc-cutter-with-14-punch-set/

Mate that's sweet 😋...looking like a xmas gift to myself I'm a thinkin 🤔 😉

[Captain Canada]

Great work ! Always nice to watch and learn.

[PR19_Kit]

Do you get the matching hammer to bash the punches with?

[Jakko]

I got one of these for cheap because a couple of the punches were AWOL.  It's the mutts nuts.

I think I will go and see if I can get something like that on this side of the world, thanks for the tip. Ordering from Australia will probably not be the most efficient way to get one

[Jakko]

It's starting to look like something now:

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The tyres are on, but only temporarily to see what it looks like with them, but I did glue the wheels to the axles. I don't normally do it like that, but because the tyres can be put on and taken off easily anyway, I figure it will be easier this way after all. I did have to remove the moulded-on, hollow axle stubs from the backs of the wheels and drill them out to 3 mm so they fit over the Italeri axles.

The periscopes for the passengers are finished, I moved the lifting eyes (they're in different places on the LAV than on the Piranha I and II), added front turn signals from the Dragon MBT 70 kit, and also fitted more details like grab handles, hatch handles, the supports for the antennas, etc. The main things still left to do are to finish the hatches, finding something to use for the firing ports (or to make them from), add a cover over the exhaust, fit the actual antenna bases as well as smoke grenade launchers, and figure out something for the front and tail lights. I'll probably also add pioneer tools, but I think I'll have to look a bit more closely at the YP 408 first, to see what was carried on that, and how.

[Gondor]

That, is looking good 

[Rick Lowe]

That, is looking good 

Yup!

[Jakko]

Thanks

[Jakko]

For the headlights, I took a look at the Canadian Piranha, the AVGP. I had some lights left from a Hobby Boss Leopard 2, and scratchbuilt the mounting from some plastic card and punched discs:

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They're not 100% accurate, but they look good enough, if you ask me. Maybe I'll add more detail later, we'll see. The lights should actually "float" above the armour, but because I made the backing plate from 0.25 mm plastic card, I doubt they would survive for very long if I had replicated that, so I glued them to the armour instead.

On the back, I added the hinges for the hatches:

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I wanted to make the hinges from plastic strip at first, but eventually went for sawing a slot in a piece of 2 mm square rod, using a small hacksaw because the blade of those is much wider than of modelling saws. I then filed the top to be half-round and sawed off the finished hinge. After glueing them in place, all it took was adding a piece of rod between them and some strip cut at an angle for the part of the hinge attached to the hatch.

The filler cap is just some scrap of plastic that happened to be 3.5 mm diameter with a 3 mm disc on top, and some more strip etc. for the hinge and lock. The pieces of tube on the rear plate are for the lights, but those aren't in them yet.

[Rick Lowe]

It's very satisfying to turn some thick sheet into little gubbins like that - and often a lot cheaper, as well as being easier to glue.     

[Jakko]

My main problem with it is that always take ages to actually start building details like these even when I have a decent idea of how I want to do it. But then when I do start, I generally finish them in one go

Incidentally, I ordered a set with larger punches, to make the firing port covers. It's not as excessive as it may seem, because in recent years I've quite often found myself needing to make discs larger than my largest punch (3.9 mm) can handle, so now I decided to do something about it.

[Rick Lowe]

Impetus, like inspiration, is where you find it. 

[Jakko]

At the back, I added the typical antenna tuning box used by Dutch Army vehicle radios from the 1970s on:

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It still needs the antenna added on top, but I'll only add that after painting. The dimensions come from the parts in the AFV Club YPR kit, and I had actually made two, but one came out crooked so I decided to only put an antenna on this side instead of on both.

At the front, I completed the hull hatches:

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The commander's hatch is really just a copy of the Grizzly's hatch based on Trumpeter's instructions

[Jakko]

I've been using my new tool:

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6 mm discs of 0.25 mm plate for the covers over the firing ports, with a much smaller disc on it (made with my RP Tools set) for the hinge — on both sides and the rear. On the sides, their tops are about level with the bottoms of the vision blocks, and all are about 2 mm to the left of the blocks (when viewed). At the back, they are about 6 mm below the tops of the doors and 3 mm from its left edge. On real Piranhas, the hinges can be either at the bottom or at the right, and as you can see, I chose to put them at the bottom because that seems to be the older style.

The ventilator on the roof, between the hatches, was also made with my new tool: first a 4 mm disc of 0.75 mm card as a spacer, with a 6 mm disc of 1.5 mm card on top of that, of which I filed the edges at an angle to make a truncated cone. That I had to do that anyway was a stroke of luck, because I found that the 1.5 mm plate is too thick to punch well with this set — it's fine if you want a hole in a plate, but not if you want the disc, because its edges will be ragged. That is to say: the two sides were nicely 6 mm and round, but the thickness of the plate between them was ragged and smaller in diameter than the rest of the disc. Anyway, after filing and glueing it in place, I added four bits of 0.88 mm rod around it, because something like that is visible in Trumpeter's instructions, too.