 Over the years we have seen new techniques with building and painting, some have created their own offshoots and sub-techniques and others have may have just faded away. Sometimes the new technique may be accompanied by a new product or a common household product but the idea generally is to make the modelers life easier and possibly cut down the time on certian areas of the build so the modeler can focus more on other areas of interest. One aftermarket product that has been around for quite a while now are Fruilmodelisimo metal tack link sets. Some people love them, others prefer the plastic options, but one area that I think we can all agree on is the time consuming pain they are to put together. I have seen many different rituals from modelers on how they put fruils together, and quite honestly I felt there was alot of time wasted with pre-dilling each link, then measuring and pre-cutting all the track pins. Then to have to glue each pin after all was done, talk about time consuming!!! I tried this for a few sets of Fruils and decided there had to be a easier and less time consuming method. I was never fond of the wire that comes in the track sets as it is too flimsy, so I would use brass wire. The problem is that for a bag of 6 pieces of .022 brass wire is 4.00 dollars and what I started to develope as a assembly line technique wouldn't really speed things up at all unless I upped the quantity of wire. Around this time I sourced some wire that had a very unique configuration so I tried it on the track and was pleasently surprised as it did exactly what I needed it to do. The method I came up with is explained in the captions and based on the quantity of wire sold in the Track Wire pack. I can finish two runs for most tank models based on roughly 72 to 92 links per side in about a hours time. There is enough Track Wire to complete 3 to 4 wide track tanks(merkava,chally,tiger1/2) and 4 to 5 smaller tracks(panzer 3/4,38t ect.). Best thing is due to the unique shape of the Track Wire no pre-drilling or glueing is necessary and this is what aids in cutting down the pain factor of putting tracks together. I have assembled 17 sets of Friuls with this wire and technique and have not once used glue so my tracks have a free sag and drape perfectly with no tight spots. The confirmation of the Track Wire and the SD method was when I had fellow cohort and Armour Model Master Chris Jerrett over to my crib and heard his horror stories of Fruil assembly so I pulled out a run I was doing for a Cent. AVRE and quickly showed him how I rocked it out. I gave him a pack of Track Wire and when he called me later in the week he told me that he had rocked out 4 sets of tracks for upcoming projects. No more screaming expletives and spending up to 3 hours per set. The dreaded task of assembling track runs is now just roughly about a hours worth of work, and as I said at the before this leaves much more time to enjoy other facets of building or painting. Who can't love that? I have also used the wire for grab handles, superglue applicator, and brakeline/hardlines. You can assemble your tracks however you like and try the wire, or try the SD method and your own wire, but combine the SD method and Track Wire and I hope you will see what I mean. Not bad for a truck dude to make track dudes life alittle easier!
Step by Step guide to assembling Friulmodel tracks with Track Wire coming soon!
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