ARM: Review - AFV Club 1/35 scale T-34 Single Link Track Sets

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AMPSOne 16 years ago

Kit Review: AFV Club 1/35 scale Single Link Track Sets: Kit No. AF35142; T-34 550mm Stamped Links; 450 parts in brown stryene; estimated retail price US$16.95 Kit No. AF35173; T-34 500mm Width Cast Links; 170 parts in brown styrene; estimated retail price US$16.95

Advantages: nice compliment to AFV Club T-34 kits or any other T-34 kits in 1/35 scale

Disadvantages: =93Model Kasten=94 approach to track assembly not popular with most modelers

Rating: (AF35142) - Recommended; (AF35173) Highly Recommended

After-market tracks have been popular for many years, and AFV Club generally has been wise enough to include single-piece vinyl tracks in its kits (which most modelers are happy with) but also to offer single- link styrene sets for after-market purchase. The advantage of this is that since they are designed for their kits they are a =93drop-fit=94 with no hassles for the modeler.

These two sets cover most basic T-34 tank types with the main early and main late types of track. As such, it is a giveway that AFV Club is planning to release an early model T-34 tanks (mostly Model 1940 and some early Model 1941).

The sets are in the now standard AFV Club brown styrene, but whereas the late one will probably be popular there is one serious drawback to the Model 1940 or 550mm set.

Model Kasten pioneered a method several years ago of using tiny styrene pins to assemble working 1/35 scale tracks, and it provided to be relatively unpopular with most modelers due to the tedious work required to assemble one set of tracks. Worst of all were their US Medium Track sets with the need for five parts per link =96 pad, end connectors, and two tiny pins. Although the directions said to simply =93insert pin=94 and then cement, most modelers knew that by capillary action that usually wound up with the pins freezing and the tracks quickly becoming non-working.

AFV Club has now offered this same method for their 550mm tracks. Each set comes with 75 =93A=94 links (with a guide tooth) and 75 =93B=94 li= nks (smooth faced) and 300 pins. Each pin has to be assembled one at a time and to remove them it pretty much necessitates two sprue nippers =96 a big one to cut the pin and its sprue from the larger frame and a smaller, fine one to nip the pin from the sprue after installation. While AFV Club claims you do not need cement, this usually has not been the case with their other track sets (which usually can be kept together long enough for painting and installation before having to =93freeze=94 them in place with liquid cement). Each pin here is roughly

2.5mm long and 0.5mm in diameter so good luck.

The other set, however, is much different. It comes with 90 =93A=94 links and 80 =93B=94 links which assemble by slight flexing and snapping them together using pins on the =93A=94 links. Snip them off the sprue, clean up the sprue nubs, pop them together and done.

Overall these are a nice idea, but the overly fussy 550mm tracks may not be as useful and I expect most modelers will simply cement the links together and skip the pins.

Thanks to Miin Herng Tsueng for the review samples.

Cookie Sewell

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AM 16 years ago

Hi Cookie.

Please tell me this. The 550mm width track set is for early T 34's, and the 500mm width is for late T 34's ?

Do I have this right ??

Did they ever interchange, ie; did late model T 34's (ex a T 34/85) ever use the earlier track set ?

Thanks !

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Bruce Burden 16 years ago

AM wrote: : : Please tell me this. The 550mm width track set is : for early T 34's, and the 500mm width is for late T 34's ? : Here is what Cookie said on HyperSqueal:

To provide a "Reader's Digest" version of the article, initially the T-34 was equipped with a wider version of the stamped steel track shoes used on the BT series tanks. These were similar in design to the last BT-7 "short pitch" tracks but 550mm wide. But experience showed that they tended to bend, shatter and break as the tank was too heavy for them, and in late 1940 a new design was created. The new one was a cast link with built-in stiffeners, and was much more durable. It was also 550mm wide, and was much more durable. The tracks were fitted to the developed first production series T-34s ("Series 1.5") and the improved series 2. They were also fitted to most of the tanks produced at the Stalingrad Tractor Factory (STZ).

In early 1941, tests showed that the projected T-34M 450mm tracks worked better on the T-34 itself, and plans were made to switch over to this track. They also used a single pin (the first two types of T-34 track used two pins or "half-pins" held in by shims; the new ones simply used a "pin knocker" bracket on the hull to knock them back in when they became loose.)

In summer 1941, a new design of shoes, based on the T-34M track but 500mm wide, was placed in production. Due to the problems with relocation to the Urals, however, this track did not enter widespread use until mid 1942, where they became known as the "waffle" tracks to modelers and "webbed" tracks to the Soviets. Several different designs were made, but all shared common dimensions and were usually cast in pairs (one with and one without a guide tooth, as they had to be used in matched sets of two).

Bruce

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ARM: Review - AFV Club 1/35 scale T-34 Single Link Track Sets

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