Hey kids
So I had this idea to make a dozer blade that was shaped like a V. After a lot of cutting and filing and gluing I pulled it off and took some pics along the way, so here's a little tutorial on how I made it
As far as bitz go, all you need is 2 dozer blades and the parts that attach it to the tank.
To make the angled cut to make the V shape, I had to use a Miter Box for a saw. You can get these at hardware stores. There's a hobby sized one that Xacto makes for use with their razor saw, but their box wasn't tall enough. Here's the box I got, from Home Depot, for like $15, if the link works.. Most miter boxes only cut 90 or 45 degree angles, this one does 22.5 also.. I didn't want the angle on the blades to be too big and this 22.5 angle worked out perfect.
So here we go..!
Using your razor saw and miter box, stand up the dozer blade in the box and cut along the box's guide. After you get 1 side done, get your other dozer blade and stick cut it on the other side of the box so the angle goes the opposite way.


After that's done, use a file and sand down the cut area so it's nice & smooth, then just glue em together.
Take your mounting bitz and with your saw carefully cut off the part with the rails that attaches to the tank. They're too close together to mount to the other bars propery once it's all done, so you need to make the rails wider. Snip em in half, spred em out and connect em with a an extra piece of sprue. Use the bottom of the tank as a guide, they should fit perfectly on the rails right next to the treads.

Next cut the inner parts of the bars off at the back of their bottom hydraulic thingy and glue them inside

Then, cut off the little stubs that are left, so you have 2 L-shaped hydraulics. Save those little stubs.

Glue the L shaped bitz inside. As you'll see, the wider rails for attaching to the tank just happen to be the right size to match up with the backs of the hydraulics. This happened totally by accident, but I'm not complaining.

Now you want to go back to one of those little stubs that you saved and cut off one of the little round sections and file down the edges so it's smooth. Glue these to the insides of the L's and then use spare sprue pieces to attach the 2 middle hydraulics, then use green stuff to fill in the gaps.



Now back to the rails.. they're a bit too short to attach to the tank, so you can take the other thinner railds that you hopefully still have and attach them to the back with some extra sprue pieces. You can actually skip this part if you're making it for a chimera based tank, but the russ types need the extra length for it to fit right.


Trim the ends of the rails a bit so they match the angle of the other part, glue it together and you're done!

Here's some finished Russ & Hellhound pics for comparison:




