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After almost 2 straight weeks of powering through my armies on parade display, I decided to take a brief brake and work on another project for a few minutes. Never played fantasy, but i do love some of the models. Perhaps my all time favorite is the steam tank. I've always had a fascination with steam power and fictional steam powered machinery. I also love modifying models whenever I can. The smaller the model to modify the better. I love doing things like lights, such as installing an LED in the search light of a baneblade, or lighting up a model of the starship, Enterprise. Motorizing model ships, etc. However if I can come up with something that doesn't use electricity, I get really excited. It's even better when I can use the natural design of a model to make it work. After building my first steam tank, I fell in love with the model, especially the interior and the boiler. Well I decided to build another steam tank and try to have fun with it.



Got some brass tubing that I've installed into the boiler. The two sections of tubing fit snugly inside each other. I've also hollowed out the smoke stack. The outer brass tubing is still smaller than the interior diameter of the model's boiler so i I may try to put some holes to see if I can get som venting near the pistons. I have no idea if this will work, but the idea is to try to be able to open the boiler, put some dry ice in it. Then introduce water through the smoke stack. We'll see if it works on such a small scale.

Colour me intrigued. I'll be keeping an eye on this.

EDC

If this works, it'll be great.
Good luck, as I have nothing to help.

^^Subbed!

Did a leak test today to make sure that the brass tubes created a good enough seal to keep the water inside. Worked like a dream. Started to paint the boiler. Hope to grab some dry ice this week to finally test the effect. Also decided to try something else with this model.



That's right, the main gun is spring loaded. I don't know where the projectile finally stopped, but it definitely covered almost the entire length of the house before I heard the initial impact.

Oh wow...! Can't wait to see what's next.

So much awesome

Basically showing what the inside of the boiler looks like.



Did some further refinement on the cannon. I moved the hole to the top of the cannon. To prepare it to fire, you use something like a paintbrush handle to compress the spring through the muzzle of the cannon. Once the spring is compressed, you jam the paper clip into the hold with a respectable amount of force as you release pressure on the spring. The paper clip should then act like a sear in a real firearm, effectively cocking the cannon. Place the projectile into the cannon. I've been testing it with pieces of sprue, but my intent is to use ball bearings. Thus far at full elevation, I've been getting close to 40 feet.

I also refined the sear. Basically cut the paperclip to size and put an eye on one end. The intent is to tie something like fishing line to it, and drill a small hole into the back of the gun turret to run the line out of. Hopefully it will be enough to pull the sear out and fire the cannon.

Just did my first test of the dry ice effect. It sort of works. The effect doesn't last long. Wasn't able to last long enough to for me to get setup to try to take a picture. Kind of amusing to listen to the tank bubble though. I'll probably try again later. Right now the boiler is kind of frozen shut.


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Here's a little video I took today testing the cannon using a steel bb. Used a cardboard box and some toilet paper to help absorb the energy from the bb and stop it.