Tank Furniture: Hawsers

Well, it's been a hell of a long time since I posted on this blog - athough not for want of thinking about it.  I've been pretty busy at work since before Easter, what with two major projects in Turkey at or close to finale stage requiring frequent trips to Istanbul.  However, considering the recent trouble in Gezi Park and Taksim Square, I've not been over there for the past few weeks (I'm missing my Thursday night tango club at the Taksim Point Hotel, I can tell you).  But I digress.

So, to get back into the swing of things here is something of what I've been working on intermittantly over the past few months, related to those Armourfast tanks that are lying mainly unpainted in a box (they were getting dusty on the workbench they'd been sitting there that long).  The thing is, the Armourfast kits, being simple models, need a bit of kitting out with clutter, so I've been working on that and thought that one of the things you see on real tanks are hawsers.  So here are some I made earlier from string and wire.

The string is actually the decoration from a wedding order of service (not mine) and the loop (at either end) is made from some twisted fuse wire.  After cutting into lengths of 7cm or 8cm, I stiffened the string by giving it a coating of wood glue (PVA) rubbed in with my fingers.  Then I superglued the fusewire loops onto either end of the string.  The join was disguised with a 0.5cm strip of masking tape wound around it a few times.

Once all the glues had dried I undercoated it in black, gave it a heavy dry brush of gun metal and then a thin wash of rust colour.  When I get around to it I will post a picture of them in situ on the tanks themselves, along with some of the other items I've been making.