Building snow chains for VW Beetle 1/24
Call it a patience test:
1. I started to paint all of the wheels. I tried to achieve the same effect as seen on the original picture. Once I was done, I looked for the tiniest and finest chain around. I left it in brass burnishing liquid over few nights. Repeating the process few times.
2. Before I start, I always think the whole process through. To the last scratch. To avoid any mistakes that would make me start all the process over again. I started with an inner ring in a size of the chrome cap. I attached 6×2 legs (long enough to stretch to the back side of wheel). I looks like spider now.
3. Now comes the part, when it got really messy. Each pair of chains have to be connected with few links just above the attaching point. Problem was that when I wanted to fix the links, the other legs where flying around and always got tangled up in each other. So before I wanted to continue, I always needed to unravel them. To prevent that to happen I used Vallejo bottles and cups as a saddle to operate on.
4. I used try & fail approach to calculate the length of the new chain needed to connect all of the spider legs at the back side of the wheel. I attached always the first leg out of each pair. Real challenge was to close the chain with last pair. When connecting the chains I was always checking the front side to make sure it looks good from viewpoint side.
IMPORTANT NOTE: you need to end up the process with back chain circle big enough to be able to slide the wheel through on the wheel hub. Spider legs on one wheel I made were too long and I ended up with too small circle. But I didn’t want to re-work the chains, so I rather sanded the wheel hub (it is not visible anyway).
5. All the legs are fixed on the back side. Still a bit far from what I wanted to achieve. To make it look like a snow chains there was the last step to be done.
6. Right on the top of the tire tread I simply connected two separate legs from two separate spider chains. Now the opposite tensions started to work and all the snow chains got that right look I wanted to achieve. I used brush and rust color to cover some of the most shiny steel spots.
ORIGINAL CAR:
MY 1/24 SCALE MODEL:
