Hello all.
I recently made my own TD for my armour and after discusing it with some of my fellows they asked me to do a tutorial on how i made it.
I thought i would share it across a couple of boards.
Materials you will need:
68mm pipe. The same as is used on TK TD's
68mm pipe connector. I used two in my build but you could if your careful just use one. I got mine from Homebase.
14 plastic strips or just a piece of plastic to use for the strips. Must be 15 cm long
Some plastic scraps
Hacksaw
Dremel
Masking tape
P38 car body filler or some other sandable filler
A good glue. Super glue would do but i use zap-a-gap
A pencil
Step 1:
Measure a length of 68mm pipe and cut off a 19cm piece.
This is the main TD body
It's ok if the ends are a bit wonky, my advice is to give yourself a bit of room and cut it slightly larger than needed then trim it down later.
Step 2:
Get the connector and measure at the 68mm end 2cm down. Mark it up with your pencil then use your masking tape to create a cutting line
Turn the connector upside down and measure 1cm from the smaller end.
These will form the outer and inner end of your TD
Step 3:
Cut up the marked out bits of the connector then trim to the required measurements. The reason i used masking tape is that it gave me a great cut line to dremel around when trimming.
Next use the inner ring to create a disc. This is where the scrap plastic come in.
Once the disc is made glue to the bottom of the inner ring.
Glue the inner ring into the pipe and then the outer ring on top.
It should at this point look something like this:
Step 4:
Time to make the plastic strips.
Each strip is 15cm long and 1 cm wide.
Glue them at regular intervals round the pipe leaving a 5cm gap between each strip.
Finish by filling the ends with filler and sand till smooth and then paint.
It should end up looking like this