So I started building my 1/72 Jagtiger, and I've been totally puzzled

The rubber caterpillar. First, it hangs from the wheels like you wouldn't believe (and keeps the model 'raised' unless I pin it down with something heavy), and then it wouldn't even glue to itself, let alone plastic wheels. I tried to melt it together with a pre-heated screwdriver, but I fubared it beyond recognision. So I'm gonna use alternative plastic caterpillar for this one after all, but with my other models I won't be so lucky - they only have rubber ones.

What did I do wrong?!

Hi,

rubber tracks, they are the biggest source of frustration for modellers. They break, they melt, they crumble after painting and now they also won't glue

I don't know which glue you are useing, but because there are usually plastic softners in these kinds of plastics to keep them flexible, they are difficult to glue with normal glue unless it's the type of rubber that can be glued with normal plastic cement which I assume is not the kind you have.

To give the glue some grip, you could make the guide teeth of the track a bit more rough with sandpaper so the glue (I would recmommend CA/crazy glue) has something to grip and than glue it to the other end or the road wheel. Other modellers use staples or fine wire to put the ends of the tracks together.

Is there a bit of sprue that comes with the track? You could test your methods on that first.

Cheers,

Matthijs

Well, at least now I know I'm not some clueless moron who wrecked a perfectly normal caterpillar!

I use Humbrol precision poly, I suppose next time I'll try some crazy-ass superglue. Actually, I'll test it on the one I'd destroyed, since there's no use for it anyway.

Thanks!

You can try usign 2 part epoxy glue. the one that dry fast...
or try using CA with accelarator.
SO far i got good result with both of them.
You can also use fine wire, sewing tread to link the end together and then hide it join somewhere we cant see