I purchased this 1918 Structo Wind Up Tank on eBay November of 2021 for $166.42 after shipping. This thing was extremely rough... just the way I like them! Every piece of this tank was rusted and corroded solid. I had to cut the axle shafts just to get the wheels off and the axles out of the hubs. The tracks were entirely rusted through, the clockwork motor was seized and had a broken spring. I knew after disassembling this poor tank; that I would need to remake the majority of it from scratch if it was to ever come alive again. I enjoyed making parts on the CNC mill and new Precision Matthews 1440TL lathe as well as my favorite new toy, the Senfeng Fiber Laser. The most challenging part of this entire build was recreating the wheels, I originally wanted to stamp them, however I found the stamp was not going to work, so I created a die to spin the metal into on the lathe which worked wonderfully after about 20+ tries. The tracks were extremely fun to create and were pretty simple outside of the shear amount of work it took to make 80 individual track links all identical and fit them correctly so they freely move, I don't have an exact number but I believe to have somewhere around 35-40 hours into just the tracks, with design, testing, peening and polishing. I wanted to nickel plate each track link in house, then I realized, doing each of the 80 links individually would take 15 minutes of plating each for a total of 1200 minutes or 20 hours if I didn't' loose anytime at all. I quickly realized that was not going to happen, so I cut the track links out of a mirror polished stainless steel sheet with laser film, this cut down the time considerably and gave me a very similar finish. I spent four weeks trying to make my own clock springs from scratch and ultimately failed, if the video wasn't extremely long I would have loved to show you how I went about this. I need to do some more research on how they were originally formed. Overall, I really love how this Army Tank turned out and look forward to my next project to be a smaller one. Thank you!

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Chip Channel Restorations
PO Box 1178
Grand Island, NE
68802

Lathe details
Precision Matthews PM-1440TL
Check out their website at https://www.precisionmatthews.com/

CNC Fiber Laser Details
Senfeng 1.5KW SF1313G
Check out their website at https://www.senfenglaserusa.com/

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   • 1918 Structo Wind Up Tank Restoration...  

Products that I use for ChipChannelRestorations
Nylon Punch https://amzn.to/2SGq3OC
Nickel Plating Kit https://amzn.to/3dhYfcJ
Ultrasonic Cleaner https://amzn.to/3506TZV
Blasting gun https://amzn.to/34IBGKl
Blasting Media https://amzn.to/3lA8lbT
Wet Sand Paper https://amzn.to/2SJVTKi
Deburring bits https://amzn.to/2GOyuox
Black Gloves https://amzn.to/34JREUL
Metal Polish https://amzn.to/34N7Cx5
Small Cut Off Wheels https://amzn.to/2GCPxdq
Buffing Wheels https://amzn.to/33NN34D
Buffing Compound https://amzn.to/34LfJdF
Lead Test Kit https://amzn.to/2GMehzF
Paint Stripper https://amzn.to/30UNGav
Camera Tripod https://amzn.to/2FmuGu8
Led back lights https://amzn.to/3iWMI41
Camera light https://amzn.to/30VlsMR
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