Welcome and congrats on the new toys to make toys
. I also am a self taught machinist (wanna-be)
. Model man is right with making just enough to see if they work. Titandigs, Paul, has a dozer thread with awesome machining skills. He was the one to tell me about track pad spacing. If they are too tight they will get clogged and spring up like a ticked-off cat. I forget what he recommended but at least a few mm between pads/shoes. I ended up re milling all of them to allow a bit more space. If I make tracks again I believe I will try and add relief holes to the pads. Good luck and once the tracks are done the rest will be a lot less repetitive work. Only time I really have track problems is when I'm not paying attention and turn sharp in loose dirt filling links then the sprocket packs it in and slips. Just like 1:1 machines you really don't want to have a lot of dirt/rocks spill into track links. And keep posting progress pics, it's always interesting to see what others find solutions for and how they go about it
!!