Well, I masked and painted the canopy frames of my Ar 234 today. I removed the Frosty tape from the nose, and saw the crack at the top !
I have the Squadron vac (luckily) that’s trimmed and Futured. There’s less distortion in the vac, but the IP has to be attached differently. The injection piece has locators for the forward arms of the panel, and the vac obviously doesn’t.
I put a lot of time into removing the mold parting line on the nosepiece, and now I can’t use it.
At least I have the vac !
Between the Hurricane’s instrument panel and this canopy, I think the modeling gods are trying to tell me something !
Maybe this is a dumb idea / question, but don’t they have stuff that supposedly removes cracks or makes cracks in glass and plastic supposedly “invisible”? I don’t know if it’s a filler, resin or something else. I have to believe there’s gotta be some gimmicky product out there that might work.
Pix!!
All I can say is BUGGER!!! I hate it when that happens! I can imagine what you might have said when you pulled the tape off…I probably would have said things that would have shocked a sailor.
Makes you wanna go out and kick the cat! Hope you manage to fix it.
Looks good, man.
I think it is a form of acrylic gel, I would get the thinnest one and try to force it into the crack.
Atleast that is how I think they “fix” cracked windscreens on cars, actually not fixed just the light won’t be reflected off the crack anymore and thus it appears to be gone.
Darn bad luck man.I knoe no way of fixing that short of replacing it ,
however that acylic gel sounds interesting.
Well you got the vac so she will look right in no time ,Pix.
Any clue what caused the crack?
Thanks David, Lee, Model Museum, razordws, and obiwan !
No, I’ll be using the vac rather than trying to patch this one. I’ve put too much effort into it to try an unknown thing, especially in such a visible area.
I’m not gonna kick my cat, either. He’s the greatest little buddy I’ve ever had ! I’d put this model in a trash compactor LONG before I’d hurt any animal. People are a different story, though.
Looks like I’ll be doing more masking & painting tomorrow !
I cannot see how you can completely disguise this - thus cannot you not make it a feature - e.g battle damage, and “imitate” a temporay repair??? Totally agree with your observations about animals etc. by the way.
It just became a “little crazed” from longterm storage in an out door environment. That way you do’nt have to do anything more to it. That excuse always works for me. LOL.
Pix, the repair idea may not be a bad one. On the real airplane, the crack would be stop-drilled at the end, and a surface patch would be glued over the crack, since it is not in a vision-critical area. On these repairs, the crack remains visible through the patch.
Our Webmaster brought up an interesting point I’ve been wondering about. Will these products they advertise on those cheesy TV ads for filling scratches in glasses work on our plastic canopies? Or did they steal the idea from us and are selling little bitty bottles of liquid acrylic – basically Future – at a ridiculous price? I’d like to explore this, but can’t afford to gamble to the price of the stuff on TV. They add over half again the price of the product for shipping and “handling” on these TV “bargains.”
BTW, Pix, I forgot to mention, judging from what I can see, you have a beautiful model, vac-form canopy or no. I think this is a case where that flaw will always sort of ruin the experience for you, while onlookers will marvel at what a brilliant job of modeling you did. I wish just once I could look at my models through the eyes of others. Others who aren’t rivet counters by nature. They might not be great, but I’ll bet they’d look a lot better than they do through the eyes of the one person who knows where every tiny blemish, visible seam and masking bleed is.
TOM
TOM
Just cover it up witha little bit of bird poop. That what the guys over on the “Dark Side” would do. That’ s the maddening thing about aircraft models, eveything always has to be so dang perfect! I think your bird is superb just the way it is. Just be careful not to make things worse in your attempt at fixing it.
Perhaps a flock of birds? They were flying when suddenly this plane appeared in front of them as if out of nowhere. If I was a bird, that would be enough to make it happen. [(-D]
