Hi All,
Ive been thinking about this for a while but have come to nuthing! So am looking your advice. I have a kit where i need to put a 30g ballast in the nose of jet i put together but i cant think of any thing heavy enough and small enough to put in there!
What do you guys tend to use? Household items if possible
Scale is 1:48 if that helps
Many Thanks
I use lead sinkers and other fishing lure weights. Birdshot and BBs also work.
I use steel nuts made for 1/4" bolts. One weighs about what you need; two or three threaded onto a short bolt weigh several ounces, enough to keep a B-29 nose down.
Lead shot can be tucked in just about any corner of a model.
Just be careful when gluing stuff in with a lot of glue- rapid curing glues often generate a lot of heat. I recently had to spend a bunch of time reshaping the nose of a 1/72 S-92 made of thin plastic. After I’d sealed her up, the next day the conk on it looked like Jimmy Durante’s.
Gerald’s plane there is nice and thick.
Ny father used to load his own bullets for competition shooting so he used just the bullets sometimes.
Myself I use BB’s. The other thing that is nice is to pick up a small digital scale. I got one from Harbor Freight for about $7. I put a lid on it and zero it out and then I can measure the correct amount of BB’s. If you factor in the type of glue you are using you can sometimes go a little lighter… But that let’s you know just how much material you have to bury…
I will use epoxy when cementing in ballast into a thin skinned subject, to avoid the heat damage Bondoman mentioned.
You can also drill small indentations on the backside or nonvisible sides of internal components to hold the shot. Such as wheel and bay walls, instrument panels and bulkheads. Small shot like this can also be inserted in nose wheels, bombs, fuel tanks engine nacelles as long as the spot is forward of the main gear. Of course the further forward you can place it the less shot necessary. But there are certain subjects where it just can’t be done, so you are force to get creative and end u with a rather heavy model. Fortunately in these situations the kits landing gear were very stout.
Yup! I ruined a perfectly good model once by burying the ballast in glue that deformed the plastic. I try not to use any glue at all, if possible, and I think if I did need glue, something like Elmer’s glue would be the safest. I usually use lead fishing sinkers, and pack around them with solder strips which are flexible and heavy and will keep the sinkers from rattling around.
Of course, the easiest course of action is to avoid tricycles in the first place and just build tail draggers! [:D]
Or build them wheels up and hang them from the ceiling.
For small areas, small lead shot works well. For large areas, steel bolts and washers work, and are cheaper. Lead solder is good, and fits well into fuselage spaces.
Mostly, though, I use flat strips of aquarium ‘lead’. It isn’t actually lead, but a dense metal alloy which is used to weight down plants and decorations in fish tanks. It cen be cut to size with scissors or a scalpel, and superglued in place. Specially good for glazed-nose aircraft and helicopters, since it can be tucked beneath the cockpit floor.
Cheers,
Chris.
Oh and don’t forget Plaster of Paris also works too.
Don’t forget that it can generate heat too
I’ve actually had to ballast the tail of a model:
http://www.century21models.talktalk.net/MT68.htm
The reason for this is that the entire nose lifts so it has to balance on its main gear.
I ended up packing the engine nacelles with Airgun pellets
I use BB fishing weights and glue them in with white glue works very well for me. Fulled the nose of a P-61 with them and almost has too much weight added there.
First, I’d check with Terry Dean (nightiemission@aol,com) to see if he has a weight set for your particular application.
Try thinning the plastic aft of the main gear. A rotary grinder and some careful grinding can cut down on the amount of weight you need in the nose. Really thick stabilizers and positionable flaps can sometimes be drilled out. Full engines can be cut down to just exhaust pipes and compressor detail, with the exhaust pipe being ground down paper thin.
There’s usually a triangular void between the nose gear well and fuselage sides. Some careful grinding here will make room for more weights. Same for the area above, below and around the cockpit. Sometimes, its necessary to replace cockpit floor and bulkheads with lead sheet, and to pack the area forward of the instrument panel with weight. Radomes are prime candidates for weight-packing, and you can pack the nose of drop tanks (and, occasionally, bombs).
Still can’t find room for enough weight? Use the titanium powder used to balance golf clubs, available at your local golf pro shop. Mix it with epoxy and fill any available void forward of the main gear (the farther forward, the better)
The last, and least exotic, solution is to mount the aircraft on a base and secure the whells so it CAN’T tail-squat.
Phil - just sharing a few of the soultions I’ve used
I’ve always used fishing weights and I am careful with the super glue. Just enough to hold things in place and never use accelerants so less chance of heat build-up. Besides, when you use those lead weights, you are keeping them out of the waterways! Think Green! (Just a joke! No offence to my fellow Anglers out there!)
Once I figure out how much weight is needed I put the required number of fishing weights in an old spray paint top, squirt in the 2 part, 5 minute epoxy and stir it all together. I then place the weights in the fuselage halves, engine nacelles, or wherever. There is enough glue to hold the weights to the plastic parts or to each other. The tricky part is figuring the amount of weight needed. I assemble the main parts of the kit and the landing gear together with masking tape and balance the weights in the nose and cavities until it tips forward.
Ken