All right, for those of you who can’t stand to see a grown modeler cry, you might want to stop here.
As many of you know, I bought my first vac form kit a while back. I got it cheap from the consignment section of the hobby shop, I put out quite a bit more on aftermarket goodies for it as it was rather a minimalist kit.
Anyway, I carefully outlined all the parts on the plastic sheet and started to score around them with my knife. I scored over and over again until I was nearly through the plastic before I tried snapping the parts out.
I began to bend one of my cut lines and it snapped all right, a gorgeous razor straight line diagonally across the part I was trying to get out. I didn’t twist the sheet when I tried snapping and the straightness of the unintentional break makes me think it could simply be a flaw in the plastic. The break goes across two major panel lines and a rather intricate vent depicted on the surface.
I decided to put it up for a while as I wasn’t ready to see more potential unintentional breakages.
I decided to relieve my tensions by going back to a 1/72 Smer Spitfire kit I’ve been toying with for a bit. I hadn’t looked at it for a few days and the last thing I did with it was to put upper and lower wing halves together. As the trailing edges of the wing parts were extremely thin, I went really carefully with the cement. As Iooked at it lastnight, obviously not carefully enough. The whole trailing edge, wingtip to wingtip is an irreparable mess.
Its been a while since I had this sort of bad luck with models, so I guess it was my turn again[:(]
Upnorth-i just had the glue thing happen on an Eastern Express Hansa seaplane-Added some extra glue-why I don’t know-and the side just collapsed. I tossed the sucker. Remember-it’s gotta be fun.
Bugger!!
Sorry to hear about your mishaps. I hate when that happens.
The good thing is that you’ll learn new techniques fixing these problems.
Good luck.
Well, I’m certainly not going to give up on the hobby. Been at it long enough that things like this wound the pride more than anything else.
The spitfire is pretty much a goner, If you saw the back edge of the wing you’d know what I mean. The vac form is getting a break for a while.
Meantime, I’ll concentrate on my Bilek reissue of Italeri’s 1/72 SAAB Gripen and a 1/72 kit by RS of a nifty interwar Czech built biplane called the Praga E.39.
I managed to snag a resin cockpit for my recently acquired Zvezda SU-25 Frogfoot today so there’s another beastie I can start on now.
I guess I thought after a few years of modeling without major incident, I had the hang of the hobby. Serves me right for getting complacent I guess
Remember, bad things usually happen in threes…
So, keep the lids firmly on the glue bottles, put the paint away carefully and fit corks to the tips of the scalpels…
Hang in there - it can only get better!
Utter a long string of explatives and profanity, throw the offending item against the nearest concrete or brick wall, stomp the remaining pieces into the floor, then have a couple of cold ones and go watch TV for the rest of the evening. Come back to the modeling tomorrow with a new, positive attitude and start on a different kit.
The vacform part will be ok - just re-enforce it from the inside with Styrene strip & CA… then you can sand it down as normal… you’ll survive that one. [:D]
I think the Spit needs a decent burial… at least 1/72nd scale kits are cheap [;)]
Believe me, I sympathize with you. The one and only vac I’ve tried (many years ago) was a RarePlanes Grumman F3F in 1/72 scale. Got the interior scratch built, landing gear installed (stolen out of a Revell F4F as was the engine and prop). Got the fuselage together sanded and primed. Went to cut the cowling out of the sheet and made the mistake of reading the instructions - “The cowling may be very thin and should be reinforced with putty or epoxy”. Well, it was thin (you could see through some of the rocker box blisters), so I installed a coat of body putty to the inside front of the cowl and shut down for the evening. Next evening come in to work on it, turn on the lights and guess what had melted into a shapeless mass of plastic and putty. Yep, I’d used a laquer based putty. Boxed it up and it’s still in storage. Never tried another (Although I do have an XP-67 Moonbat in 1/72 that I’ve almost worked up enough courage to try vacuform again with).
Hey Blackcat! A vac kit is a vacuum formed kit. Usually a sheet of plastic with the parts vacuum-formed-which then need to be trimmed carefully-not for the faint-hearted. But the only venue for esoteric kits.
Don’t be put off by Vacuform kits. I’m nearly done with my first, and I didn’t find it at all indimidating. Here’s a few things I learned that may help:
Removing Parts- I found a bit more labor-intensive method of getting the parts out, but less prone to innacuracy. Cut the general shape of the parts out, then sand the bejeezus out of it on a large, flat, VERY coarse piece of sandpaper. The backing should fall away once it’s thin enough. Perfect most every time.
Gluing Parts- Use superglue. Glue the parts together as best you can. Any gaps can be filled by covering it in superglue and (guess!) sanding it. Allow the plastic dust to fill the seam. Even the ickiest seam can be flawlessly filled like this.
Finishing- Use primer. It will help you spot bad sections you need to hit (once again) with more sandpaper.
Vac kits aren’t scary. Give 'em a try!
Not to rehash any bad memories, but could you post a pic of the bad wing? I’m curious of how bad it really is…
Sometimes I think: THIS is supposed to be a hobby? THIS is supposed to be relaxing??? Some old sci fi show used to advise us: “we are not alone.” Absolutely true with modeling disasters; we’ve all had them. In the last three months, I haven’t finished one kit, without having something go wrong–usually right at the very end; sometimes with the very last piece. Fortunately everything was fixable–but I’ll always know it is there!! Hang in there, and good luck on your next endeavor.
I got rid of the Spit lastnight, so I didn’t get any pictures of the wing damage.
Basically, instead of adhearing to each other, the trailing edges of the wing halves, warped and shrank away from each other. The warpage carried through to about halfway to the leading edge on most parts of the span.
So really I had no trailing edge left at all and nothing straight to anchor a scratch made trailing edge replacement to.
