Starship Modeler Discussion Forums

You don't necessarily need degassing chambers or pressure chambers if you brush the pattern with rubber first and then let this initial coat partially cure. This will fill any detail that would otherwise trap air. Repeat if necessary although you rarely need to. Then mix up some more rubber and pour...

Air bubbles in the surface of the rubber mould getting filled with resin.

You don't need to seal the wood with PVA. You'd be better spreading thin superglue over the wood to seal it and then there's no bonding issues. You can smooth the wood with fine abrasive paper after the superglue has soaked in and set which you won't be able to do with PVA on it. Then you can glue y...

You may find epoxy does the same thing if you don't roughen the plastic sheet first. You'll get a better bond with epoxy but it can still separate. This sounds counter intuitive but try balsa cement in a tube. You can stick ABS with balsa cement. Some of the old Graupner glider kits provided ABS fus...

If you're skinning styrene over a wood shape, remember that if the styrene is to be formed over the wood (say a wooden cylinder with styrene sheet wrapped around it – your basic "hull" deal), the ends of the sheet will try to come loose. You might bolt them on or just glue a strip to co...

Who's your supplier Antenociti?

How big is the hull and what wood are you using?

..... unless you use epoxy laminating resin. Polyester resin does stink and should be used in a well ventilated area, preferably outside. Fibreglass generally is one of those materials you either get on with or you don't. Again a lot depends on what shape you're trying to mould. Never mix up more re...

It depends what you're making as to whether a rubber or rigid mould is required. Figure work can generally be done in rubber. Things that need to retain dimensional accuracy are usually done in rigid moulds. The latter need to be planned for a little more because of the usual problems with undercut ...

What colour is it? Genuine styrene is very forgiving and the easiest of plastics to vacform. It does sound like you have a sheet of acrylic or something similiar. Clear styrene will vacform but tends to get very brittle. If it's clear and you bought it from one the big DIY stores, it could be either...

Buy the best quality files you can afford and try putting talcum powder on them. You can also gently heat them (not so hot that they lose their temper) to soften resins or other sticky materials that have clogged the teeth. If they're clogged with copper or aluminium, try filing a piece of mild stee...

Obviously true alloying needs all the metals involved to be brought above their liquidus and mixed but the principle is similar at the contact surface. The conductivity question depends entirely on how fast you can bring the local area of the joint up to temperature. That's OK for small joints but w...

The comment, "In practice though it takes more heat to melt a joint than it took to form it. That's because the solder has alloyed with the brass and it's now a tin/lead/brass (copper and zinc) alloy", is not quite accurate. The truth is, the solder and brass are not alloyed, but there is...

Just get some paste flux like plumbers use and put some on the tip. That will cut through most contaminants and it'll automatically re-tin when you put the solder on it. That is, afterall, what it's supposed to do. Most soldering iron tips are made of copper and some are plated to prevent the erosio...

It's a job that dress making needles were designed for (other than dress making).

I've got a book which advocates painting them in PVA before painting them properly but I'm not sure how much of the detail might get obscured.

Before you go too mad, the Airfix astronauts were available moulded in styrene by Lodela(?) which might have been Airfix Mexico but my memory is very fuzzy on that. They were definitely available though. I have two boxes myself.

A lot of the military aircraft garage kit makers already do just that. It means you can reproduce engraved panel lines and other details (subject to the usual vac form limitations). The best material for making vacform moulds like this is metal filled epoxy resin. The other advantage is that because...

Oil based paints like enamels have a tendency to yellow with age. Lacquer based car paints however are formulated so they generally don't for obvious reasons. Red and blue pigments in car paint might fade over the years but the carrier lacquer doesn't yellow.

I use a small paint brush for most solvent capilliary cements.

Superglue accelerator has a nasty habit of embrittling plastic. It will craze acrylic too. Wrap a strip of thin styrene around something like a pen, spray it with kicker and watch the strip disintegrate. It's funny, I've just been talking about this on another forum.

Even if you can keep it liquid, as it ages it loses it's strength and will be brittle when it sets. It's a false economy being cheap about it.

Plastruct parts are not all ABS. The VT tubing and grey structural shapes like hemispheres and dished heads are ABS. They also sell grey sheets of ABS. The multi coloured parts and the grey inline valves variants are butyrate. The smaller sizes of pipe are butyrate too (more often that not, moulded ...

Sorry, the tut tut was for the word "casted" which is not a word. You meant "cast". There's been many threads here about it so it's a bit of a running gag. You can fill whitemetal with any type of filler designed for cars. There's all sorts of things can cause surface blemishes b...

Any chance of some pics of these (tut tut) "casted" parts? Is it shrinkage or general discolouration?

The one thing I can say is CLEAN the brass. I use a wire wheel in my Dremel to clean it. You want the brass to sparkle before you start solder. Then be sure to heat it red hot cool it then solder the two peices together. Er...No. Sorry, this is not a good idea. Getting brass that hot not only annea...

Presumably the originals didn't use Tamiya paints so there must be a way of matching the finish without using Tamiya paint.

I agree with Owen. Superglue in a plastic plug and fill the edges with superglue. Use a spray accelerator if you have to. Sand it within an hour or so and it sands at the same rate as the surrounding plastic to give a near pefect finish. Quickest filler known to man (at least on small jobs). You can...

http://www.jacobsonchemicals.co.uk/news_current.htm The Fibreglass Shop [Fibreglass], MAP. Address: 197 High Street, Brentford, Middlesex. TW8 8AT. Telephone: 0208 5681645. Facsimile: 0208 5687191. Also in Brentford: Strand Glassfibre Ltd, Brentway Trading Estate, Brentford, Middx TW8 8ER I've bough...