Miles Kendig
Active Member
Got my kit from Randy late last week and have been assessing the pieces the last few days.
Like a couple others who have gotten this and posted here, I'm a resin virgin about to lose it with this kit- And I mean that in more ways than one.
I haven't done a full count of all the pieces, but it looks like all the major ones are there. Unfortunately, after about 60 castings, it looks like a good number of these molds are already shot because some of the warping I have seems pretty significant. And it's warping that isn't present on other people's kits.
Going in, I knew I was signing up for a project that was going to require a learning curve and a good bit more improvisation than something like the Zvesda/Revell kit (which I still haven't finished).
Working on that one though has given me a familiarity with the basic structure and how things in general should look and what goes where.
I thought that would give me a good footing to start, along with Randy's attempts to simplify the build with how he cast the pieces this time.
Unfortunately this is the kind of stuff I'm running into
As you can see, the left hull piece is elongated about 1/2 to 3/8". It's not just warped, it's distorted.
I knew when I ordered it I couldn't expect Randy to hold my hand and walk me through every problem, but I reached out to him anyway with some thoughts on how to address this and only got back the general rote answer - run boiling water over it and press it into shape and then run cold water to set it.
The way I see it, there are only two options to fix this piece.
The first would involve building a jig using the mirrored right side piece, which I'll have to take for granted is "true".
I would take an outline of it (bottom up to trace) and then have 1" x 2"'s around three sides in a shape like this
After the hot bath, while the piece was pliable, I was thinking I would be able to slide it into the jig, and then use Rob Rossi's system of weighting it down with a bag of sand while it cools.
Thinking about it some more, is it foolish to expect the resin to essentially contract vertically while remaining the same horizontally?. More than likely, I would guess forcing it into a narrower constraint is simply going to cause the middle of it to start buckling...maybe even rippling in waves? There is a good 1/4"+ that needs to be reined in.
That seems like a lot to me.
The only other option that I can see is to make a cut and trim out a 1/4" sliver either in this area here, or below closer to the exhaust end.
The problem there is, the elongation is distributed evenly across the interior cut out. Taking a chunk out of one area is going to throw the interior dimension off.
So- which of these two options seems the most viable?
There are a bunch of other pieces that have, what i assume are, the more typical banana effect going on. They need to be made pliable and then tamped down flat, or constrained. This is the kind of stuff I was fully expecting (just not on nearly ever main piece).
One that I'll post a pic of later, is starting to twist like a pretzel and some of the long trench pieces have warping on both the x and y axis.
But it's that hull piece that I think is going to vex me the most.
Like a couple others who have gotten this and posted here, I'm a resin virgin about to lose it with this kit- And I mean that in more ways than one.
I haven't done a full count of all the pieces, but it looks like all the major ones are there. Unfortunately, after about 60 castings, it looks like a good number of these molds are already shot because some of the warping I have seems pretty significant. And it's warping that isn't present on other people's kits.
Going in, I knew I was signing up for a project that was going to require a learning curve and a good bit more improvisation than something like the Zvesda/Revell kit (which I still haven't finished).
Working on that one though has given me a familiarity with the basic structure and how things in general should look and what goes where.
I thought that would give me a good footing to start, along with Randy's attempts to simplify the build with how he cast the pieces this time.
Unfortunately this is the kind of stuff I'm running into
As you can see, the left hull piece is elongated about 1/2 to 3/8". It's not just warped, it's distorted.
I knew when I ordered it I couldn't expect Randy to hold my hand and walk me through every problem, but I reached out to him anyway with some thoughts on how to address this and only got back the general rote answer - run boiling water over it and press it into shape and then run cold water to set it.
The way I see it, there are only two options to fix this piece.
The first would involve building a jig using the mirrored right side piece, which I'll have to take for granted is "true".
I would take an outline of it (bottom up to trace) and then have 1" x 2"'s around three sides in a shape like this
After the hot bath, while the piece was pliable, I was thinking I would be able to slide it into the jig, and then use Rob Rossi's system of weighting it down with a bag of sand while it cools.
Thinking about it some more, is it foolish to expect the resin to essentially contract vertically while remaining the same horizontally?. More than likely, I would guess forcing it into a narrower constraint is simply going to cause the middle of it to start buckling...maybe even rippling in waves? There is a good 1/4"+ that needs to be reined in.
That seems like a lot to me.
The only other option that I can see is to make a cut and trim out a 1/4" sliver either in this area here, or below closer to the exhaust end.
The problem there is, the elongation is distributed evenly across the interior cut out. Taking a chunk out of one area is going to throw the interior dimension off.
So- which of these two options seems the most viable?
There are a bunch of other pieces that have, what i assume are, the more typical banana effect going on. They need to be made pliable and then tamped down flat, or constrained. This is the kind of stuff I was fully expecting (just not on nearly ever main piece).
One that I'll post a pic of later, is starting to twist like a pretzel and some of the long trench pieces have warping on both the x and y axis.
But it's that hull piece that I think is going to vex me the most.