**** DONE: GB-48 1:72 Heinkel 115 C-1 - Carrier & Maritime Patrol A/C of WWII

[Wurger]

 

[rochie]

Really nice work on the engines

 

[Wayne Little]

Great work Graham...

 

[Bustedwing]

Very nice. Does this version have the fixed, rearward facing, machine guns at the rear of the engine nacelles?

Yeah they did but they were more like two little dinks molded in the wing. I shaved them off.

 

[Gnomey]

Good work so far!

 

[fastmongrel]

Really good work so far. I have been looking at this kit for a while but kept saying "naaahhh" my experience of Revells reboxes of older kits has not been good.

 

[Capt. Vick]

So get the Matchbox offering

 

[Bustedwing]

And then it happened. When things go bumhooley. Definitely, get the Matchbox kit ! I have to say this is a mystery and I have never encountered this before. I started to scribe some panel lines and it turned into a disaster of the third kind. First I sanded down the very faint almost visible raised panel lines. Then I started scratching in my own. The plastic explodes ? I don't know quite how to describe it other than to say imagine trying to scribe panel lines on a potato chip. The plastic appears to be a mixture of two slightly different colours that were not mixed enough. It's full of swirls like unmixed paint. I ended up scraping all the loose bits off leaving big holes and dips which I filled with putty. I think I might spray a couple of heavy coats of automotive build primer, sand it smooth and try scribing the lines in the primer and see how it looks. Pictures will give you an idea what self exploding plastic looks like.

Weirdest thing I ever seen model wise, I think I'll have a double now !

 

[fubar57]

Really odd, never seen that before

 

[Capt. Vick]

Not that I have built much, but I have never even reD about this happening until now...lucky you?

 

[Crimea_River]

New one to me. I agree with your solution, though if the paint is "hot" it might do more harm. Just a guess but the only way to find out is to try it.

 

[fastmongrel]

It looks like the plastic is in layers. I know nothing about injection moulding machines but I wonder if the mould wasn't hot enough and the plastic set as it touched the cold metal. I have seen this happen to metal castings.

 

[Wurger]

It seems that it's the matter of the time. In the past, the Matchbox was notorious of the bad quality of the polystyrene. It was too soft with easy peeling or spliting into layers while cutting , sanding etc. The differen colour of the plastic I don't mention at all. The same could be found for parts of the old Revell kits.

 

[fastmongrel]

It seems that it's the matter of the time. In the past, the Matchbox was notorious of the bad quality of the polystyrene. It was too soft with easy peeling or spliting into layers while cutting , sanding etc. The differen colour of the plastic I don't mention at all. The same could be found for parts of the old Revell kits.

I would in part disagree. The made in England by Lesney company kits were made from good quality polystyrene. It was when the Lesney company was bought by a company in Hong Kong in early to mid 1980s that the polystyrene quality dropped. I don't know if production moved to Hong Kong but they weren't made in England.

 

[rochie]

Very odd, glad you got it sorted

 

[Wurger]

I would in part disagree. The made in England by Lesney company kits were made from good quality polystyrene. It was when the Lesney company was bought by a company in Hong Kong in early to mid 1980s that the polystyrene quality dropped. I don't know if production moved to Hong Kong but they weren't made in England.

You are right. I meant that. Just too general statment I would say. I still have a couple of the Matchbox kits made both in the England and their later kits. The difference in the quality can be noticed.

 

[Bustedwing]

It's odd that It just seems to be the wing parts. Mind you I haven't tried the fuselage but when I cut out the plastic to fit the vacu-form canopy it seemed OK. This is definitely not a Matchbox kit. I have the Matchbox kit built sitting next to me and the parts are completely different ! I'm thinking FROG maybe but though the FROG kits were not very detailed or accurate I've never had a problem with the quality of their parts.

 

[fastmongrel]

The FROG moulds particularly the German models got scattered around the world. It could have been moulded on any continent.

 

[Wayne Little]

Haven't seen that problem in a kit surface before......

 

[Bustedwing]

Well here we go. Three heavy coats of automotive primer , wet sanded and then two coats of Krylon Flat black. I also did my usual hatchet job on the flaps. The paint seems to have reacted well to being scribed. I found what I think is the most acurate schematic of the panel lines and down loaded and resized it for reference.There are a few spots where I went through all the layers of paint and the plastic started to come apart but they are very minor and should be able to be hidden with a bit of weathering after the final camouflage coat. I started on the fuselage and the plastic does pretty much the same thing so that's the next chore for the body and primer shop. On another note, had about 30 feet of self topping cedar land on my house Monday night at 11:30pm while I was half asleep watching Stephen Colbert. Buy a house they said, it'll be fun. At least it stopped raining and I get to play with my chainsaw for a while. Hedge toast, windmill toast, 3 panels of fence toast. House OK and that's the main thing ! Fun times !