Old Tyme modelling question.....

Hi there

Going through some older issues of Airfix Magazine, I saw an ad for various Humbrol products like glue and paint, that sort of thing.

But Humbrol also produced a product called 'Banana Oil.

Other than lubricating banana's, what was this used for in a modelling context?

Steve

Reply to
Steve Guthrie
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I've never heard of it in modeling. That use must be before my time. We currently use it to test the effectiveness of protective masks. Real sharp odor but if your mask is fitted properly you won't smell a thing. Rob Gronovius Modern US armor at

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Reply to
Rob Gronovius

So where's OXMORON when we need him? Anyway, it's something that was used with wooden models. I kind of forget if it was used for shrinking the paper over the ribs or for filling in the grain.

Bill Banaszak, MFE

Bananas make me queasy. ;]

Reply to
Mad-Modeller

Remember to eat bananas before flying aerobatics, as they taste the same going down as they do later coming up!

Hope this helps, Peter

Reply to
Bushy

Do a google search in RMS for "banana oil". Some time back I asked about it after I heard JimBob Walton mention it in an episode of "The Waltons". IIRC, it was a type of dope for balsa & tissue models & smelled like bananas.

Reply to
frank may

One of my wife's uncles was explaining the Long Lost Fine Art of Balsa and Tissue Aircraft Models to me once. He mentioned banana oil and that was first I'd ever heard of it. Apparently, the banana oil was applied to the tissue to shrink it down tight onto the balsa frame.

Martin

Reply to
Martin

Come off it Bill, you are old enough to remember "Banana Oil" from the golden days of yesteryear. It was used on stick and tissue models. "Something-something"-acetate, memory fails this morning...(great pain killers from the dentist). I'm still working on the "thread-drift" thread.

Rick MFE

Reply to
OXMORON1

Nothing lost about that art. It is alive and well.

Banana oil was a kind of early dope (the butarate- or nitrate based lacquer, not the drug). Indeed it did shrink the paper -- but that was the wrong way to do it. You glue the tissue to the frame or wings, as tight as you can reasonably get it. Then you use water to shrink the tissue -- best done with an atomizer. Once the water is totally dry, the tissue has shrunk very taut. Then, and only then, do you apply the banana oil. People who skipped the water step for shrinking were taking a shortcut. Not a good idea, because if the wing (especially) warps the correction is quite difficult. With the water step, if you find a warp, you just rewet a few panels and hold the wing in blocks or something to let the wing dry without a warp.

I recall using banana oil up to the mid 40's .. but by 1950 or so, it had been totally replaced by nitrate dope. Except, perhaps in the UK. Banana oil had a distinct banana-like smell, over and above the pungent dope smell. Some of the early dopes had artificial scents added to simulate the original banana oil. I don't know if the stuff had anything to do with bananas, except the smell. I suspect that it would be in great demand these days -- what with kids sniffing dope (the lacquer) to get a cheap high ... If they knew about it, they would probably really relish the authentic banana oil as superior stuff because of the scent.

Boris

Reply to
Boris Beizer

Boris wrote (in part):

Where do you think that certain persons got the idea of smoking banana peels during the 60s?

And yes, stick and tissue models are still alive. The only part that I hate is cutting out rib after rib, etc. Also the old Comet kits that sold for $.10 to $.50 are really expensive for what you get, same plans, terrible tissue and balsa wood fit for cockroach bait.

Rick

Reply to
OXMORON1

On a Wing and a Prayer, by Rick Reilly

Now this message for America's most famous athletes: Someday you may be invited to fly in the back-seat of one of your country's most powerful fighter jets. Many of you already have -- John Elway, John Stockton, Tiger Woods to name a few. If you get this opportunity, let me urge you, with the greatest sincerity.... Move to Guam. Change your name. Fake your own death. Whatever you do, do not go. I know. The U.S. Navy invited me to try it. I was thrilled. I was pumped. I was toast! I should've known when they told me my pilot would be Chip (Biff) King of Fighter Squadron 213 at Naval Air Station Oceana in Virginia Beach. Whatever you're thinking a Top Gun named Chip (Biff) King looks like, triple it. He's about six-foot, tan, ice-blue eyes, wavy surfer hair, finger-crippling handsha! -- the kind of man who wrestles dyspeptic alligators in his leisure time. If you see this man, run the other way. Fast. Biff King was born to fly.

His father, Jack King, was for years the voice of NASA missions. ("T-minus 15 seconds and counting...." Remember?) Chip would charge neighborhood kids a quarter each to hear his dad. Jack would wake up from naps surrounded by nine-year-olds waiting for him to say, "We have a liftoff." Biff was to fly me in an F-14D Tomcat, a ridiculously powerful $60 million weapon with nearly as much thrust as weight, not unlike Colin Montgomerie. I was worried about getting airsick, so the night before the flight I asked Biff if there was something I should eat the next morning. "Bananas," he said.

"For the potassium?" I asked. "No," Biff said, "because they taste about the same coming up as they do going down." The next morning, out on the tarmac, I had on my flight suit with my name sewn over the left breast. (No call sign -- like Crash or Sticky or Leadfoot -- but, still, very cool.) I carried my helmet in the crook of my arm, as Biff had instructed. If ever in my life I had a chance to nail Nicole Kidman, that was it.

A fighter pilot named Psycho gave me a safety briefing and then fastened me into my ejection seat, which, when employed, would "egress" me out of the plane at such a velocity that I would be immediately knocked unconscious. Just as I was thinking about aborting the flight, the canopy closed over me, and Biff gave the ground crew a thumbs-up.

In minutes we were firing nose up at 600 mph. We leveled out and then canopy-rolled over another F-14. Those 20 minutes were the rush of my life. Unfortunately, the ride lasted 80. It was like being on the roller coaster at Six Flags Over Texas. Only without rails. We did barrel rolls, sap rolls, loops, yanks and banks. We dived, rose and dived again, sometimes with a vertical velocity of 10,000 feet per minute.

We chased another F-14, and it chased us. We broke the speed of sound. Sea was sky and sky was sea. Flying at 200 feet we did 90-degree turns at 550 mph, creating a G-force of 6.5, which is to say I felt as if 6.5 times my body weight was smashing against me, thereby approximating life as Mrs. Colin Montgomerie.

And I egressed the bananas. I egressed the pizza from the night before. And the lunch before that. I egressed a box of Milk Duds from the sixth grade. I made Linda Blair look polite. Because of the G's, I was egressing stuff that did not even want to be egressed. I went through not one airsick bag, but two. Biff said I passed out. Twice. I was coated in sweat. At one point, as we were coming in upside down in a banked curve on a mock bombing target and the G's were flattening me like a tortilla and I was in and out of consciousness, I realized I was the first person in history to throw down. I used to know cool. Cool was Elway throwing a touchdown pass, or Norman making a five-iron bite. But now I really know cool. Cool is guys like Biff, men with cast-iron stomachs and Freon nerves. I wouldn't go up there again for Derek Jeter's black book, but I'm glad Biff does every day, and for less a year than a rookie reliever makes in a home stand. A week later, when the spins finally stopped, Biff called. He said he and the fighters had the perfect call sign for me. Said he'd send it on a patch for my flight suit. What is it? I asked. "Two Bags." Don't you dare tell Nicole.

Reply to
Eyeball2002308

AAAaaaah! The smell of Banana Oil in the morning...........(Back before we learned to smoke.) HIGHLY FLAMMABLE as I recall. Almost set fire to the garage after coating a model with Banana Oil and then moving on to the soldering work on the landing gear.

Modeling was much more dangerous (and exciting!) back then.

;-)

Rick Fluke snipped-for-privacy@blackfoot.net

Reply to
Unamodeler

It is a chemical called Isoamyl Acetate and is a derivitive of Amyl Alcohol. Its used for many things including as a solvent. Its not uncommon to find it in canned spray paints as a thinner. It also can be found in finger nail remover. How it came up with the moniker of "banana oil" is anybodys guess but probably because it smells like banana's.

Mike

Reply to
MQM-107

Insert the word "polish" after "nail" and it makes more sense.

Mike

MQM-107 wrote:

Reply to
MRB

I may be old enough but that does not mean I encountered it personally. If I had it would have stuck with me as does most stuff long forgotten from the '50s. I had to make do with "Stanley Iron Glue" for my first couple of models because nobody at my house knew what styrene glue was. BTW, Iron Glue didn't hold up well. :}

Bill Banaszak, MFE

Reply to
Mad-Modeller

Ouch!

Bill Banaszak, MFE

Reply to
Mad-Modeller

Steve, Banana oil was an extract from the skin of the banana used to seal open grain wood such as balsa. Brian of Chiswick, London

Reply to
Brian Boot

Steve,

There's another use for banana oil which hasn't yet been divulged in this thread...

When Airfix first introduced their OO/HO (1/76) scale polythene soldier sets in the early 1960's, it wasn't too long before the more serious modellers/wargamers tried to modify and convert them - don't forget, this era was not long after the "genesis" of scale modelling as we know it today.

The main techniques involved swapping heads and arms etc, using small pins and white glue to secure them - with varying degrees of success! However, when it came to serious modifications, the only material that seemed to fit the bill for sculpting new headress or uniform details was a modelling clay, known here in the UK as Plasticene.

This oil-based malleable clay was designed to be re-used and didn't set hard. It also came in a multitude of colours. It was quite hard when cold, but made more malleable by working with the fingers.

Numerous conversion articles appeared in those early Airfix Magazines, indeed when Airfix introduced their 1/32 figures a decade or so later (not the polystyrene Multipose sets) the conversions continued and I recall trying to modify some Wermacht figures into Fallschirmjaegers.

Back to Banana Oil... The aforesaid articles always advised the figure converter to use this stuff to mix with the Plasticene, as it would assist the clay to harden and accept a coat of paint.

So, there you have it. Another use for Banana Oil!

Finally, I could never find the stuff when I was a kid, now I know that I was looking in all the wrong places and should have gone to a shop selling flying models!

HTH

Chris

Reply to
Chris Hughes

Unfortunately, Estes Industries bought out the Comet line (they had previously bought Guillows). While they have continued the Guillow line of kits, they are NOT producing the Comet line. In my opinion the lines did NOT overlap that much, and I sorely miss some of those old Comet kits.

BTW, the Guillows kits for decades now have had sheet parts die cut, so you don't have to use a broken razor blade to cut the ribs :-)

I w>

Reply to
Don Stauffer

Reply to
Don Stauffer

"> So, there you have it. Another use for Banana Oil!

This brings back memories of an illustrated book or comic I had when I was really young. The story was the kids uncle, I believe, was a fireman and was secretly buiding the kids a model fire engine. The kids kept smelling bannana oil and trying to find an explanation. Finally in the end he presents them with the model - they take one smell and exclaime "Bananna Oil" . I guess the bananna oil was a clue I didn't get I was too young to get it at the time, and we had no model builders in the family - so the story kind of stuck as one of those unexplained things about the world around me. Also make me think there may have been other usages like a sealer on other models, or the guy who wrote the book only knew about aorcraft models.

Val Kraut

Reply to
Val Kraut

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