Vacuform kits

If it's British then the female fox is more generally known (and chosen) as it holds more a place in storytelling and country folk knowing what it is they're hunting!

Richard.

run away, as fast as you can, dont look back..............im, 50 ive built models years ago,.and started back up appx. 5 yrs ago doing all those injection molded plastic rare/oop/$ kits from the fifties /sixties,.and collect-aire resin kits$$,ive built one vacuform kit,..will never build another one ,..........this hobby is for enjoyment,.not as a second job.good luck

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Ingo:

Kalmbach publishing company puts out a soft cover titled "Building and improving vac-u-form models". Good book, look for a copy. I will admit that the Dynevector Sea Vixen is not what I would call a beginner's vac-u-form. I would get one from Falcon of New Zealand or Aero-Club as a starter. Aero-Club's deHavilland Venom series or Falcon's Supermarine Spiteful would be a better starter.

Bill Shuey certified vac-u-form addict

On the Aeroclub Models web page there is a great free for downloading article in PDF format about building vac kits. More than worth the price. It's a joke people ;^) not the article, the price bit, sheesh ;^)

-- Mike in Bellingham, WA - USA

Ingo - this may be a bit late, but... I think that the vixen referred to is the fox one. deHavilland weren't real big on imaginary animals... except for the Dragon Rapide.... (ahh well, there goes another theory :) ).... I think you'll find that it just followed on from dH's then policy of using 'V' names for their twin-boomed a/c - Vampire, Venom, Vixen. There were some Brit a/c of the time that were named after mythical creatures - the Westland Wyvern comes to mind (what a shape - so cool) - I'm sure there are others.

Have a look at

-this is a good site for Brit a/c lovers.

RobG (the Aussie > >

I've tried twice to build a vac form kit, single engine fighter, one in

1/72, one in 1/48. I've bought the books and seen the videos. I just have no idea how one does it. I've seen some beautiful examples others have done. But, then, I've never finished a marathon or spent 40 days in a plastic box in London, either. It takes a special talent just to cut out the pieces and make them the right size and shape.

I've often thought that if a vac model maker had a process to cut out the pieces and then sell the kits, I and many others might acutally try again.

May the force be with you on your challenging new journey. Jerry 47

Works okay for me? Try:

HTH Andy

I haven't built any yet, but I have an Airmodel H-13J and a few other vacform kits laying around.

However, I just recently had an idea (or dream?) for a tool that could be helpful in cutting such kits. I'll make one and try out if it works.

The basic idea of the tool is this:

A small wooden square block, about the size of four dice stacked two-by-two, suitable for holding firmly between the thumb and index finger. The corners are sharply defined on one of the short sides, the others are rounded for comfortable handling.

From the sharp corner, there is a slot, angled at 45 degrees, in which a normal small straight-edge Xacto-blade will fit. The blade is held in position with a screw, and can be adjusted, so an appropriate amount of the point extends beyond the corner of the block. This should be about

1.4 (square root of 2) times the thickness of the plastic sheet to cut.

To cut a part out, the outline of the part is simply traced while pressing the vertical edge (above the blade point) againt the part, and the horizontal edge against the sheet.

This should leave an exact remainder of the thickness of the sheet all around the part, with one side sloping 45 degrees. To remove this, another side of the block is used.

This side, which is probably the upside from the tracing action, also has a slot, at perhaps 40 degrees. The blade can also be fitted here with a screw, and a hole is drilled above the edge, all the way through the block. This should work just like a micro-"plane". The blade is fixated parallel to the side, protruding the same amount. Now this is used to remove the remaining edge of the part, simply by using it as a plane.

In my imagination this seems to work perfectly, and a part like the body half of a H-13J should be cut out and cleaned perfectly withing minutes.

How it works in real life is of course another matter entirely: so please let me know why this is not going to work. I know this is contrary to the traditional method of cutting vertically and sanding afterwards. But then, that just sounds so *tedious*.

-Lasse

not really...I'm no contest winner but I love vacforms...just cut around the edges and start sanding.Then glue together like a regular kit.You just need to add a lot of the little details,but thats what spares boxes are for.

I've seen a few do that(can't remember offhand who,sorry)but the price goes way up and number available goes way down...

Reasonable people can differ, though. I find vacs much easier than resin kits, since the warping, if any, is easier to correct, and they are styrene (or in the case of multi-media offerings, mostly styrene), which is more forgiving than resin and doesn't require epoxy or CA for an adhesive. The big problems are that some vacs are pretty crappy molds to begin with, and it does take a while to get the hang of separating the parts from the carrier sheet and prepping them for assembly. Vacs are closer to scratch-building than any other scale medium (except maybe balsa kits like Guillow's), so inevitably one develops some scratch-building skills along the way.

If you really want to do a subject that is only represented by a vac kit, just take it slow, and take heart in the fact that most any screw-up with a vac can be corrected--it just takes a lot longer to build. The Aeroclub pdf is well worth reading, BTW.

Mark Schynert

I made the jump with the Dynavector 1/48 TSR.2: I just HAD to have one. I agree, the Aeroclub article is very useful, and the TSR.2 had some tips from Taro with the instructions, too. I used a white-board black marker (the dry wipe type so I could rub it off easily after the part was out) to draw into the angle between the part and the carrier sheet, and then sanded away with a combination of sandpaper taped to glass or a sanding block, depending on the part until you could see the black through the sheet, and then watched the extra carrier sheet peel away when it got paper thin. The main tip was to drop in Taro's recommended braces and glue them in before doing the sanding. (He suggests cutting strips of plastic card or rectangular section and dropping them across the larger sections (e.g. main fuselage components) so that they settle to where they fit, and then gluing them with liquid cement)

Mine went together OK, and looks like a TSR.2 (albeit one in service in a naval strike reconnaissance role in about 1980, with wrap around camo). I'm not _rushing_ to do the Aeroclub Meteor NF.12 (to build as a TT.20) that I also have, but I think if you have Aeroclub or Dynavector kits, then you're on the safest foundations you can be for getting into vac-form building.

Best regards, Matt

Someone built the thing, SOB IIRC (although I don't know if you can say SOB when it comes to vacs) in an old SAM issue I think. Want some scans of the article?

HTH Bonehammer

Where can this be found?

Thank you all very much for good advise and links. May be the twin-boomed Sea Vixen is not really a starter kit - my first idea was Dynavector's Javelin, but it was not available at Hannant's, so I ordered the Sea Vixen (I must have one!) If it's too much for me, I'll try something easier (Wyvern?) first, if not, you may see it at Hyperscale one day.

I wonder why there are no injection-moulded kits in 1/48 of all these great airplanes....Attacker, Sea Vixen, Canberra, Javelin, Swift, Scimitar, Gannet, Sea Vixen, Wyvern (what is a Wyvern? not in my dictionary) I would buy them all. At least there is an Sea Hawk announced by Classic airframes. Ingo

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