Restoring a model from the scrapheap or junk box.

[mcollazo]

Scrapheap is Alive and Well

Well not all of it. I was able to revive some of the scrap heap airplanes, and Helo's  Here are some pictures, enjoy.

[mcollazo]

More back from the scrap heap.  Some of these I finished last night! 

[tigercat2]

This gentleman (and modeler par excellence) works in my office and is an Absolute GENIUS when it comes to resurrecting kits.  Some of these kits from the scrapheap were built in 1970 (!) and I thought I would never see them intact again.  Talk about a blast from the past!! 


Wes W.

[B777LR]

Thats what i call skill!

[mcollazo]

I'll be posting the rest of the scrap heap tomorrow.  There were a lot of good kits that have been salvaged to a new life, its amazing what crazy glue, sandpaper, paint and a little bit of patience will do.

[mcollazo]

These are additional items restored from the scrapheap the list is long so bear with me!

1) Ta 152 restored with new landing gear new cockpit and new prop. Back to life!
2) Open Cockpit Machi restored it was in pieces within the scrapheap
3) Hurricane see if you can spot it on one of the scrapheap pictures Hint it was brown
4) Love the FW-190 specially the color scheme on this guy.  Did not have props or anything else so a donor model gave its wings to a good cause.

[mcollazo]

Here are other models restored from the heap.

1)  Not from the heap but from my sons room he is a fan of Flight of the Intruder so hear is my version of Cool Hands' 505  This plane was built for an NJROTC project.
2)  Told you I love the FW190 and the colors that were on these birds are fantastic!
3)  Same bird but a belly shot.  This scheme was used at the end of WWII to prevent the Flak Gunners from hitting their own planes.
4)  Another favorite subject Spanish Civil War Me-109, even though this model was not used in 39 it still looks good.

[mcollazo]

Restoration has been going on for about a month now so here are some more models from the heap!

1)  Israel - Me-109/Avia
2)  Me-163 The Comet Rocket Plane- First and only rocket fighter restored from the scrapheap, it was missing tail, cockpit and was a little bit sad, but it now has its stand, antena, opened the rocket engine exhaust, added the prop for the generator and a figure.  The other item is that this is a 1/72 so this model is tiny and did not have its windows behind the cockpit opened, so.... here comes dremel!  and some Crystal Clear and voila instant windows.
3)  Yeah the tires look fat but at least he has tires!  The plane was intact but no landing gear now at least it has fresh decals and gear.
4)  Love this little bi plane it was in pieces broken bottom wing and half the gear was missing, struts were everywhere now he is back together and a happy  model.

[mcollazo]

More rebuilds from the scrapheap.

1)  An Aichi Serian - this one is not a restore but an awakening.  I had not built anything in years and TigerCat got me exited about the hobby again.  I love seaplanes specially the japanese and this one the Serian was launched from a submarine aircraft carrier.  Look the I401 and I400 on google for their story.  Anyway this is my version.
2) Oh this is another favorite the Dornier 335 Arrow - this guy was a gonner and was given to me by tigercat as a do what you can I really don't want it.  Well a little sandpaper, paint and spares and we have a Dornier serving in North Africa.
3)  Inspired by pictures of captured German planes this Dornier sports a natural metal finish. The finish is actually natural metal (aluminum foil).
4)  How about a Siamese WWII plane, SIAM was an allied of Japan so they got some of their fighters, I loved the camouflage scheme and  had to save this one, even though it had no gear, canopy, missing a tailplane and the wing was in three pieces it's now showing its stripes once more.

[mcollazo]

Last batch of the night

Here are the last four fighters,  Tomorrow I will post a how to so you can see for yourself the restore process.

1)  This one can be spotted in the heap its the Corsair this one in US colors
2)  Another former scrapheap member is this Dauntless.  The canopy was termaformed from another model as it was completely gone. New paint and landing gear (scratch)
3)  I'm proud of this one it was in five pieces, I had to termaform part of the pants and added the lights and bombs, one of the winglets was gone so I scratchbuilt the other one and then I had to match the paint from 30 years ago, new stirene struts and we have a Lysander!
4)  Yak 9 the little fighter was elevator less, (donated from a generous P-40)  gearless (scratch) and propless (spares).  Had trouble matching the paint but in the field you used whatever paint you could get so its not too bad.

[BlackOps]

It's nice to see all of these aircraft brought back to life!    
I must admit, I myself would have been tempted to try to fuse every single one of thos kits into some sort of monstrous flying behemoth

I think you probably made the right choice  

[mcollazo]

If you've been following the saga of the scrapheap you have seen a few models brought back to life.

I will try to document what I did to bring the models back to the living, from the dulldrum of their life in the junk box or scrapheap.

The subject for the night is a Regiiane RE2000 Falco I

this is how it looked when I found it in the scrapheap.

It has a cracked wing, no gear, no prop part of the couling is missing and the canopy is history, the bird itself is in good shape but how to get it back?

[mcollazo]

A leg to stand on.

Well the first thing I start is with the landing gear.  Luckily this Falco has part of the gear still intact so I used stretched sprue to lengthen both legs to the same size.  The Falco also used a 90 degree rotation to close its gear similar to the P-40 and the Corsair, so I looked in the spares for something to use to simulate these parts that were missing.

Another lucky strike was that rumaging through the spares I located  the falco canopy.  I will do another how to do your own on another post.  At this stage I also opened up the gun ports using a round file.

[mcollazo]

Now for wheels....

Well I looked in the spares box and I did not find any two wheels that could fit so what's a guy to do?   SPRUE!

Now for the warnings and caveats,

1)  Sprue is melted typically with the heat source of a candle.
2)  Candles are open flames and need to be respected.  Make absolutely sure that you have proper fire extinguishing equipment i.e. a certified and functioning fire extinguisher in your shop before you light a candle!
3)  Remove all paints, varnishes, and anything else that is flamable from your work area.
4)  When working with sprue remember plastic is flamable and if you heat it too much it will catch fire.  Have an open water container (bucket, dish something) where you can dunk the sprue if it catches on fire.
5)  Watch your clothing and hair a drop of hot plastic on your clothes they could catch on fire and so will you.

If this has not scared you enough let me warn you this is dangerous stuff.  Spend the money and buy the tires they only cost a couple of bucks at squadron.  I was on a hurry so I made my own.

Enough caveats you have been warned enough.

If at first you don't succeed sprue sprue sprue!

I basically melt the end of a sprue (preferably the color of the wheel (black)) and then I mold it to shape.

To do the molding of the wheel I first heat the sprue to where it's about to melt then I form it using the top of a table.  The bottom of a smooth containter that will not melt (preferably metal) also works good.  If the shape doesn't come out right (too thin/thick) just meld again and reform.

In the picture It seems that I am using the wing as a mold I am not it would melt the wing!  I am just sizing the cooled part to see if the size is right.  If it doesn't fit the wheelwell well its too big, too small and it would look like it rattles.  Once the size is right then I saw it off the sprue with a fine tooth modeling saw (one of my good friends). 

Feel free to post questions.

[mcollazo]

Once you have both tires you need to drill a nice hole (where is that dremel!)  so it will fit in its shiny new axle.  Once again the spares box supplied a prop and I took the engine out and detailed the back row of cylinders with flat black followed by a dry brushing of silver.  Once that was in it was time to make a cowling.  Again the scrapheap and spare came to the rescue with a donor cowling edge from another cowling.  Now I am lucky but not that lucky that I would find an IDENTICAL couling to the Falco.  So I had to cut it from the donor cowling, remove a piece of it on top and superglue it.  It came really close (close enough for government or resurecting dead airplanes).  So in it went.