Vacuform GB is On!

Hi Guys....

Pretty quiet around here. I guess we all have had our share of woes that have kept us
from the vacuums........

I have again returned to the Heinkel and will take a pic or two this week.....well we still
have some time left for the GB......

 Happy Vacu-building....

Gera

 Hi, Gera, for your request for wwII vacuform kits. Combat Models has about 4 . Avro "Anson", Breda 65,Fiat G-50,MC-200. All these kits are around  $37.95 and he has parts kits for all.The part kits are about $25.00  ..Call and ask for Robert Models,#570-450-6547. He will take a check. No visa cards. I have built all these and they make a nice model. Good luck.

 Bulldog 3

   Hi fellows. new as of today, the vacuform building cought my eye as I was looking over some

   things on this site would love to be a member. I have been building vacuform for quite some time and to be honest once I learned a lots of tricks about them they became my type of models to build. I have over 152 now built. And my stock room has quite a few more I have not built yet. All of these are 1/32 models, I also have quite a few 1/48 vac.models also.I us to be  only in 1/48, untill I built my first 1/32 Vacuform model. I found it quite enjoyable.  I read that some of the GB member might be finding these kits hard to find. I' be glad to help anyone who wish to find one or a certain type of model. I have a big list of where I have and do find models I won"t.

Working on  1/32.. Japanese Betty, 1/32 ...Sea Wolf.

Here's a short update on the D.XXI, for anyone still following along.

Finally got the tube frame/cockpit painted and glued into the fuselage.  Of course, I only realized after gluing it in that I had forgotten to add belts to the seat.  Not too late, fortunately.  Also glued covers over the opening at the front of the fuselage to create a firewall.

Unfortunately, the hardest parts are still to come.  The wing to fuselage joint is going to be horrible, and I will have to fabricate wing fillets since the kit basically ignored those.  Also, the vacuform canopies are very inaccurate and poor quality, so I'm going to heat-and-smash my own using clear styrene over the white styrene form that I cut out over the cockpit from the original mold.  Pressing on!

Cheers!

Joerugby - Would love to see some pics of the P-51H.  Post many and often.

Here's finally a few pics from my Wings Fokker D.XXI build.  Things are moving slowly but steadily these days, getting close to closing up the fuselage.  Here's the tube frame and cockpit.  Scratchbuilt it all from styrene rod and sheet.

Here's another view:

I realized too late that the seat is a little underscale, but I think it'll be OK in the end.

Here's a shot in the fuselage, the trick will be getting it centered between the fuselage halves once close up.  I'm considering cutting the canopy area out to see better in the fuselage, though I've read to wait until the halves are glued together before cutting out the canopy to avoid uneven joints. 

I've also got a scratch instrument panel built up, but I've got to paint the frame and interior before adding that.  More to come.

Hi Guys.............

Lost myself with my Scratchbuilt B-18 Bolo for a while,but last night I concluded the fuselage of my model, so I´ll place some pics later this week........Great Bloplan Armored Car!!!!!

Happy to see you guys are at work.............. 

Gentlemen,

I just picked up a 1/72 Wings P51H that I was going to incorporate into a "Mustang Ranch" build.  Mind if I post photos here?

Jeff,

This turned out ot be a quick build, Kubus is finished. It was basically OTB with a few scratch additions. Here are pictures of the finished project.

Mike T.

Jeff;

Thank you for the comments. Just by the nature of the kit its easy to build. I am going to try to add a little more life to the model by building up the front suspension a little bit. The kit only goes for a rod connecting the tires. I'll make a rough appearance of the forward wheel and tie-rod set up.

I might start another vacuform as well. There are three kits I have cut out but not sanded down. This would be either the Broplan PZL P.46 "Sum" in 1/72, the Wings 72 Fokker T.VIII (twin engine floatplane) or the Wings 48 PZL P.46. I am tending to the Fokker, but the Broplan P.46 will complete my collection of Polish pre-war prototypes. 

Mike T.

Excellent work, Mike.  You're the most recent to join the group build, and at this rate, you'll be the first to finish!  I'm waiting for some plastic sheet stock to arrive before proceeding with my Fokker D.XXI, but the internal tube frame for the cockpit is almost done.  I'll post some pics soon.

Looks like you and I may be the only active members of this group build at the moment.  We started with 4 or 5 guys, but haven't heard anything in a while.  Keep posting the pics!

I dug out "Kubus" from my stash and was surprised how easy it started. At this time the armor shell is nearly assembled with exterior gear except for the rear view mirrors. The chassis is about 50% done. I plan to add some more details than the kit called for. A replacement lamp was used for the exterior as the kit one was not correct to the original type.

This is an ugly vehicle, no doubt about it. It was based upon the chassis of a Chevrolet 3 ton truck built pre-war under license in Poland. Weathering will be light as it was assembled and sent right into battle. Here are some pictures so far.

This is the kit package with some of the white metal parts supplied.

Early view of the two part shell halves assembled. There are inside plastic strips added to support the fusing of the two halves.

The main chassis components assembled as well as the tire halves glued together.

The shell with primer and added parts. I had to add new weld lines after sanding erased the previous ones.

Mike T.

Solid;

I have several vacuform kits in my stash, mostly Wings48 & 72 and Broplan kits. When I get home tonight I'll see which one I'll build. There is one armor kit as well, that is a 1/35 kit of Kubus. Kubus was a makeshift armor car that the Polish Home Armor used in the 1944 Warsaw Uprising.  Here's some information on it. The vacuform is from a Polish company. I'll definetly do that one, but I might do a small airplane as well.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kubuś

http://www.achtungpanzer.com/pol/kubus.htm

Mike T.

Had to go all the way to page 3 to find this thread.  Just checking for any status reports out there.  I finally got the bench cleared off and started work on the D.XXIs tube frame.  I'll post a couple of pictures in a day or two if anyone out there is still interested.

Cheers!

Hi Guys.............

 Am still here, and will shoot a pic or two of the Heinkel. I am also finishing 2 solid wood models, the B-18 Bolo and a Cant-501 which have taken more time than was planned!!!!!........keep pitching guys!!!!glad to see you all in the battle.......................

Rob, why don´t you substitute the plastic card with " cardboard " for the track....it works perfectly and you can make each "track link" with a ruler and pointer. I did this for a Renault WW1 tank and no one could guess how I had done them...... several leyers or cardboard will get you the thikness you want.

jeff wrote:

Rob, that looks like an interesting build.  Have to say I've never seen vacuformed tracks.  How on earth are you going to get them into shape!?

jeff wrote:

Rob, that looks like an interesting build.  Have to say I've never seen vacuformed tracks.  How on earth are you going to get them into shape!?

Yeah - good question.  How thick is the plastic?  I wonder if it's thin enough that you can bend it fairly easily.

I think it's great that you're tackling a vac armor kit - it's pretty rare that you see one of those done.  I can't wait to see how it turns out.

Bruce

OK, dug my vacuformed kit out and here it is in all its splendor. Picture one is the front cover. It looks like someone in Spring Lake, NJ paid $2.50 for this kit originally.

Picture two show you what $2.50 got you when you bought this kit. The green items in the plastic bag are the injection molded road wheels, drive sprocket, exhaust and gun tube.

Picture three is a close up of the vacuformed parts. Sixteen vacuformed pieces and eighteen plastic pieces. I believe I have a detail set that was available for this kit that added pioneer tools and objects like that. I will search for that set.

I'm still here with my half and half XP-72. Just had very little building lately! I've made a little progress, but nothing that would really show in pics!

Charlie 

I'm still here, too.  I've also got a couple of other projects I'm trying to clear out so I can devote the lions share of my time to the D.XXI.  I did pick up some plastic tube stock yesterday at my LHS to build the tube frame with.  I tried to stretch some sprue to use for the tubes, but just couldn't get the consistent size I was looking for.  I also found a nice internal diagram of the interior to help lay out the tube structure.  Also shimmed up the cowling to get it back in round.  Other than that, no updates and nothing picture-worthy. 

Aaron, sorry about the backorder.  I was really looking forward to seeing how the Sherpa went.  Any idea how long before delievery?

We're still here.  I'm just backlogged on my scratchbuilding project so I probably won't get to the KC-10 for a while.

Bruce

arrrrgh, my order arrived and no Sherpa it is backordered.

I'm off to ebay, I'll let you know what I end up with.

Where did everyone else go on this, don't make me struggle with a vac kit alone.

Lets bump this one back up to the top with a quick update.  Started on my Wings Fokker D.XXI a few days ago.  Got the fuselage halves cut out, the wings cut out and glued together, along with the horizontal stabalizer halves.  Here's an initial pick of everything taped together:

Note the canyons at the wing roots, and the poorly shaped wing fillet.  Things like this are probably why only 4-5 guys signed up for this madness!  I guess using your brains and stretching your modeling skills are what make vacuforms fun, though. I had to reinforce the forward fuselage halves to get them to line up.  Pretty successful here:

Despite careful sanding to help ensure the minimum amount of plastic was removed, the cowling did not come out round.  I'm shimming in styrene strips with white glue to figure out how much to add to get it back in shape:

Hope to start scratch-building the interior soon.  The D.XXI had a tube frame, so I'm thinking stretched sprue is the way to go.  I have some nice pics of the instrument panel and forward cockpit, but can't find any of the seat and aft area.  Guess I'll have to make an educated guess. 

Any other Vac GB updates out there?

I thought I had heard good things about Roll Models which is why I decided to give it a try. Looks like a good selection and decent prices, which I thought makes up for the rather spartan site. Apparently they are rather slow, I figured 2-3 weeks not a big deal, I have stuff to work on, after 3 weeks I'm starting to wonder though. At least they don't charge until they ship so worst case I just have to order all over again from someone else. If my order isn't at least in the mail next friday I'll be surfing ebay for something interesting to try out, vacuform adds a whole new dimension to whats available so I wan't to give it a try when there are others building along that know what they are doing.

We had a better than usual tax return this year so my modeling budget was expanded a bit and I thought I'd try out a few of the other online shops I'd never used before. I've found Megahobby (which advertises here) is pretty quick, and I am very happy with Tower hobby, fast, good prices and a fixed shipping rate, it also has the best selection of Model Master Acryl I've found online. Still waiting on Roll Models and Lucky Models.

2 or 3 weeks!!!, are they making it for you??????.......checked their site, what an awfull place!!!

Good luck!!!!