Shaping Sheet Styrene

Well, the description of the problem you got is sketchy, but the general answer ould be: 1) sanding block 2) shaping the styrene hot.

1 - The sanding block is a mighty handy tool for many jobs. While you can buy apropriate cork blocks you might consider cutting one yourself out of soft wood two-by four or something like that. The wooden block has to fit your hand nicely, and it's good to radius one edge of it a little bit to assist in sanding inner radiuses. Then you cover the block with sandpaper (Good durable 120 grit sandpaper is best for heavy work on the styrene) and fasten it to the block with two flat-headed thumbtacks. Using such a block you can work large flat surfaces (like the alignment surface of two fuselage halves) and sand down large quantities of styrene, among many others.

2 - Sometimes heating up a piece of styrene and then shaping it while it's hot saves a lot of sanding. It's hard to be more specific here, because the details depend on the part to be created. Sometimes you can make a wooden tool, over which you can stretch a heated peace of styrene sheet to extrude it, then you let it cool down a bit and cut the needed part out. Just an example.

Hope it helps, good luck with your project and have a nice day

Paweł

Thanks for the response. Sorry for the poor description of the part; I'm not sure of the technical term.. I think it's aileron.

Anyways.. I think heating it might actually be my best option. if you don't mind... How would I go about doing this? Exposing it directly to a flame? I don't want to burn anything. Thanks again.

Well, your options depend on the gear you have at hand. A small, steady flame would be OK, just try to move the part to be heated a lot, so as not to melt only one point of it. Other good option is some elctric heater, like an electric stove or stuff like that. Just make sure you shape the part first and have some material to trim later, this helps. It's good to have something to hold the part by - either excess material or a dedicated holder, frame, something like that. It's best to arrange the heat source side by side with the shaping tool (a kind of die, or something like this) steadily secured, for instance in a vise, so as to have both hands to hold the part to be shaped. If I was from the USA, this would also be the point where I'd write a lenghty disclaimer and a fire warning . Good luck again

Paweł

Your problem is why I use wood when scratch building.  I have power tools but styrene tends to melt when you power sand it. With wood I use a modeler's plane and can shape things like ailerons very well. X-acto makes a fine modeler's plane.  And, you can start with aileron stock or trailing edge stock from a hobby shop and go from there.  That will cut down on the work.    However, these stocks shapes are in balsa wood, and basswood carves better than balsa, so I'd recommend using basswood stock.

Suggest you also bring this up in the "scratchbuilding" forum here at FSM forums.

Yes I should have posted this in scratchbuilding.. My apologies.  Thank you both for your advice. I think I'm going to try using wood instead of styrene.. Don't know why I didn't think of that before. I'm assuming I can find the X-Acto plane at  acmoore or michael's. Thanks again guys.

I super-glued two pieces of flat styrene together to get the correct width.

That's where you screwed up...

You should have used a second strip that was about a third to half the width of the first one...

Then you fill the gap between the trailing edge of the first one and the trailing edge of the second one with putty, making sure you over-fill a bit, using a plastic spreader to make the putty smooth..  Then wet-sand the putty down to shape with a sanding block and 180-grit wet-or-dry sandpaper. After that, you wet-sand the sand-scratches out with finer and finer grades until it's smooth as styrene....

Make sure that you use an alcohol-based putty like Testor's or you can melt the styrene... Squadron Green might work too, but I've never used it for that kind of work, so no promises..

Contact me back-channel for a drawing of the above technique.. It'll be clear then...

Yeah, that definitely is the way I should have gone. I ended up building them out of balsa and they seem to be turning out fine. I shaped them in about 30 seconds and now I'm applying several coats of primer before I fill the gaps in the balsa because its so light and "airy" if that makes sense. I'll use either squadron putty or wood filler.. I'll try the wood filler first.

Does this sound resonable or am I out of my mind??

In the chance someone was interested....

I ended up shaping therm with balsa, then laid down 3 coats of enamel primer. Then I applied elmer's wood filler at one end and carefully spread it with the edge of a credit card followed by light sanding. The wood filler process was repeated 3 times followed by more primer and voila! I'd show pictures but I don't have a decent camera.

Pretty labor-intensive IMHO... But if you're happy with the results, then well done...

Thank you Mr. Hammer. As it turns out, I also made the ailerons in the fashion you described. I prefer the results from your method to the balsa ones I made previously. Thanks for the tip!

Anytime, my friend.. Anytime... Glad it worked out for ya..

JTBuckley

In the chance someone was interested....

I ended up shaping therm with balsa, then laid down 3 coats of enamel primer. Then I applied elmer's wood filler at one end and carefully spread it with the edge of a credit card followed by light sanding. The wood filler process was repeated 3 times followed by more primer and voila! I'd show pictures but I don't have a decent camera.

The amount of effort needed to fill balsa is why I use basswood.

One with primer, one without. Both using the method described by Hans. The curvature is far from perfect but I prefer them immensely to the kit-supplied part. Sorry for poor picture quality.

Ahhhhh I don't think I posted the pictures correctly. Sorry.

You can't upload directly.. Host them on a photo site like Photobucket.  Then when you open the picture there, right-click on it it, click "properties", then highlight and copy the url address.  Then come in here, reply, open the photo-window by clicking on the little film strip icon up top, then paste the url in there, and click "insert"...

This one better work.

Looks like you posted the thumbnail...  Did you click on the picture after you uploaded it to get to the full-size one, or is that the size you uploded?

The one on the left is sporting squadron green putty...I ran out of white. I wanted to match the curvature of the wing on the bottom of the aileron as well but no luck yet.

Feel free to criticize/help