Bob B Posted January 30, 2002 Posted January 30, 2002 My son has been discovered the joy of playing with Airfix and Revell 1/72 scale WW2 soldiers. There are also several other European brands available. I loved these when I was a kid. Now there are more types available. WW1 figures, French Foreign Legion, Civil war, Japanese, German Engineers, Arabs, etc. However, now they also come with sorts of figures that come in multiple pieces, and require gluing to stay together. I have washed them off in rubbing alcohol and tried several types of glue ( contact cement, CA/super glue, and model airplane cement) but nothing will permenantly bond them together. After the least bit of playing with they still come apart. Any one got any good ideas?
Jason Posted January 31, 2002 Posted January 31, 2002 This is a tough one, and unfortunately I cannot think of a good way to approach this little problem. The major problem is that most 1/72 scale military figs are a soft plastic as opposed to polystyrene. That's why model cement won't work on them usually. I've always used CA for them when I put them in dioramas, but I don't think CA is really what you want if they are going to be enduring the play of a youngin'. I know that model cement simply won't set correctly on this type of plastic. When I used to play with the Airfix and MPC figures as a kid, I can't recall really gluing any of them. A good deal of the Airfix guys didn't require gluing. Maybe Jacques or one of the others has some ideas, sorry I couldn't be of any real help .... [Edited by Jason (31 Jan 2002).]
Jacques Posted January 31, 2002 Posted January 31, 2002 well, tha plastic use in those figures is almost a vinyl, which is almost chemicaly inert. You can give it one more go with Tenax 7, a "hot" glue, that has some stonger qualities than regular testors glue. Other than that, you may have to find the figures that come in plastic form to glue, or the one-piece figures that only require paint...and as I recall, too much handeling will cause the paint to flake off...oh the joy. Glad to see the younger ones are getting into it. My daughters at starting to try and help me make my models "pretty"
Brad Sallows Posted January 31, 2002 Posted January 31, 2002 sigh...I still have a couple thousand of those little plastic beggars around... Washing (dish soap and water) seems to help paint stick. Fastening: I heated the tip of a nail on a top burner element of an electric stove. Then, very carefully I melted and "muddled" the plastic of two parts I wanted to join (eg. the underside of a base for a horse and the plastic pin that fitted a hole in the base). If I didn't succeed on the first go, I wouldn't continue further because the likelihood of screwing up the figure increased. I never did it with small parts, which all seemed to have decent friction fit - in fact, in most cases the fit was good enough. Nor did I bother fastening riders to horses. I'm not certain the plastic ever really mixed well between the two parts - occasionally two pieces would separate cleanly after cooling. It is best to first experiment by trying to join two pieces of plastic flash. I wonder if a sticky substance like pine resin or tar would work.
Gennady I. Beregovoy Posted January 31, 2002 Posted January 31, 2002 Not familiar with 1/72 figures but me suggest: file or sand the areas to be glued. This will roughen the surfaces, like grooves or something. Maybe that'll work.
Bob B Posted February 1, 2002 Author Posted February 1, 2002 Thanks for the suggestions. Back when I first got into these little figures, back in the 1960's!, they usually didn't come in multipe parts requiring glue. IIRC, All we had back then were the Airfix guys. Has anyone ever contacted Airfix or Revell about what to use? BTW, even though they are all suppose to be the same scale the figures made by Revell seem a little bit bigger and show better detail. There are even some WW1 Brit Horse Arty units that I think are pretty cool, however my boy didn't seem to interested in these. Oh well...
DougRichards Posted February 1, 2002 Posted February 1, 2002 Bluntly speaking, nothing will glue these figures. It is possible to gain some temporary adhesion using a rubber-type cememt, which sort of sticks to to them. Airfix used to recommend a British product called 'Bostick' (the same people who make blu-tack - that plasticene type temporary adhesive - more of which later). I have resorted, in the case of horses on bases, to using a soldering iron applied from underneath to melt the pin on the bottom of the hoof to the base. Some of the old Airfix horse to base matches were terrible anyway. A possible way to glue these figues to bases for other purposes, such as play, is to to use two-part epoxy - not as a glue as such, but to go around and over the base of the figure - embedding the base in epoxy. Blu-tack in itself can provide temporary adhesion for play purposes as well. To paint these figures, try painting the figure with super-glue to form a rigid shell that the paint will adhere to, ordinary varnish can also be used for this. I have some 20 year old Airfix figures that have lost their plasticiser - they go rigid and so brittle that simply dropping them can break them. Even these won't glue as such.
nfafan Posted February 1, 2002 Posted February 1, 2002 Originally posted by Bob B:Any one got any good ideas? Just one.. Try swimming pool patch cement. It has worked well for me in gluing the 1-pce tracks on tank kits. But then, they don't get much rough-housing! Pity shame that these neat little figures are'nt molded in hard styrene like a model kit is. They'd take paint, glue, etc so much better!
DougRichards Posted February 1, 2002 Posted February 1, 2002 Originally posted by nfafan:Just one.. Try swimming pool patch cement. It has worked well for me in gluing the 1-pce tracks on tank kits. But then, they don't get much rough-housing! Pity shame that these neat little figures are'nt molded in hard styrene like a model kit is. They'd take paint, glue, etc so much better! Some companies have made 1/72 in polystyrene - including Hasagawa, Esci , Aifix and Matchbox, generally as crew for AFV and guns. These are usually in more than one piece - ie arms need to be be attached, any weapons need careful straightening and they are fragile. They also seem to have a propenisity for shrink holes.
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