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Water Baths


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Hi Folks.

My Storm Eagle has arrived from Forge World, and apart from the rear hatch (which is getting replaced) its in pretty good condition. Unfortunately, a few of the parts are twisted or bent to varying degrees.

I'm told this can be fixed by using a hot water bath and bending by hand into the desired position. I've not used this type of resin before and was wondering if this is an effective technique, and if so, what temperature works best.

Thanks for your input.

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Resin, like styrene is thermodynamic. Add heat and they will soften, and once they cool they return to the original hardness. More heat give you more softness, but it will always stiffen once cool.

 

It's safe enough to use water as hot as boiling, but that's only really needed for bad warping of really thick parts. Just take it at a reasonable pace and try to soften it only enough to get the job done. Dip the warped area in the water for a few second to start, and see if that's enough. If yes, great, make the adjustment. If not, dip for a few more seconds, and try again. 'Rinse and Repeat' until you get the desired correction.

 

That said, if the warping is minor you can usually use just really hot tap water or a hair dryer set on high to get enough heat/softness to make the correction. These will warm the piece plenty for most jobs I've found.

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Any danger of leaving fingerprints in the resin using this method?

 

I've never had it happen, but I always try to error on the side of caution. I add as little heat as I need to get the job done, just to avoid this possibility. I've also never had anything seriously warped that needed lots of correction. Might be an interesting test to take some scrap resin, get it very warm/hot, and see what limits it has.

 

Even with a lot of heat I don't think it's an major possibility. When softened, resin gets flexible, but not really soft like toffy. If I can de-mould a still curing resin cast of something that really is toffy-like in it consistency and not leave finger prints (and I do, all the time) I don't think heat will be a problem.

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Thanks for the tips. I'm going to have a few trial attempts with some of the sprue off cuts before trying anything on the parts themselves. It's an eighty quid model after all.

Funny that the possibility of fingerprints has come up, because there's actually a couple of places on the fuselage where very faint fingerprints can be seem. It's only on what I'd describe as non-detail areas, so I'd have been sanding those parts down anyway, but it was unexpected to see them.

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Well, I had a stab at it this morning and it worked great. Even some quite severe kinks and twists only took a couple of tries to get out.

I just used hot tap water and left the parts in for a minute or two. When they came out, I applied a little pressure to bend them the way i wanted, then left them to settle for a bit. If they were still bent, they went back in the bath.

Job done.

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Well, I've bathed all the parts and started construction. I'm going to build it in sections, so I can paint various parts before final assembly. I'll be using green stuff to fill gaps and also magnetising certain parts so I can swap out weapons etc.

There are a few places where the big joins wander a bit from an exact fit, but I think they are all under 0.5mm at worst. I figure I can use the old triple combo of pinning with brass rod/superglue/clamping with rubber bands to iron these out.

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