Hawkeye’s Squawkbox

Well not exactly true but an issue one needs to pay attention to is what heat and humidity can do to a model. Yesterday evening we had our monthly IPMS Chapter meeting here at my place for a cookout. One of our members Bruce Williams loaded his models into his car before he left for work, figuring he’d go directly to the meeting afterwards…makes perfect sense considering going home first is in the totally opposite direction.

Bruce left his models in his car for the day…which wasn’t probably a wise thing to do considering we were experiencing some rather hot and humid weather. Fortunately no ill effects came to the model itself, however…his base didn’t fair as well.

Bruce mounted his model on a base made from pine…the heat that the wood was exposed to inside his vehicle was enough to get the sap (remember this is dried lumber) to ooze from within. The results…beads of pine pitch around the edges of the base.

You can see the glossy areas in the black border of the base…that is pine pitch oozing out of the woodgrain.

Heat can cause warping, sagging and in extreme circumstances melt a model into a lump of goo. Even when the ambient air temperature is lower than the melting point of the plastic…the temps inside a vehicle can exceed safe levels. Please take the precautions to protect your labors so you have a model that isn’t suffering from heat stress…it is a hard one to repair and is usually fatal…for both the model and the modelers ego.

Oh by the way…GREAT work Bruce!

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 16th, 2008 at 1:10 pm and is filed under Tips & Techniques. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.