I have a locomotive shell I wi***o use for a project. It is an N scale Rivarossi E8 shell. It has a rather annoying bow on the engineer’s side behind the cab on the long hood. It bows inward.
Is there anyway that I can restore it to its straight walled shape, or at the very least, lessen the severity of the bending?
I was thinking about putting something inside of the shell to push it outward so that the side is straight; but I’m not sure if I should heat the side to make the plastic softer…?
You might want to try softening the plastic in hot water and reshaping and letting it cool. Hot water should make the plastic a little soft. Use Hot water from the tap, NOT boiling water.
I haven’t had much luck using hot water to fix bowed styrene. Yes, it fixed the problem, but it created all kinds of other unwanted curves in the process.
After fooling with it for a lot longer than expected, I got acceptible results, consider this to be a lucky break, and have henceforth retired the technique.
Use the green or white body putty instead of Bondo. Bondo heats as it sets up and can cause more problems on the thin plastic shell of N scale models. I got a small tube of the putty at my LHS, only to find a huge tube at the local auto parts store for the same proce as the LHS. As with Bondo, drill some small holes in the bent area to help the putty “get a grip”.
I am assuming you are referring to Squadron putty. It is great stuff and you will find several uses for it. They also sell sanding and smoothing kits for their putty.
But unfortunately, the bow is too large to be filled with putty of any kind. And that will not bring the inner wall back to its original shape, unless I filed that down.
Could the hot water technique work if I possibly had a large block in the shell to prevent the rest from warping?
obviously, you’re not going to be happy until you give it a try and gain some experience. experience is defined as doing everything wrong until you learn better.
well, here goes: fit a block of wood to the inside cavity. if the warp is too great to pu***he side out on the first try, you will do this in increments. with the block holding tension on the part you want to bend; tickle the foundation of that bend with heat from an industrial heatgun until that bend “relaxes” and let it cool down while the wood holds the shape you want. keep doing this until you get the results you are looking for, or destroy the shell beyond repair.
the trick here is that you have to be positive with the plastic, and tell it where it is going to go. if you don’t keep complete control, it is likely to get away from you. wishing or hopeing it does what you want is not enough. create a path of least resistance that only lets the plastic go where you want.
an industrial heatgun is like a blowdrier; only it puts out real heat and can wreck things real quick. a blowdrier is not an industrial heatgun.
N scale is a bit small to be doing this to. good luck.
take notes and tell us your story when you’re done. it ought to be pretty entertaining, and take pictures.