Some of you have read already that I go to flea markets and do some of my sourcing there (see my Faller AMS post for instance). Sometimes you might get really vintage kits and if you are lucky they are even complete. Mostly the plastic or resin parts will be OK but the decals are a different issue. You’ll find that they are yellowing and worse even splitting.
Yellowing: Paperbacking and/or Varnish discolour the decal.
Cracking: Cracking or micro cracking are physical defects of the decal.
If your kit has only one of these defects you are lucky, because there are a couple of ways to rectify these issues. Have a look at the http://www.oldmodelkits.com/blog site. In the blog they have some articles about restoring damaged decals. On the site itself they sell vintage model kits.
Worse than cracking and yellowing to the decals are damages to the plastic parts or missing parts. If a kit is still packed in it’s original package and maybe sealed the chances of missing parts are a bit smaller than if the package has been opened and the kit is part assembled.
As a teenager I remember having built quite some airplane kits in 1/72 scale but also two 1/35 scale WW1 planes, both kits from the 60′s or 70′s by Revell. A Fokker DIII (Tri-Plane) was one of them. One of the body sides was badly twisted as if if got warm. Obviously there was no direct assembly possible, that twist had to go first. The body panel was slowly heated up until it could safely be twisted back into it’s original “shape”.
Now that was not enough though since it wouldn’t stay in that position. So I heated it again and used sellotape to fix it to the other body panel and let it cool down.Instead of just heating the body panel (hot air pistol, blow dryer, etc.) you could opt for soaking the twisted part in hot water and then work it to fit the counterpart.
If a part is actually broken you can just glue it back together, like you would anyway do with the model later on. Depending on the broken part you could opt for repair “on” the model, once the part gets glued to another part.
Missing parts are a bigger deal. If it is a really vintage kit you might not actually be able to replace it. You can only find a replacement (donor kit) or a badly broken model. Chances are low that you’ll find it. So you’ll have to scratch build the part or , if it is a part available a second time in the kit you could copy it. Everything failed? You still have the chance to make this model into a custom project where you use the parts available and create something new or keep it in your parts box.
BTW, the link above also leads to a site where you can order some really nice vintage models! Just remove the “blog” from the URL and you can browse …
Tags: Decal, How-To, Plastic Kit, Restoration