Our last post on glues, cements, and solvents for plastic model building promised a part two – tips to help you know which adhesive is best for your particular project, as well as useful tools for precision placement of your adhesive.
First, let’s talk about the pros and cons of each adhesive …
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Tom’s Corner
Tips, techniques and commentary from Master Model Railroader Tom Piccirillo
One of my favorite hobby activities is rebuilding old model railroad equipment that I have acquired over the years from friends, estate sales, and flea markets. I think it’s really cool to transform what appears to be a pile of junk into a high quality model. So, the time came to restore a beat-up O scale brass model of a Pennsylvania P54 coach that’s been in storage for about 35 years.
Tom’s Corner
Tips, techniques and commentary from Master Model Railroader Tom Piccirillo
Back in the 1960’s, when I was a teenager, I used to ride my bike several miles to view the annual model railroad show at the Central Jersey Model Railroad Club in Westfield, NJ. Although I liked watching the huge O scale steam and diesel locomotives hauling their heavy trains down the main line, I found myself highly fascinated by the operation of the model trolley cars that plied their way from one town to another on the layout . . . over, under, and around the main line tracks. I was hooked. Modeling O scale traction was to become my life-long passion. Collecting electric current from the wire suspended over the tracks in order to power the cars was the ultimate in realism, and I had to prove this could work in reliable fashion, even in model form.
Once upon a time … or as we say now … “back in the day,” when you purchased a model kit you also picked up a tube of model cement for the assembly process. If your parents were like mine they knew when you were scale model building instead of doing your homework. Model cement had a strong distinctive odor that permeated the air throughout the house. It was the mainstay product to stick those pieces and parts together, and it all too often bore our fingerprints if we weren’t careful with how we applied the cement.
