Falcon plastic goes sour

buzz1941 · 6 November 2005, 08:11 PM

I've had to throw away all my stashed Falcon vacforms, such as the BE.2C and the Fokker D.VIII, because the styrene has "turned" and become incredibly brittle. It would be like trying to build a model out of Ritz crackers. Anyone who has some of these kits, watch out. Hopefully, those kits already built up will be OK.

RAGIII · 6 November 2005, 09:50 PM

Just checked my BEs and 1/35th EV/DVIII. Still as flexible as the day I bought them, ( when originally issued). Maybe storage or prevailing heat/weather conditions?
RAGIII

Shipmodeler · 7 November 2005, 04:30 AM

wait a minute, don't throw any more away! I'll take them.

7 November 2005, 06:46 AM

I have a Meikraft Hansa Brandenburg W-29 that has changed color in it's unassembled form - went from a gray color plastic to greenish. I had only opened the bag recently after getting it on Ebay, and had not noticed similar plastic changes on any of the other Meikraft kits I had gotten. Wonder if this is a similar problem or if there is something nasty in the air in my home? Maybe just got exposed to daylight somehow, but it was kept in a room that usually has the blinds pulled where my vintage GI Joe collection is stored. I didnt notice the consistancy to change yet, and I had just started trimming all the flash and cutting the pieces out in preparation to start working on it. I know it was all gray when I first opend the mailing box a few weeks ago.

Tom Oxley

buzz1941 · 7 November 2005, 10:37 AM

I did the get the models at the same time directly from Falcon, so maybe it was a bad batch of styrene. Other vacforms by other manufacturers stored in the same place are fine. These just shattered into tiny pieces at the least flexing, like safety glass in a car window. Maybe UV light somehow changed the plastic, but these weren't really exposed to light in storage.

PeterL · 7 November 2005, 11:03 AM

They can also be affected by temperature and humidity. The garage is not a good place to store vacforms.

7 November 2005, 06:00 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tom Oxley

I have a Meikraft Hansa Brandenburg W-29 that has changed color in it's unassembled form - went from a gray color plastic to greenish. <snip>
Tom Oxley

Well at least it's your favorite color now Tom!

Green but not with envy,
Brian da Basher

melsharkskin · 8 November 2005, 09:51 AM

A friend just sent me that bare-bones 1:32 D.VIII by Falcon because after one look at it when it arrived from the mail order firm, which refused to take it back, he knew he was stuck with something he'd never touch again.
But, to the point, how do you check to determine if it's brittle? I don't know that I'll ever build it, and will doubtless keep it around as an oddity. I also sincerely doubt it given the options that, if not available now, will be soon.

I had never used anything by Falcon except their canopies, which I have used for almost twenty years. Many years ago I went to a lot of labor to use their conversion kits on a couple of builds just as resin was coming into use for seats and simple things like that; in other words, back before we had expensive resin parts to turn single seat jets (dear god, I said that hated word on this forum!) into two-seaters. So all we had for that was Falcon conversions. The funny thing is, those cheesy Falcon conversions, made of one sheet of poorly vacformed styrene for three conversions (you bought all three to get the one you wanted and if you were lucky a clear canopy), cost as much as the resin stuff does today.
But back to the subject, how do you test the plastic before you get into the project and find out after you've invested a lot of time into the project?
TOM

buzz1941 · 8 November 2005, 10:42 AM

Grab a corner and bend it.

melsharkskin · 9 November 2005, 05:15 AM

I don't know how I could have forgotten this: Just this year, doing a build that was on a tight deadline, I got about a third of the way through a Hasegawa kit of a Hurricane (can I say Hurricane here, too?), and had added a king's ransom in AM PE parts to it along with some scratchbuilding, and up to this point I'd noticed the smaller kit parts to be "fragile." But as I proceeded with the larger assemblies like the wings and four-part fuselage I noticed the crumbling effect precisely as described by Burl, and his description of the pieces coming off the parts is exactly as my experience: they were like shattered auto safety glass.
I panicked and must have asked about this awful turn of events on every model forum in English, and then some, and not a soul was familiar with the phenomenon that was happening every time I picked up the model. The cursed thing had leprosy or something and it was as though every time I touched it another piece fell off, and then took yet another with it. This was a new model, fresh from Hasegawa's US distributor, Dragon USA, with the cellophane still on it. We got another one from somewhere else and it was fine.
I suppose it would take a chemist to theorize on this phenomenon, but there was no way my model could have been exposed to light before I opened it. And this, of course, was an injection molded kit. Vacform building, which I enjoy with good kits, has enough built-in problems and potential booby traps without something like this happening to it. It's bad enough to pick up a vacuform part and feel your thumb go through it due to short-molding.
TOM
PS: Per your short answer to my long question, Burl, all I can say is: "Duhhhh."