The Ship Model Forum

Unless the parts are warped, there's usually no need for clamping. Run a bead of thick glue along one edge and hold the parts together for a couple of minutes. Of course, most of my models are in 1/700 so that makes thing easier.

You might try some of the wider Tamiya tape. It holds pretty good and I think could well bear the stress. The problem inherent in trying to clamp hulls split down the middle is there is no really good place for a clamp of any size to get any purchase along the lower seam. Not so with those split at the waterline, of course. I think I would try to dry fit the hull, then carefully apply the Tamiya tape at close intervals, stressing it as much as possible, then, once you have the hull taped, go back and "spot weld" with CA glue, then finally go down the seam with something like Tamiya Extra Thin to actually weld the two halves together at the molecular level.

Bob

Hello all,

I have been away from building models for a while....many years actually. I wanted to check to see if I could find an improved way to clamp glued parts for drying. In the old days when I got my start pretty much everyone used rubber bands.....but I often found that problematic in that if a little glue got on the rubber band.....you ended up with a mess to fix when you took the rubber band off.....

I also used to build almost exclusively aircraft so rubber bands on the fuselage was a great way to get even pressure. The only real model ship I ever built was the 24" Cutty Sark by Revelle and as I recall I had to come up with a way to clamp without rubber bands....but I don't recall how I pulled it off after all these years.

Is there some new trick or is there some sort of clamp or clamps that work for gluing ship halves together?

Thanks for any advice....

SC