Method for straightening hulls

JNSekas · Post by **JNSekas** » Fri Dec 21, 2007 5:31 pm

Hi Folks!

I've straightened my share of resin hulls using the tried and true method of a soak in nearly boiling water etc. Although this yields results, I sometimes spend quite a bit of time getting the hull up to the proper temperature. I thought I read on this board or heard of someone promoting using the microwave oven instead. The person IIRC said they would nuke a 1/700 cruiser hull for about 20 seconds. Voila! A very warm (hot) rubbery hull that he would clamp on a flat board and let come to room temp.

This sounds intriguing since it is very quick and doesn't involve hot water. It sounds scary, because.... it's a ship in a microwave! Anybody try this? Any thoughts, opinions, experience etc?

Thanks and have a great holiday season!!

John

Karsten · Post by **Karsten** » Fri Dec 21, 2007 8:03 pm

I don't know about the microwave method. I have had a couple modelkrak ships with slightly warped hulls.

I placed a piece of Aluminum Foil in s frying pan and placed the ship on it then heated on low until the ship leveled out. After coolling it stayed flat and nother was deformed or altered detail wise.

Karsten

Edward Pinniger · Post by **Edward Pinniger** » Sat Dec 22, 2007 12:09 pm

I've used the boiling-water method to straighten a warped hull (1/150 LCT from Gramodels, a small UK manufacturer) and found it worked very well, though you need to be very careful when handling the hull to avoid damaging moulded detail or distorting thin parts like bulwarks.

One thing that's very important is to use BOILING water, from a kettle, not simply very hot water from the tap, otherwise it will work very slowly or not at all.

Microwaving resin parts does sound a bit scary - I'd be worried about expanding air bubbles/trapped moisture causing the resin to crack or even explode, but maybe the softening of the resin prevents this from happing.

JNSekas · Post by **JNSekas** » Wed Dec 26, 2007 1:04 pm

Thank You Karsten and Edward !

A warped hull thread was recently started over on SN and I posed this question. Al Torres and John Snyder both emphatically warned me against doing this because (1) depending on the resin you could melt delicate detail and (2) much more importantly, a trapped air bubble could cause an explosion. John said I may get away with it 99 out of a 100 times but do I really want to risk it?

I could just see explaning that one to my wife!!

Thanks again and have a great New Year!

John