Mold lines on a beehive oil filter?

[Jantrix]

If you have built one of the Revell 32's you've seen the part. Most of the part is ribbed and has a mold line running through it all. Anyone figure out a way to get rid of the line without losing the detail?

[MAGNUM4342]

X-acto knife. Hold the blade perpendicular to the seam and scrape gently with the edge of the blade.

[Ace-Garageguy]

The tried-and-true method that works best for me when removing mold lines from finely-ribbed parts is to fold a sharp crease in a piece of 400 or 600 grit sandpaper, and use it as a sharp two-sided file to remove the offending seam, perpendicular to it, one groove at a time. Depending on how good your eyes are, you may have to work under magnification.

If it's a chromed part, you'll have to refinish it anyway, and the fineness of the grit will leave scratches that are easily filled with one coat of primer, but it's still sharp enough to cut quickly.

You may also have to repeatedly fold the paper in several new locations, as the grit wears off of the edge quite rapidly.

[Jantrix]

Thanks guys. I've already dechromed it. I'll give it a try tomorrow.

[Erik Smith]

Some actually have a real mold line:

[Art Anderson]

Erik's made an excellent point! Most, if not all of those "classic" beehive oil filters were cast aluminum--back in the day when scrap aircraft aluminum was extremely plentiful (from almost half a million airplanes being cut up and melted down after WW-II). Many items, such as the beehive oil filter he shows, were diecast, meaning that the mold used was very much the same style of mold used to make the model car part--just 25X larger and made for accepting molten aluminum alloy instead of styrene plastic. That would make for the mold parting line seen on the one Erik's shared here.

About the only way such a cast aluminum part could be made without any mold parting line would have been to sand-cast it, which of course would have meant a lot of polishing and finishing of the raw castings. Of course, CNC machining didn't exist "back in the day", but that would have resulted in nary a mold parting line.

My thinking here? I'd leave the mold parting line on the kit oil filter, because chances are any vintage cast aluminum accessory such as this would have a mold line or two on it.

Art

[Ace-Garageguy]

Art also makes an excellent point, but it really comes down to period. Some of these things being made today have machined ribs, and an early cast unit could easily have been chucked up into a lathe and the fins cut pretty and smooth. Just depends on the exact look you want.

[Jantrix]

Great info thanks guys.

[High octane]

If the oil filter is chrome plated, give it a coat of Testors Dull Cote and it'll look a lot closer to the aluminum oil filter. Also works on plated wheels, Moon tanks, front bumpers for funny cars or match racers, etc.

[Harry P.]

So since the real thing was a cast piece and not machined, it should have a seam line.

BTW... why a "beehive" filter? They don't look anything like a bee hive...

[zenrat]

So since the real thing was a cast piece and not machined, it should have a seam line.

BTW... why a "beehive" filter? They don't look anything like a bee hive...

Not a man-made one. But it does look a bit like the sort of hive bees would make inthe wild. The sort that frequently drops on the protagonists head in cartoons.

[Erik Smith]

They look a littel like inverted old school bee hives - like this...