How did you melt yours?

[lordairgtar]

Never melted a model doing this. I've melted my share of cassette and CD cases in my various cars, though.

Hmmmm, interesting. just before the advent of CDs, someone started experimenting with cassette cases made of a resin type of material. Supposedly, they do not melt in the automotive environment. I have one. It came from Ford and was a sampler of music to tout their stereo cassette decks. I left it on the dash of my Mercury at car shows and guess what...it never warped or deformed. But with the coming of new music storage media, the development ended as the manufacturers figured it was a wast of money to go further.

[Danny Lectro]

20-something years ago, as a teenager, I melted the body of an AMT Dodge Super Bee prostreet. My Dad gave me a can of engine degreaser to strip the paint off when I was out of brake fluid, and I used it without questioning him. I was devastated, but my Dad just laughed at me. To this day, I'm still convinced he handed me that stuff knowing the damage it would cause.

[Daddyfink]

Back in '85 I was building a Robotech Valkyrie and I need white paint. I went to the garage and found a can of it. It was Hi Temp Header Paint! I melted most of the kit to a pulp!

Since then, I only use model approved paints!!

[Jantrix]

Happily I have never melted a model. But I did learn a valuable lesson about not putting models on a window sill that is east of west facing after a friend had three of his best warped terribly.

[vintagercr]

I can't count how many bodies I destroyed back in the late 60's and 70's using a soldering iron with the knife attachment. They always made it look so easy in the magazines. Lol

[customsrus]

When I was a lot younger I use to strap bottle rockets to models just to watch them go down the street and blow up. With enough bottle rockets tied to them they would blow apart real good.

[ToyLvr]

Choose your weapon: Fire crackers or Roman candles

Wish I could get back some of the neat old models my friends and I blew up when we were kids. We also went through a pyromaniac phase where we'd put gas in an old coffee can, light it, and drop models in there to see them melt (seriously, my parents were good people and wouldn't have allowed this; me and my friends were just really sneaky and hid in the woods).

I can remember in the 70s that I was building a '65 Olds (Havanna Banana kit?), and warped it when using some sort of touch-up paint. Didn't understand how/what at the time. That's another kit that I wish I had again.

More recently, bought a "Predicta" parts car which had a warped hood. Previous owner was trying to speed up drying time on the primer, and got it too close to a light bulb. seems to be a common mistake...

[jaydar]

I put mine in the oven! Earl Scheib, "I'll paint any car any color $29.95" Said he used an oven -baked finish.... soooooooo

[Nxr]

You guys are so mean for blowing up models with fireworks and bottle rockets I never melted a model or really did anything like that but i did ruin many kits back in my childhood days when i tried to use shampoo and toiler paper to remove paint i didn't like. lol.

[Tom Geiger]

Wish I could get back some of the neat old models my friends and I blew up when we were kids. We also went through a pyromaniac phase where we'd put gas in an old coffee can, light it, and drop models in there to see them melt (seriously, my parents were good people and wouldn't have allowed this; me and my friends were just really sneaky and hid in the woods).

My spoiled friend Henry got a new Cox airplane for a present. I think it lasted 1/2 hour before he crashed it well enough to destroy it. So he decided to use the remaining fuel in the can to set the airplane on fire. He set the plane up on the edge of a block wall, filled the entire fuselage with the fuel and dropped a match in. Nothing. So he decides to take a closer look. Boom! Fireball! Henry does a back flip. It took him all summer to grow new eyebrows!

[Greg Cullinan]

Haven't melted any as an adult. Remember the firework route as a kid.

I have a bucket of fireworks(including Roman candles and tanks) and have been thinking about torching some builds in the yard with my son for kicks and giggles.

[highway]

It seems most of the replies are teenage mistakes, just like the mistake I made in my senior year of high school. I thought it would be cool to have Monogram's 1/8 scale 79 Trans Am sitting in the rear window of my 1:1 79 Firebird. One wonderful May afternoon I came out after school to find the T-Tops and top of the windshield frame sitting on the dashboard, and learned sun+glass+heat caused by sun+glass=melted plastic! I also learned about 13 years later that it also equaled a $100 dollar mistake. That was how much it cost me when I found one open but sealed inside to replace that kit at a hobby shop!

[Lunajammer]

Fireworks. One of my older brothers enlisted in the USAF, Vietnam era. His future was uncertain. As a rite of passage, he packed up his Revell 1/72 airplanes, and he'd built almost all of them, then he took us two younger brothers with him into the country where he took shots at them with his BB pistol. Then tossed firecrackers at them like they were being bombed, then finally burned and melted the remaining debris. My other brother and I wanted to save our favorites but he said he'd enjoyed building and owning them. Now he was going to have his last fun with them and wouldn't let any remain.

It was good fun, but now as an adult I recognize the significance that what he did was, in a way, cut ties to his childhood. The good news is he never went to war, he retired a Lt. Col. and now is assistant director of aviation for the state of Kansas.

[mrknowetall]

Recently? I was in the process of (trying) to strip the paint from a resin seat I bought from Drag City Casting. I dropped the seat in fresh 91% alcohol and let it fester for a bit. When I checked on it the next day (!), the seat had twisted into something totally useless. My Bad! My Stupid!

I won't even mention stories about trying to use the old Auto World "Cutter"! Talk about melt!

Edited November 18, 2013 by mrknowetall

[gluebum]

I tried to remove a slight warp on a Mini Cooper with warm water, wasn't warm enough the first time so I went right to hot...OOPS!! "MINI" Cooper!!! I guess I can use the rest of the kit for parts now.

[FASTBACK340]

I didn't torch my models, but Aurora cars were fair game. Set. 2 on fire and see who remains mobile the longest..... or until a screaming parent intervened.

[Danny Lectro]

I just remembered one I ruined about 7 or 8 years ago. I was researching less toxic ways of stripping paint, and found a reference to using Pine Sol. I thought to myself, "That sounds like it should go easy on the plastic!" But I ran with it and didn't absorb the warnings in the article.

I checked on my parts after a soak, and found the surface softened and runny.

I went back to the article, ready to bite somebody's head off, and saw they had warned about that very possibility. I felt really stupid that day, especially since the kit was an expensive, limited run import.

[samurai7]

91% alchol warps resin?? I didn't know that...I was gonna use it with future and airbrush it on a resin figure.

I had Magnum P.I. Ferrari..I wanted to strip the paint off the body... because of a fingerprint....So i used gasoline...It soften the plastic. And to add insult to injury....It didn't take the paint off.

Edited November 19, 2013 by samurai7

[Chuck Doan]

1/43 scale car. Brush painted and hurry up dried under a desk lamp. Funny now, not then!

[chevyfever2009]

Lets see heat gun making them into "wrecked cars" and a concrete wall and m1000s

[hack-n-whack]

Dehydrators are bad.....humkay

(especially the ones without temp control like mine)

WIP '36 Ford Roadster with '37 head light buckets,

trying to make a Danbury Mint styrene copy.

Top was a clear piece of unknown origin (kit historians?)

anyhooo....placed it in the dehydrator and took a nap....

I think the clear conv't top was from AMT's '37 Chevy.

woke up to this major FAIL

[Zarana-X]

I ruined a set of Centerline wheels. They were from the Monogram 3n1 Trans Am. The axle holes in the hubs are huge. i was going to fill the holes and redrill them for a different axle. The front and backs were already glued together. For some reason, I thought it would be simple enough to use Sculpy. (polymer clay) It used to be quite common material in customizing action figures where you can set the clay in boiling water. Afterwards it behaves much like plastic.

I did end up wih a set of wheels with realistic crash damage, though.

[dwayne4385]

91% alchol warps resin?? I didn't know that...I was gonna use it with future and airbrush it on a resin figure.

Just did this the other day. I ordered a supercharged ls9 from vcg and 2 turbos. I read an article that said you could clean them with alcohol before painting. When I took them out of the alcohol they were way to soft. $30 dolaars down the drain and leason learned.

[mrknowetall]

That may have been the clear up top from AMT's '37 Chevy convert.

[Joker]

That may have been the clear up top from AMT's '37 Chevy convert.

Thanks for the info..