...plastic card was invented?
and what did people use before Halfords and other spray paints?
and how did you polish up clear plastic before micro mesh?

Offcuts from packaging

A brush or, if you were lucky, and airbrush. NB non-cellulose spray cans are a fairly recent invention. Certainly before 1980 it was cellulose in a spray can or nothing.

Toothpaste and cotton wool; SolvolAutoSol and cotton wool; Brasso and cotton wool.

Can't remember pre-plastic card and have always used tinlets rather than spray cans................but to remove scratches and polish canopies, it was fine wet 'n dry, then Eucryl tooth powder with plenty of water, and a final polish with a piece of denim. In fact, it still works very well. I don't know if the tooth powder is still available but I've got a pot from 30 years ago




Can't remember pre-plastic card and have always used tinlets rather than spray cans................but to remove scratches and polish canopies, it was fine wet 'n dry, then Eucryl tooth powder with plenty of water, and a final polish with a piece of denim. In fact, it still works very well. I don't know if the tooth powder is still available but I've got a pot from 30 years ago

Eucryl powder is still available, I use it myself, got a tub of it last week in Tesco.

For teeth or models??

Interesting......so - what else was used before all the things we now have ???

Our imagination...

er.....yes....yes...I see that.....could you be more specific?

Balsa wood used to be very much in use years ago. Needed lashings of sanding sealer and varnish to give the gloss finish before decals/painting

Another item would be very thin ply (wood) as this could be bent/shaped (usually had to hold it over the steam from the kettle... I still remember the burnt fingers!)

Mike

I can remember the earliest resin kits appearing in the 1980s, at least that's when I became aware of it. Very expensive handmade stuff in 1/72 from behind the iron curtain. I never thought it would catch on. Until then, obscure subjects relied on crude vacforms or scratchbuilding.

The first etched brass products were quite controversial. While I wasn't involved with any clubs at the time, I remember an American penfriend relating some controversy over brass details' eligibility in IPMS competitions. I'd been using plastic rod and strip for this kind of detail, and I still do in many cases.

One thing that was very different in 'the old days' is this was a very cheap hobby......

Cheers,
Bill.

Use your imagination.
We carved lumps of balsa wood (or obeche, if we could find it) into some semblance of a shape, somewhere near the "scale" drawings included in the box, usually using single-edged razor blades, and coarse sandpaper (wot's wet-and-dry, then?) Canopies? Never heard of them; we just painted a domed portion of the model's fuselage black. 20 coats of sanding sealer, on the balsa, to try to turn the wood's grain "smooth as glass" (as written on the bottle-never worked.) What paint we found was always glossy, so needed spoonfuls of talcum powder, to flatten it (until my mother discovered who was pinching it; she never found out where her nail varnish went, though-well, it smelled like dope.) Transfers (not decals) were never the right style, or colour, and never stuck to the wood, anyway. Finally, after untold rollickings, about balsa shavings on the floor, and balsa dust in the supper, flying models seemed a safer bet, especially in November, when a 1d "flyer," sellotaped under each wing, turned every model into a Meteor.
Edgar

I still look at plastic packing, and stuff to see if it has a use. lots of tubing, and thin plastic can be found, and used for free. Look at that plastic under cakes from the supermarket. An almost perfect quilted effect as an example!

Both!

The best sanding sealer was clear dope and talcum powder. Or Alabastine for the larger crevices. (Alabastine - a kind of polyfiller). Plastic canopies did not arrive for a while after the war - you could occasionally buy them from model shops made of perspex or acetate. And they could be polished very well with Bluebell or Duraglit. .303 Brownings from suitably sized panel pins.

I also used poster paints occasionally - obtained from an Artist Aunt who showed me the technique of adding "gum" to make it adhere to shiny surfaces.

I think Plasticard had been around in the commercial world prior to plastic kits. So it just migrated into the model world. But otherwise it was margarine cartons.

I remember making tiny electric motors to rotate the props on some models - these motors were about 1/2 inch high. Made from an oval nail bent "U" shpae and wound with fine copper wire for the armature - a needle as the shaft one end was in a bearing formed by a partially drilled hole and the other was a piece of tin plate. The commutator (?) was a piece of 1/6th dowel and a band of copper wire.

I think we were very innovative then - necessity being the mother of invention?

Sticky back plastic & fairy liquid bottles....

Using our flint knives on our mastodon fur work places we carved them from solid matter.



Sort of like Blackburn would do millennia later with the Buccaneer.

fascinating......
I'm wondering about doing some research into days gone by or something like that so keep the methods of yesterday comeing please

Kev,
Look at EVERY thing and think if it can be used. Example, The thin plastic tabs that hold tags on clothes, Ideal for cables in wheel bays for example, Cotton buds, the plastic tube on them, the clear plastic boxes that you get cakes in, gives you thin clear plastic, crisp packets the foil on the inside mirrors on vehicles, it goes on and on...

Plastic card hadn't percolated through to Cornwall when I started out so my first AFV conversions (Deacon SP as per Feb 70 Airfix Magazine, Sherman Firefly as per May 69 AM) used ordinary postcard, which showed a tendency to sag over time. Later plastic card did arrive but only 10 thou so the next generation (Light Tank Mk IV as per May 69 AM, 2nd Sherman Firefly, rebuilt Deacon) used that. I abandoned use of 10 thou for major structural components when it became apparent that paint made it very fragile: when I dropped my second Deacon, it shattered like a glass ornament.

Nick

I was thinking particularly of things that arent around now, but were around back in the 80's, 70's, 60's and 50's.
Did anybody make models before then?

Well yes - there is evidence that the Egyptians made model boats for the Pharaohs children - and model aircraft were flown before before man did. Certainly flying model aircraft was quite an activity well before the Second World War - and to a lesser degree before the First. Have pictures. Model yachting was popular on Sundays before and after the Second World War in places like Hampstead Brighton Clapham Common Kennsington Park and from the pictures it seems quite a Spectator sport. One wealthy gentleman arrange for model warships to be built and were "pedal" powered by luckless servants re-enacting sea battles on his lake.

Obviously ships were more practical.

And there were the dockyard models made way back.

A Col Bowden was quite a well know aircraft modeller of the 20' and 30's - very inventive.

Using what to make and paint them with?
When did Airfix start releasing inj. molds?
"sigh"....
so much to learn, so much knowledge to acquire....

Wood, card, tissue paper, bits of metal, and for the bigger and more expensive stuff, I daresay the local blacksmith got involved too.


Their first injection-moulded kit was the Ferguson tractor in 1949; the first offered for sale was the infamous Spitfire BT-K in 1954. They weren't the first, though.

I have used a section of the metal leg of my then modelling table for F1 wheel rims. It made the table a bit wobbly until I replaced the leg with a broom handle!

The first copy of Scale Models I ever bought in 1973 had a 1/72 Harrier 2 seater conversion where the main part of the forward fuselage was made from the plastic centre of a Scotch tape reel scored and bent into shape. As more than one person has already said, I look at everything plastic in the home and elsewhere with a modeller's view - what can I use that for?

Phil

Certainly the model ships were made of wood in the main but appropriate parts were fashioned from metal. I doubt in fact if the local blacksmith was involved as his methods would have been a bit too heavy handed. There was a class of model yacht known as "Piano Boats" because they were made from the tops of upright pianos and thus were very much standard in length. The main method was "plank in frame" construction. I remember an old chap who not having a band saw wold saw up his board into planks - say 1/2inch by 1/8th inch by hand. And all were just about perfect.

For the aircraft dope was the usual paint - for ships any paint or lacquer - and "shellac" for waterproofing.

Some yachts had a "vane" steering gear which was influenced by the wind against a vane. The gearing was quite complex - usually of brass and frankly quite a work of art. Again all homemade.

The model aircraft were initially frequently from Bass wood (later balsa) covered in tissue for the smaller models as Seán says but the larger ones covered with silk and clear doped. The engines were sometimes petrol and often hand built at home - there were also "glowplug" engines - two stroke. All were pretty unreliable. When radio gear arrived it had to be tuned and was not proportional as today but what was sometimes known as "crash bang bang" For example if you wanted the model to turn right you had to first signal - "left" the next signal would be neutral and the third "right". Most radio was home made because of cost - batteries weighed a ton - the transmitter was a large box and was staked into the ground. I remember that sometimes it could take an hour or two to get the model airborne. Servos/actuators were powered by strands of rubber - bit like the rubber powered model aircraft.

The main difference was, up to the early fifties, that a lot of stuff had to be "home made" - partially due to cost - 1/6d pocket (9p in todays money) did not buy much and also because there was no where near the range of things available that there is today. And there was one's reputation - you simply did not buy it if it could be made. I have to say the workmanship skill ingenuity and dedication patience and commitment, looking back was quite remarkable. But then of course people did not seem to have to "have it yesterday". All in all life was pretty easy going, in comparison.

Sailors used to carve models from whalebone, walrus tusks, shark's teeth; it was known as "scrimshaw." Examples can still be seen in some museums.
Rubber-powered models were usually the lead-in to flying; they rarely worked, especially the "scale" low-wing fighters. Like their full-size counterpart, they were totally unstable, and high-wing stuff was boring, because it didn't fight. Everything was clear-doped, since coloured dopes just weren't available, and, if you painted any sort of semblance of colour, it made the darn thing too heavy to gain any height. Titanine dopes (same company that made wartime Spitfire, etc. paints) were the material of "choice" (that'd be the day.) Sometimes, in a fit of desperation to make something fly, a glider would be pressed into service, and they did at least fly (usually away, if you got the trim wrong.)
Eventually, enough money might be saved for the first diesel engine, usually a Mills 1.3 (c.c.) or the E.D.Bee (1c.c.) or, for the real spendthrift, the E.D.Racer (2.49c.c.) Later came the specialist racing engines, like the Oliver "Tiger," again of 2.49c.c., which became the top motor for class A team racers; these were control-line models, which meant that they were on the end of 45'-55' lines, and went round in circles, with the "pilot" in the middle, hanging on for grim death, trying not to get giddy, and trying to avoid tripping over the other three competitors or tanging your lines with theirs. All this while standing inside a small circle, and trying to avoid stepping outside, for fear of disqualification.
Diesel fuel was a basic mixture of ether, castor oil, and paraffin, sometimes with odd additives to make the mix "hot." I once saw a young lad do a fire-eating act with the stuff; it never appealed, somehow. Getting the compression setting, and the fuel/air mixture, right could need the touch of a brain surgeon, and the required amount of flicking, to get the thing to start, led some modellers to have a right forearm that would have graced Popeye.
Thankfully, things progressed to the glowplug motor, which involved a (non-sparking) plug to which a 2v battery was attached (1.5v for the smaller motors.) Again, there was the necessary "flick," but, this time, there was the added danger of over-priming, followed by a backfire, which always caught the backs of not-quite-fast-enough knuckles (I still bear some scars.) Once started, the battery could be disconnected, since the fuel kept the plug glowing, which kept the engine running; adjust the mixture until the engine note rose to a scream (neighbours loved that,) and release.
Petrol engines were not a serious consideration, due to their price, and the need for very large models, to lug their weight, plus the attendant batteries into the air.
There was a small sideshow, the Jetex motor, which was, really, a miniature solid-fuelled rocket motor. Seriously under-powered for the models (usually made by KeilKraft,) I've often wondered, since, how toxic the blue exhaust fumes might have been; I still have some of the fuel pellets, somewhere.
Edgar

Lovely Edgar - I wonder if we bumped int each other then - did you ever go to any of the rallies at Halton?? I remember on one occasion they had a few Mosquitoes parked up - but they were in Flying condition.

No, daft as it might sound, I never visited Halton until the 1970s (no driving licence before 1975-cycled everywhere before then.) I did go to Scampton (1950-something, at a guess, since "S-Sugar" was still gate guardian,) for the British SMAE (Society of Model Aeronautical Engineers) championships (it was there that the "fire-eater" performed.)
Edgar

We went to Halton in a club members van... amazing the discomfort up with which you put when you are young. Yes - was a member of SMAE - now the British Model Flying Association by the way. The name was changed at the whim fancy of some pure and earnest types who felt that Society of Model Aeronautical Engineers was too elite and discouraged the younger element (Ahhh didums) - actually when I joined at about 12 years of age it was partially the "high fallutin'" title that appealed to me....... I think I have my ED Racer still somewhere and didn't they make a 3.46 as well?

We made models out of wood.
There were two options, you made a solid model or a stick & tissue model.
A solid model kit consisted on rectangular blocks of balsa wood and plans of dubious accuracy.
You carved and filed and sanded and carved and filed and sanded then glued and then painted and sanded and painted and sanded.
No decals, you cut out the roundels and other markings from the printed sheet and glued them onto the finished model.
The only preformed parts available were cast lead alloy machine guns and bombs. The wheels were turned out of wood and the landing gear were wood dowels.
There were few modelers back then (1930-40's) because few people wanted to develop the skills necessary to do all this work.
The Stick and tissue kits had formers and ribs printed onto cheap balsa wood which invariably split when you tried to cut them out of the sheet.
After you put together a S & T kit you covered it with tissue paper and got the material tight by spraying it with dope.
Again you cut out and glued on the markings. Most S & T kits were for flying under rubber power or some light small engine.
Then, after WW2 ended plastic kits appeared on the scene and all a "modeler" had to do was to glue the few parts together, slap some paint on it, apply the waterslide decals and presto, he was a modeler.
Obviously the market for plastic kits way outstrips the few modelers who would work in wood.
Nowadays many of the younger modelers are pretty helpless unless the parts they want are available in the kit or as an aftermarket item.
Does that answer your question?
Stephen, the alte cocker

this is brilliant!!!
keep the info from days gone coming

lets be a bit specific -
what would you use to build, modify, paint and finish a model say, between 1968 and 1975?
(including airliners if anybody did, how would you have kept the white, white, and prevented it discolouring)

Are you talking about plastic models of that era - that was my radio and free flight period. Scratch built.

I am sure that plasticard was available - and so were Humbrol enamels but not sure about acrylics.

Build - whatever the shop stocked, usually Britfix polystyrene tube cement.
Modify - forget it, building was difficult enough. Alan Hall was the innovator, with his balsa wood/talcum powder conversions
Paint - see "build" above, but usually Airfix paints
Finish = paint; that was all there was, no gloss varnishes/decals/flat finishes
Keeping white models pristine was largely a case of not smoking.
The only way to make airline models was to go back to carving balsa wood; there were no kits. I have vivid memories of trying (and failing) to carve the "double bubble" fuselage of the Vickers Vanguard.
Edgar

Just a minute - I remember a Bristol Brittania by Airfix - can't have been much later than about 196.... something. Double bubble on the Vanguard - must be losing it - or do you mean the Boeing Stratocruiser??. That was a luxurious aeroplane!!

Thinking about it though I am not sure there was much modifying of plastic kits back then - too much of a novelty as they were.

This was an example of scratch building in 1973 or thereabouts - makes me feel humble - it is the basic (????!!!) framework of Keystone B4a - from "Scratchbuilt" by Messrs Alcorn Lee & Cooke

I started in 1952, so 196whatever was way down the line (I'd started badly-paid work by then.) Still, 1962 was when I discovered photography, and girls, who liked to have their photographs taken; opened up a whole new world, where the word "models" was concerned.
Tsk, tsk, Vanguard was the follow-on to the Viscount; eventually saw freight business as the Merchantman.
Edgar

Yep - and that - I started work on £1.5.0 per week - £1.25 - and the photography - first real camera was a Retinette 1B - which I still have somewhere. I seem to remember too that girls were quite good fun.... gosh .. wish I had better recall.....

Sorry thought when you were talking double bubble you were talking "shapes" ... hey something is beginning to come back too ... must sit quietly and ponder for a while.

Sorry Kevin - I digress....

LMAO!!!
thats ok....

"Are you talking about plastic models of that era"

yes
but dont be shy about other subjects, this is all good

Ooooh. This brings back happy memories

I remember the "Glow plug" engines. Lethal things! I had a couple fitted to "flying" balsa, tissue and dope covered model planes. These planes were of the "Control line" variety.

Under the (usually left) wing there was a wooden / metal triangle. The apex was loosely attached to the plane so it could rotate (left and right) and pushed / pulled a thin copper bar that moved the tailplane up and down. The other two corners (of the triangle) were each attached to two (e.g.) 50 yard fishing lines which then attached to the joystick in my hand... A piece of wooden bar with, funnily enough, fishing line tied to both ends.

Man! These plane were great! They flew around you in a very wide circle and went up and down!

Lethal to anyone who happened to wander into their flight path whilst we shrieked with glee and shouted warnings.

At least, that's how I remember it.

I also remember the many hours spent in Bellahouston Park trying to get that bl**dy engine to start in the freezing cold, rain and howling gale of a Glasgow summer. As for winter.. Well, we tried... We really did...

...Or the engine suddenly starting and the prop hoiking a four inch slice out of ones finger before the engine died due to the very bloody finger being in the bl**dy way of the bloody (by now, very bloody) prop.

Planes that were painted yellow very soon looked red. Call it "weathering".

Ahhhh. Happy days! Happy, happy days!

There was, of course, the "Chicken Finger." This resembled a thick fingerstall, and was made of sorbo rubber, around 1/8" thick, with ribs on the back, and it did save the occasional rapped knuckle. Not sure if they're still available; I suspect that any vendor would be accused of pandering to all sorts of sexual perversions, these days.
Edgar

things is different today then......

how about this -
today, you can use micromesh to polish up your clear plastic canopy after filling and sanding the gaps so its a neat tight fit and is more
see-thru than it was when you opened the box....
what would one have used before Micro-mesh?

Toothpaste, or, possibly wet-and-dry, down to 2000 grit (used wet, of course,) with the final polish achieved by using the back of the paper (dry.) Old furniture polishing trick, that one.
Edgar

And also those things that ladies used to polish their nails. But Duraglit or Bluebell was the stuff for perspex - if badly scratched then first with Solvo Autosol. Chloroform was the tuff for sticking perspex.

fascinating....
so how far back does that trick go?
who thought of it?
I wouldnt have thats for sure

If you mean the "back of the paper" idea, it's been around as long as furniture polishers have been using sandpapers, and that predates the lot of us (even David & me,) by a wide margin.
Edgar

Balsa wood and talc, those were the days!

Tony

would anybody care to join me in co-writing an article for possible publication about this, comparing the old days to now?