VacForm plastic kits

[Giorgio N]

25 minutes ago, Andy350 said:

Many thanks.  I will see how it goes, I picked them up to build.  If I want to sell a couple is there much of a market for these?

 

Market for this kind of kits depends.. but then it depends for most kits anyway.

There sure is a market of collectors who want that certain issue of a certain kit, be it inkection or vacuform. Now it is true that most collectors will focus toward old Frog or Airfix kits, but some may also want a Contrail one.

Then there are the modellers who want a kit of that particular subject and that in order to build that will happily offer huge money even for a basic vacform. Of course the downside of such a market is that the day someone will issue that same subject in injected kit form, the value of whatever was available before that day will crash.

This explains why certain vacuforms can still be very expensive today while others may languish on auction sites at low prices for ages.

I'm not fully aware of the kit situation of these subjects, I know there's a Mariner from Minicraft but does not seem to be easily available. From a quick check on Ebay kits of this size from these manufacturers seem to go from £30 up to 60 or even more.

[Graham Boak]

For most models, the price you can get for selling even still-wrapped ones is small.  You might be lucky, and find that rare modeller or collector who will want that particular kit, but i fear that most will be put off by the very idea of vacforms.  Unreasonable perhaps, but there it is.  I feel the only way to find out is to try.

[Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies]

I do enjoy a vacuum form kit now and then.

[Graham Boak]

One benefit of vacforms is the thin walls allowing superior internals.  The main problem, as pointed out, was that the same isn't true for the solid parts.

[Ed Russell]

Out of those kits the Mariner and Lerwick look the "easiest". I don't think any of them would be my recommendation for a first vacform. I would do a single engine monoplane type.

If you get around to the Mariner, there is an excellent build by Mark Davies to follow here.

I have made a number of vacforms and quite enjoy them.

[John B (Sc)]

I still do the occasional vacform, some being well hoarded Aeroclub kits - thanks John !  Those tend to be well detailed and worthwhile. Sometimes the only way to get a  model of what you want

 

I also have one or two Echelon kits still in stock, Lightnings and Hunters, sadly only one Hunter being a two seater.  I built one Hunter as a Mk 1, easier to do with the vacform kit than by modifying the Revell beast.  Frank Brown (I think) did a superb job on those kits. 

 

I did seem to have  a habit for a while of building vacform versions just before an injection mould kit came out. I still have my vacform Vulcan, only now possibly superseded by the new Airfix issue.  I gave up wrestling with a vacform Valiant when the Airfix one was issued and I still have the remnants of an appalling Nimrod somewhere...

[Black Knight]

Most vac biplane kits come with either the shape of struts moulded in the sheet or with a length of strut shaped plastic strip from which you cut the struts down to size.

John Adams, aka John Aero, did another tutorial,  on how to make struts from commonly available plastic strip

 

[noelh]

I had the Echelon 1/32, Hunter kit. It was brilliant as vacforms go. Great decals and a lot of cast metal parts. I never finished it but it wasn't the fault of the kit. I still have a lot of the parts and have half an idea of using them on the Revell kit. 

 

Vacforms were always a bit tricky but for an old school modeller very buildable. 

[Paul Thompson]

10 hours ago, noelh said:

I had the Echelon 1/32, Hunter kit. It was brilliant as vacforms go. Great decals and a lot of cast metal parts. I never finished it but it wasn't the fault of the kit. I still have a lot of the parts and have half an idea of using them on the Revell kit. 

 

Vacforms were always a bit tricky but for an old school modeller very buildable. 

Ha;f way throught the Echelon Lightning, as an F.6. Been that way for nearly two years, but, yeah, not the fault of the kit, more that I got a lot of extra reference and am taking the time to do it justice. Beautiful kit through and through, just a pity the canopy was made of the material that yellows and I'll have to make a new one. Although state of the art for a vac, the Flightpath detail set is improving it a lot, but isn't helpng the speed. OTOH, although I'm eager to have it finished, it's also immense fun to build. I also have a bunch of Welsh Models vacs on the slow burner, so to speak, and a couple of WW1 types that are taking up more of my time (a Formaplane BE2c amongst them).

 

Paul.

[John B (Sc)]

On 8/28/2021 at 11:41 PM, noelh said:

I had the Echelon 1/32, Hunter kit. It was brilliant as vacforms go. Great decals and a lot of cast metal parts. I never finished it but it wasn't the fault of the kit. I still have a lot of the parts and have half an idea of using them on the Revell kit. 

 

Vacforms were always a bit tricky but for an old school modeller very buildable. 

 

I have been tempted to use some Echelon parts on a Revell Hunter too.  They were superb kits; Mr Brown did  some excellent artwork to go with them, and also good background research had obviously been involved. 

 

John B

[tempestfan]

On 8/4/2021 at 10:48 AM, John B (Sc) said:

I did seem to have  a habit for a while of building vacform versions just before an injection mould kit came out. I still have my vacform Vulcan, only now possibly superseded by the new Airfix issue.  I gave up wrestling with a vacform Valiant when the Airfix one was issued and I still have the remnants of an appalling Nimrod somewhere...

Always good if someone takes that ultimate sacrifice upon him/her 😉 But which vac Vulcan? There were at least three (Rareplanes, Formaplane, Nova) - but as the apalling Nimrod would likely be a Formaplane too, then possibly one of the others. 

 

To illustrate the point with prices: The Nova Vulcan is a HUGE model in a HUGE box. And it came with a huge price tag as well - IIRC the box of mine still had the stickerwork of being sent from the US, at mind-boggling cost. Ten years ago I paid EUR 1.50 (in words: one point fifty) plus a similar amount of (distributed) postage for it off a certain auction site. But then I have not paid more than EUR 20 for any of my Airfix Vulcans, and as little as EUR 7.50 for a Type 11 boxing.

 

I have not checked current prices but there are some vac kits I think are scarce, without being superseded by any long run kit. One I have in mind is Rareplane's XP-67 Bat, which I do not recall from any 80s and subsequent ads. Not sure about his Bell Airacuda, was there a Valom? 

 

There were one or two exquisite (on the sheet) kits by Polish manufacturer Miniplast in 1/48, the one I have is the PZL P.46 Sum. If found cheaply, it looks like it may make a good first vac.

[Paul Thompson]

8 minutes ago, tempestfan said:

 

I have not checked current prices but there are some vac kits I think are scarce, without being superseded by any long run kit. One I have in mind is Rareplane's XP-67 Bat, which I do not recall from any 80s and subsequent ads. Not sure about his Bell Airacuda, was there a Valom? 

 

There were one or two exquisite (on the sheet) kits by Polish manufacturer Miniplast in 1/48, the one I have is the PZL P.46 Sum. If found cheaply, it looks like it may make a good first vac.

Airacuda, Valom, but the Rareplane kit is also still easy to find cheap.

Currently, Esoteric and Aeroclub go for ruinously daft prices. Also increasingly Maintrack and Project X can be rather balistic. I reckon they mostly just circulate around dealers these days.

 

Paul.

[Black Knight]

Collectakit (aka Pat) has a very good stock of vac kits at extremely low or reasonable prices.

I've bought some off him at SMW

[Britman]

Just to bolster the conference of any have a go modeller my first vacform was the 72nd Rareplanes Vulcan! It turned out really well except the vacform process doesn't lend itself to undercarriages. It did get WOC when that wonderful Airfix kit came out first time around.

 

Keith

[theplasticsurgeon]

On 8/4/2021 at 9:48 AM, John B (Sc) said:

I did seem to have  a habit for a while of building vacform versions just before an injection mould kit came out. I still have my vacform Vulcan, only now possibly superseded by the new Airfix issue.  I gave up wrestling with a vacform Valiant when the Airfix one was issued and I still have the remnants of an appalling Nimrod somewhere...

I bought a Rareplane Vacform Douglas A3 Skywarrior  just before the Hasegawa 1/72 Skywarrior was released,

building them both simultaneously - earlier this year.  Each having cost the same price, £10.

Result - the injection build is just a different league from VacForm. 

I came to the conclusion that the only utility for vacform, is where there is no injection equivalent.  Something which a perusal of the RarePlane back catalogue confirmed to me.

I also concluded that I won't be buying another vacform kit - I've taken on that challenge now.

I won't rule out building a kit donated at Jet Age - but won't go looking.

[Giorgio N]

3 minutes ago, theplasticsurgeon said:

I bought a Rareplane Vacform Douglas A3 Skywarrior  just before the Hasegawa 1/72 Skywarrior was released,

building them both simultaneously - earlier this year.  Result - the injection build is just a different league from VacForm. 

I came to the conclusion that the only utility for vacform, is where there is no injection equivalent.  Something which a perusal of the RarePlane back catalogue confirmed to me.

I also concluded that I won't be buying another vacform kit - I've taken on that challenge now.

I won't rule out building a kit donated at Jet Age - but won't go looking.

 

You make a very valid point, although there are a few things to consider.

For a starter, the Hasegawa Skywarrior is a high quality kit, made by a company that generally gets things like fit, mould quality and parts engineering right. Compared to a Hasegawa kit like that, many other injected kits fall in a much lower league.

Said that, I believe that against almost all mainstream injected kits a vacform will be inferior. Not that a vacformed kit can't be built to the same level of an injection kit if not better, but the work involved will be much more and the modeller will have to spend a lot of time.. and in some cases money, as parts may have to be added that are not incluced in the kit or are useless. Something like say an Italeri kit is likely to be not as good fitting or detailed as a Hasegawa one, but it will still be easier than a vacform.

Things can be different when comparing vacforms to certain short run injected kits, and I know a few cases where I'd probably go to the trouble of preparing all parts from a vac kit rather than try to extract the parts from the sea of flash of certain short runs... then here it should be kept in mind that short run kits were just another answer to the quest for being able to offer certain subjects without having to invest the kind of money needed for a proper injected kit, so the limitations are part of the "fun" of these kits... of course today short run kits have made giant leaps forward and really some are positioned between the big mainstream names and the original "cottage industry" ones, both in terms of quality and in terms of sales numbers. To be honest some short-run manufacturers are only just a whisker below the mainstream names and maybe even above some of them, even making short run products...

In the end there are good reasons why vacforms have disappeared and one of them is that as you say, an injected kit is better and today a decent quality can be achieved with manufacturing techniques that allow the production of kits sold in relatively small numbers

 

[tempestfan]

1 hour ago, theplasticsurgeon said:

 I came to the conclusion that the only utility for vacform, is where there is no injection equivalent. 

As Giorgio said, you may have made a somewhat unfair match... but in principle you are of course right. But then there are the occasions where the choice is between a very good vac and a very old and/or bad kit - e.g. up to not long ago between the JWK vac and the tired old Airfix Defiant; or some PM kits - IIRC Rareplanes had a very nice Beech 18/C-45, and I think the only injection alternative is still the PM kit, which leaves me decidedly unimpressed (and may be increasingly hard to find). Of course I fully concede the cases where this choice between "bad" and "evil" applies are becoming less quasi day by day.

['V']

I knew being Old may one day have it's advantage ..... Vacforms.

I tend to liken to a sculptor getting a block of stone about the right size

Then the rest is up to you !!

They were getting to be 'Old Hat' when I was seriously into aircraft modelling in the 1980's, I note that I first joined IPMS(UK) in 1983.

As previously mentioned they were a way of producing 'Kits' for unavailable subjects and quite popular in the case of the Warsaw Pact

countries. I still have a collection of Czech subjects in the loft. They also tended to include many of the larger aircraft that nobody ever

expected to be viable for 1/72 injection moulding.

I think 3D printing is the final nail in their coffin, progress of sorts. They were very good for improving ones standards, you really did

have to innovate and create from basic raw materials.

My last Vacform build was a YAK-18, at the time an 'A' model 1/72 injection moulded version was available, but in my opinion this was

inferior to the vacform kit I had.

 

 

If you find some very cheap have a go, much to be gained skill wise even if it becomes destined for the bin !!

 

'V'