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HMAV BOUNTY - A “face lift “

Gilbertm said:
Hi Grant
Great job on the case.
I am aware of this chemical for "gluing" plexiglass; it's also called dichloromethane. I have never tried this but your experience tempts me for doing so and protecting my ships.
How thick was the plexiglass that you used?
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Good morning Gilbert. Thanks. 2 of the lessons I learned is to buy plexi cut to size. This will save you a plenty headaches. Secondly use a thicker glass. I used 3mm plexi, however for a ship the size of the Caldercraft Victory I would use 4 or 5mm.
Cheers Grant
 
dockattner said:
Glass has the green tint - not plexiglass.
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Good morning Paul. I am clueless when it comes to these things. I made my Victory with proper glass and this was not the way to go. It is too heavy and very brittle. I found a small company in Cape Town which supplied “Plexiglass “. If it is proper Plexiglass or South African plexiglass ROTF I have no idea. Looks cool tho and is a good option for making cases. I know it is a form of Acrylic.
The label says Plexiglass so it must be Plexiglass ROTFROTF.
Cheers Grant
 
GrantTyler said:
Good morning Paul. I am clueless when it comes to these things. I made my Victory with proper glass and this was not the way to go. It is too heavy and very brittle. I found a small company in Cape Town which supplied “Plexiglass “. If it is proper Plexiglass or South African plexiglass ROTF I have no idea. Looks cool tho and is a good option for making cases. I know it is a form of Acrylic.
The label says Plexiglass so it must be Plexiglass ROTFROTF.
Cheers Grant
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Plexiglas® is brandname specific to the company which invented it, Röhm GmbH and Arkema Inc. If your material is marked Plexiglas®, it is probably made by them.
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GrantTyler said:
Good morning Gilbert. Thanks. 2 of the lessons I learned is to buy plexi cut to size. This will save you a plenty headaches. Secondly use a thicker glass. I used 3mm plexi, however for a ship the size of the Caldercraft Victory I would use 4 or 5mm.
Cheers Grant
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Thanks Grant
I'll give it a try using 5mm plexiglass
 
GrantTyler said:
Good morning Kurt.I buy the glass from a local guy here in Cape Town in 1x1m sheets. It costs around R1000.00 per sheet.

I cut the sheets with a knife (if you have a glass cutter it can also used). To get the line straight I clamp a piece of straight wood to the plexiglass and clamped tightly so nothing moves. Very NB. To cut I firmly score the glass along the wood about 15 times. Then place the glass along the edge of a table and press down. The glass breaks along the score line. For the bigger pieces I also score the reverse side and I needed Arlene to help me break it.

Sometimes I had to lightly sand the break edge with 220 grit to remove some slight variations. These are very little and the glass breaks easily and mostly cleanly along the line. You will see in the photo below there is a little sanding on the upper part of the edge.

Here are some pics using my left overs :

View attachment 572605
View attachment 572600
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To glue I bought some Methylene Chloride glue (about R100.00) and a syringe. The difficult part was getting large pieces to stay at 90• and exactly along the edge. I used some right angle clamps but I do not recommend the ones I got. There are some seriously good ones on line from Amazon. The longer the better and you need at least 4.
View attachment 572606
You can see my clamp (lower right) in the above pic. El cheapo ones from take a lot (SA version of Amazon).

I start gluing a length to a width piece. The glue dries in 30 seconds so I glue approx 200mm long sections at a time. I put a little downward pressure so the glue runs along the entire section. I then place the glued length and width onto the top piece and glue. Repeat for other side.

You have to crawl into some tight spaces ROTF . The glue is super thin and runny and less is definitely better. This “glue” creates a chemical reaction and pretty much welds the sheets together.

My method (as with most of my modelling) is always a bit of “McGyverisms “ as I am tool limited. They came out pretty cool tho.

The best methods are on you tube. I searched for : cutting plexiglass by hand and How to glue plexiglass.

With some of my left overs I just made some covers for my 2 F1 Ferrari’s. These literally took 30 min to make.

View attachment 572608View attachment 572609
Kurt my methods are not always the best so I do recommend checking out you tube.
Cheers Grant

View attachment 572598

View attachment 572599
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Excellent, Thank you so much for explaining your process. Cheers.
 
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