Small Scale Military Headquarters

Besides the fabrication of custom projects the paint on these projects is the thing that sells.

Jnew boy sells a bunch of his stuff on e-bay . His paint jobs are all questionable. Most of his stuff sells for about $300 . I think that is is mostly one or two guys who buys his stuff. But the fact is they do sell and he gets his prices for paint only.

Jack at Skyworks has his latest project out, a Huricane. It is a first class rendition . It takes him 3 days to do one. Cast the pieces build the model and paint. Each taking a day to do.. He sells them for $500 and up.

All this being said Admiral's , BBI's and 21st's aircraft and armor is a bargain at $39 - $90. One heck of a bargain.

So how do you keep a custom plane in the $90 range ? I guess you don't. The only way is to sell it in a kit form. Because a custom paint aircraft sells for $250-$350 again that is paint only.

There are short cuts that can be taken to keep the price down in kits. The major cost is Resin and RTV. To use these takes time. A big cost savings would be to switch to vacume forming. This was done in the past before resin proggressed into what is used today. Vacume forming is still used today in helo production cars and other things. This could be a way to keep cost down for the big parts. But details like panel lines and the like may suffer. But if you have a large piece of plastic and it cost $2.50 compared to $25 worth of resin. That is kind of a no brainer.
Opinions ?

The big guys can keep costs down because of the ability to produce mass quantities of those products.
If you are going to offer products for sale, i say don't paint. just use a spray on primer to prep the plane. Something quick and easy for you. Also, making the plane as "modular" as possible, so pieces of it are assembled, say the wings and the fuselage have to be joined together by the owner to help reduce time and shipping hassles.
I think the painting process is the most costly for the owner in the end because the creator is charging not just for supplies, but for the time involved, and labor is the most expensive cost associated with any project. That is very difficult pill to swallow for the owner.

That is definitely worth investigating. Ive seen vac formed models and they look great.

pickelhaube wrote:Besides the fabrication of custom projects the paint on these projects is the thing that sells.

Jnew boy sells a bunch of his stuff on e-bay . His paint jobs are all questionable. Most of his stuff sells for about $300 . I think that is is mostly one or two guys who buys his stuff. But the fact is they do sell and he gets his prices for paint only.

And his are done with brush and roller! Doesn't spray or airbrush anything! Plus he sells complete with his "own" facts on a particular scheme. I'm working on a Spit Mk.Vb floatplane for a guy and decided to vacuform the floats. Hardest thing for accuracies sake is to compensate when doing the master for the thickness of the plastic to be used. Vacuforming is the wave of the large scale future imo, or will be. I'd bet money the F-14 coming out whenever will have lots of vacuformed parts, especially if they do use polycarbonates which I'm sure won't be as thin as is with R/C car bodies. Plus vacuform plugs don't wear out like rtv molds do. I got 17 Rufe floats out of the mold before it was just too worn out to keep using. Could've as just had to repair any blemishes on the finished cast which was easy enough I'd just rather pull that sucker out of the mold and move on to the next.

Vacuforming would be buku lighter too, much easier to hang from the ceiling.

My biggest concerns with vac form are fragility, and requiring a level of modeling expertise that not many have.

What about making large parts out of expanding polyurethane foam? Could that be done and still capture, e.g., panel lines?

vacuforming has many advantages but as stated, can be fragile and require some decent modelling skills to put together. Just cutting out the parts from the sheet and then sanding them down to the right thickess is tricky for many and not much fun.

However resin has its own issues besides cost....like warping.

Precut out vacuform would be the best answer i think.....don't know how feasible that is though. And you'd still have to solve the weakness issue due to thin parts.

pic, have you wandered over to any of your local light manufacturing shops, handed them one of your parts and asked what it would take to make 50, 100 or ...?

grunt1 wrote:pic, have you wandered over to any of your local light manufacturing shops, handed them one of your parts and asked what it would take to make 50, 100 or ...?

No I have not but there is a local guy who makes fiber glass fusalages for R/C planes. That could be another option as well..

i've been buying mostly kits since xmas
mostly in 1:35th because 1:72 is too small for my liking.
1:18th seems to be disappearing, this is made harder for me because i live in a country where it has never been as accessible in comparasion to other board members, so i'm probably just going to give it up.

my hope is that someone will be able to successfully create another line of 1:18th, the target only FOV stuff which i've only seen in photos seems like it could have merit.

failing a 1:18th line i'd like to see a articulated 1:35 series with add-on legs & arms. It's wishful thinking but believe me if I had the means of fabricating something like this i'm sure it'd sell.

Pic:

I think you should consider a few tank models with guns or anti tank turrets in place of the existing tank model like your super quad model, unfortunately on a Panzer hard to find nowadays, but your quad left to the buyer to paint eliminates some of your headaches..

Common models abound, the Tiger, Panther, Sherman, Walker Bulldog where new bodies on existing track and lower bodies I think could be a good seller for you.

I hope you would consider some more armor models to expand our 1/18 collections to guys like me who would like to attempt painting.

TTT

Threetoughtrucks wrote:Pic:

I think you should consider a few tank models with guns or anti tank turrets in place of the existing tank model like your super quad model, unfortunately on a Panzer hard to find nowadays, but your quad left to the buyer to paint eliminates some of your headaches..

Common models abound, the Tiger, Panther, Sherman, Walker Bulldog where new bodies on existing track and lower bodies I think could be a good seller for you.

I hope you would consider some more armor models to expand our 1/18 collections to guys like me who would like to attempt painting.

TTT

Couldn't agree more..

Threetoughtrucks wrote:Pic:

I think you should consider a few tank models with guns or anti tank turrets in place of the existing tank model like your super quad model, unfortunately on a Panzer hard to find nowadays, but your quad left to the buyer to paint eliminates some of your headaches..

Common models abound, the Tiger, Panther, Sherman, Walker Bulldog where new bodies on existing track and lower bodies I think could be a good seller for you.

I hope you would consider some more armor models to expand our 1/18 collections to guys like me who would like to attempt painting.

TTT

Well I am not through with my armor phase yet . I still plan to do a lot more. Hopefully I will have some new and upcoming projects in armor that everybody will like. There are tons of varients for the Panzer IV but those are hard to come by. Even now there are some guys who can't find any Panzer bodies to go with my Wirbel. So my planned Brumbar and Hummel may be a dead dog because people can't get bodies for them.

Now the panther is another story. With the sale that Monkey D is kicking you can jump on thos $ 20 Panthers. I have 6 on the way.
these are the first things that I have thought about with the now available Panthers.
1. Berg Panther w/ front plow
2. Fictional flak
3. Back dated Panther
4.. Trogan M-10/ Panther
5. Panzer II

So I have not come to an end to my armor phase. I kind of got burned out on aircraft that is why I switched to armor. The Pavehawk project does not count. There was a lot of guys who wanted it. The V-1 was fun to do but was not worth it for retail.
Again I would love to do almost every variant that was made for a Panzer IV but if you can't get the models why do it ? Which is a bummer. Maybe Monkey D will have a sale of those. That will help everybody out.

Oh Sherman guys I have plans for those as well. Or Sherman bodies anyway. The only thing is time. With my real work kicking in time is getting thinner. To be honest if my work would have not slowed down many of the projects would not have seen the light of day. Projects like the Wirbelwind. That was a long project that eat up time. The P-36 project I did coverd over 6 months because I was working.I managed to get the wirbel out and to production in about 2-3 weeks.

I thought that this was supposed to be kind of an aircraft post ?
What happened ?

* It is ? ... well , we want ARMOR instead. heh heh heh



Mitch v MG

pickelhaube wrote:Besides the fabrication of custom projects the paint on these projects is the thing that sells.

Jnew boy sells a bunch of his stuff on e-bay . His paint jobs are all questionable. Most of his stuff sells for about $300 . I think that is is mostly one or two guys who buys his stuff. But the fact is they do sell and he gets his prices for paint only.

Sad thing about that is...painting's the easy part.

Pickel, you could do a dozer kit for the Sherman. Impressive piece in any collection.

phil