Spoiled by laser cut - now dealing with "old school" pressed

[scottbower]

OK folks,

I am spoiled!!! I built all of the WWI and WWII Laser cut models and fell in love with building these beauties!!! BUT now i am working thru my non-laser cut models and i have "lost that loving feeling".

Other than sanding the backside of the pressed sheets are there other tricks? I am having issues with the following.

- cuts that are close to the direction of the grain want to follow the grain lines and not the pressed form!!

- some of the pressed lines are actually over some of the dark printed lines OR the pressed lines are so vague, i can not see them. I do have the light/magnifying glass so i can zoom in and light the cuts. there are still times when i can not see the pressed lines

- some times the quality of the balsa is so poor that it breaks way too easily

Please help!!!!!!!!!!

[scottbower]

is there a special style of blade i should be using? I have tried medical grade scalpels and Xacto blades. Maybe the blades are too large?

[kittyfritters]

Scott,

First, put a fresh blade in your knife. Since I work constantly I put a fresh one in every day even when I am working with laser cut kits. I've never been very successful at resharpening them. I use a #11Xacto blade and a #10 blade scalpel. The problem is not the blade but that the people who laid out the dies did not always consider the grain. I attached the old Xacto cutting guidelines drawing. Where people usually get into trouble with re-cutting die cut sheets is in cutting curves into the grain. See the diagram for "Cutting Freehand Curves" The other thing to remember is make the cross grain cuts first then the cuts that are parallel or almost parallel to the grain. Anything 45 degrees or more to the grain is cross grain.

Hope this helps.

KF

[Oldyzracer1]

I use a #11 blade knife too; I stab the blade into the balsa point first with styrofoam behind. I stab around the piece, small stabs for curves, and then turn it over and stab the places I missed until the piece almost falls out.

[scigs30]

Scottbower,
Yes, it is easy to get used to lazy cut balsa, not doubt about it. I think we are all in the same boat, I know I really like lazy cut kits sure does speed up the building process. I have also designed models in cad then sent the files off for laser cutting. With most of the new lazy cut Guillows kits, I can have the structure built in a day or so. With that being said, I still like building the old die cut kits and printed balsa kits from back in the day. We have been building these models for many years without laser cutting, and our models came out just fine. For me I enjoy building for nostalgia and that feeling is lost when building laser cut kits. I never sand the back of the balsa, never really found that to work for me. If you can not see the die cut lines, try using a pencil to follow the pre cut parts, then cut the parts out with X Acto knife. I normally can just cut the pre cut notches then pop out the parts without problems. Old Sterling and Comet die cut kits are the worst, they are partially die cut at best. For those kits I sometimes put blue painters tape on the back side, then cut the parts out. This prevents the parts from splitting. Here is an old Die Cut Guillows 400 Mustang I am building.

[Arlo DiPasquale]

It seems to be a common theme that we've become spoiled with laser cut kits, and I certainly fall into that camp. Its really nice to have the parts all fit together perfectly without a ton of filling, sanding, and repairing of broken parts. I do find it kind of nostalgic building die cut kits though, and I'm only 25! What I've found that works best for the problems you mentioned pretty much mirrors what Sigs and Kittyfritters said, and their models are on a whole other level than mine. In terms of finding the die cut lines to cut, if you have a light and magnifying glass that could help, as does a sharp blade. Also, you can usually flex the parts a bit while they're sill attached to the sheet to get them to pop out a slight bit and more easily find the edges to cut out all the way. The best thing I can recommend though is to just take your time. When I build a die cut kit, I treat it more as a marathon than a sprint and take my time to get the parts cut out of the sheets, to fit them, and to fill and sand since there will be significantly more filling and sanding involved. Here are the frames of a die cut Guillow's Albatros DVa I'm currently working on. Some of the parts were severely die crushed, many of the stringer notches were far too large for 1/16" sq. strip stock, and altogether it took a lot of sanding and filling to get everything to come together. However, I believe the final result is on par with what I would have produced with laser cut parts, it just took probably 2x as long.