WM #62 F7A from Highliners Kit - Glues and Tools
Normal plastruct styrene cement (light-colored bottle) didn't work very well for
me with this particular kit. Glues that did work well were the Testor's
Plastic Cement (Black Bottle) and the Plastruct Plastic Cement in the orange
bottle. The other cement simply didn't set up on the Highliner
shell. I believe the shell and the rest of the kit are constructed of
styrene, so I am not sure why this was the case. The Testor's Model
Master cement is always my fall-back when I want something a little thicker
than the usual thinner-than-water cements.
To install the many stainless steel etched parts, and the white-metal detail
castings, you will need a slow-setting epoxy. The Highliners instructions
specify a two-hour epoxy. The best I could easily find was a 90
minute epoxy from Home Depot. At the same time, I bought some very
inexpensive super glue. I have taken a taken a tip from the advanced
model builders and started using the smallest tubes of the cheapest super glue
I can find. The hobby shop glues dry out too fast and cost too
much. The metal tube glues do just fine for me.
 
Another tool that came in really handy is the Micro-Mark chisel. This tool
is used to chisel off unwanted details. The narrow tip on this tool made
it easy for me to chisel off (per the instructions) the drip guards over and
under the doors. A normal exacto chisel blad can be used, but for it to
work effectively without removing rivets and other near-by detail, it needs to
be ground down to a narrow blade with rounded edges.
Of course, I also used the normal array of tools including the tweezer-like
sprue cutters, exacto knives, needle files etc.
Next Step Kit Cleanup
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