Review by Les Venus (May 2012)
Material: White Metal
Price: £16.95 (GBP)
Availability: Now
Our thanks to Scale Aircraft Conversions (SAC) for supplying our review samples
All SAC products are available in the UK from www.a2zeemodels.com or directly from the manufacturer www.scaleaircraftconversions.com as well as numerous reputable Internet retailers.
The long awaited 1:32nd Scale B-25 Mitchell is now here and it’s a model you will be seeing a lot of in your SMN and mostly from me who is up to build it. (see Geoff’s here now review of the Mitchell)
The B-25 has a tricycle undercarriage and as without substantial weight forward of its CofG will sit with a thud on its tail; not nice! On this new kit it seems the recommendation in the kit is 80g but I suspect that this may be conservative and a 100+g may be the order of the day. The HK kit comes with beautifully detailed undercarriage parts but it’s plastic, moreover it must be fitted during construction not at the end when I traditionally throw on all the sticky out bits. Consequently, the undercarriage is also vulnerable to damage during construction and painting so a big potential oooops factor here. The solution is something more robust and here SAC steps up with its white metal u/c set. Honestly, I love that SAC are producing these but I have to say the quality is at best average at worse poor. Definition is weak and crude especially when compared to the plastic injection moulded parts. The metal is also very soft and as you can see the scissor links are bent and poorly formed. My solution will be to mix plastic with metal but you will have to wait and see how I do.
Metal legs are needed but these are far from good but they are with some work useable and with a good polish with sanding sticks and files I think can be made to work. I hope so.
Keep up the with the work SAC but please try and raise the bar, even at a slightly increased price. At £16.95 these are not cheap but I do feel they will be needed so you pay your money and take your choice.
Overall it’s up to you but I will at this time and before use give this set a tentative recommended.
Les V.
Using white metal replacements – a general note…
I’m sure that you will be familiar with the extensive range of white metal replacement undercarriage detail parts for aircraft scale models available from Scale Aircraft Conversions (SAC). We have reviewed many of these before and so this recent batch and others that will follow shortly are all of similar quality.
Plastic moulding has its limitations (as Clint would say), but SAC has spotted a nice area that is attractive to us scale modellers. The kit parts are frequently quite flimsy and unstable or unlikely to take the completed model in the long term after we’ve often added extra weight to it and so replacing the kit parts with stronger, sturdier metal replacements can often be an appropriate solution.
The parts from SAC have some flash, but this isn’t an issue, being easy to remove with a scalpel and then sanding sticks and buffers. You’ll often find that some of the thinner parts such as oleo struts are malformed when you open the package; this is unfortunate. Better packaging would prevent this distortion assuming the parts have been packed at source undamaged. However, all is not lost as they parts can be straightened fairly easily by careful rolling and use of flat headed tweezers or pliers – but go easy!
Here are some useful observations from Ross at SAC that also give useful information…
- As you know, one property of white metal is an inherent degree of malleability which is not found in styrene plastic, polyester resin or harder metals such as zinc or brass alloys. This quality affords the modeller the advantage of being able to “adjust” the angles of the landing gear and wheels once they are firmly cemented in place
- Another benefit of the combined attributes of strength and malleability is revealed when a modeller tackles a kit that requires the landing gear to be installed early in the assembly sequence. In this scenario, plastic kit parts can incur breakage even when handled with caution whereas white metal gear actually becomes a valuable ‘stand’ for the model throughout the subsequent processes (sanding, scribing, painting, etc.) employed until completion of the build
- The malleable nature of white metal can also more than justify its cost should one or more of the legs on a completed model be accidentally ‘bumped’ during handling. The more fragile nature of plastic can easily cause a kit part to snap. On the other hand, white metal will merely bend in like circumstances. A bend can usually be easily fixed when many times a break cannot. Our gear is often purchased by a modeller who has already experienced this problem and is seeking an alternative to purchasing a new kit in order to obtain repair parts.