I just purchased a conversion kit made out of resin. The rear engine deck is slightly warped (more like a very shallow cup). How can I flatten it out without breaking it?

Thank you.

A source of heat. Hot / boiling water or a heatgun / hair dryer might softern it enough to straighten it out.

My trick is as follows:

Figure out what kind of jig & clamps you need to hold the part in the desired shape & lash it all down. (I use Lego blocks, balsa, and various clamps liberally - as well as principles of wedges & levers).

Submerge all that in fairly hot (not boiling) water for 2 minutes.
Take it out, submerge in cold (room temp) water for 2 minutes.
Take it out & leave clamped up for 24 hours.

Has worked for me ... other folks may have other ideas ...

John

my technique is to soak them in hot water, straighten by hand/eye (be careful with small parts), clamp in place for larger items and place them in the fridge for ten to twenty mins on flat trays. Whatever works best for you I suppose:0)

From your statement that this is an engine deck, then I assume it is relatively thin. If so, the suggestions above will work perfectly well. however, if the part is a thick resin block that has formed a shallow depression, then no amount of ehat is going to move it. The depresion is caused by shrinkage of the resin ad it cured and many of the older solid block resin kits suffer from this as well. The only way to fix it is to fill the depression with putty and recreate the details.

You don't see this much any more as most resin manufacturers are using hollow castings (and pretty thin as well) so warpage is more common than shrinkage, but, if it's an old kit, you sometimes still see it.

Just a "head's up".

Paul

Many types of resin have a "memory" of their original shape. Put it in hot water and slowly cool it down, and it will regain its casted shape.

This will work only if deformation was caused after the resin was properly casted. If the casting process was not long enough and warpage resulted before the parts cooled down then you can still try the jigs and clamps method.

The deck is about 2 mm think, with a 4 mm thick edge along 2 sides.

It looks like I should be able to get the twist out of it with hot water.

Thank you for the suggestions.