I need to bend some plastic ammo belts to fit from the ammo containers to the gun. What is the best way to go about doing this? Sorry no picture to show you the plastic ammo belt.

Hot water?

Don't know if it works but give it a try.

I barely succeeded when I tried curling one around a pencil or a file handle. Working it back and forth, it snapped, and regluing it just makes unrealistic kinks.

Next time, I'd tape it down to a form (wood dowels or carved blocks), then hit it with a hair dryer.
I hope there's a lesson to be learned from my missteps.
-Sean H.

Hot water might be a good idea but I've already painted the ammo links with acrylic paint. So would the paint come off in the hot water?

I thought about taping the belt to a form but each one needs a different bend. I'm thinking that if the plastic gets soft enough I can bend it quickly into shape.

Sounds like you have a good plan-- show us how it goes!
thanks for posting.
(also, looking at my photo, I realized I had bent the wire antenna on my jeep-- funny what you see in photos that you don't notice in real life. It's fixed now.)
-Sean.

I never noticed the bend in the antenna. I'm going to wait and see if there are any other suggestions. Otherwise I think dipping in very hot water might due the trick.

I believe hot water could do the trick.
I have faced the same problems several times, so any tip are most certainly welcome.

Cheers

You could replace the plastic part with a PE belt, but that would be more expensive and 2-dimensional

i'd lean toward the hair dryer as you have more control over heat output and can monitor the bend and make corrections as it goes.

reb

I do have some pe ammo belts but your right they are just flat and don't look anything close to the plastic ones.

I did try the hair dryer and it never heated the piece enough. I might of been doing something wrong or just being too carefull. I just don't want to melt the belt.
I place the plastic belt on a ceramic tile on my bench which got very hot but probably not enough to make the plastic malleable.

Still holding out of more ideas!

How about scoring between the bullets, making the belt a bit softer to bend?

Martyn

That is a thought but I'm afraid that would cause a weak spot that would allow the very thin plastic belt to break. One would need to be very gentle attempting this and I'm not sure my fingers fall into this category.

What I do is cutting the belt up, and reassembling it round-by-round. However untill recently I use'd cyanoacrylate for modelling insted of normal glue, so I don't know if it will work with modelling glue . It's tedious but the effect looks okay to me.

Tried heating a belt only once but the belt shrinked and curled up instantly

Belts are very hard to bend.Yes they are already too thin to score and will split from them.Very hot water will work,don't paint first.Using a candle or lighter you can gently heat them and bend,but takes some practice not to get them too close to melt.The best thing I have found by trial and error is (and yes I still have the habit)is to use a lit cigarette.A small,even heat source that can be used a lot closer with much more control.If you don't want people wondering why you have smokes,and they will,you might try using the heat from a soldering iron.In theory it should work the same.

Tom

Michael,

You really only have two choices: Heat and physical reconstruction.

If you don't want to cut the belt apart and then reglue in exactly the configuration you want, then heat is your only option.

Gently heating by a small source, like the soldering iron is your best bet for something as small as an ammo belt, but beware, it's really easy to over heat and then you're pooched as the individual bullets will deform permanently.

If the bend is really gentle and uniform, hot water over a dowel will work, but the bend of a real belt from a box to the breech is seldom a uniform single curve, so you're probably going to want to bend it a couple different ways, which means doing it a bit at a time and keeping the heat input local and of short duration.

If you try to heat the entire belt up enough to bend it all at one time, you will almost inevitably cause it to melt,

Frankly, plastic ammo belts are not a good solution. PE belts can be used if you paint them with one or more coats of thick paint or white glue to get them more 3D. If doing this, bend to shape first and then coat afterwards.

Regarding the paint you already have on your belt, assume it will flake off as you bend the belt, especially if you bend it in a tight radius. If you're lucky, not much will, but it's going to crack between bullets for sure and is likely to come off in larger areas. You'll be better off if you strip it, bend it as you need and then repaint.

There's no "silver bullet" on this one.

Sorry, I couldn't resist.

HTH

Paul

This is actually the technique I advocated several yearsa ago in a similar thread. Hanging belts rarely follow smooth curve, the rounds turn this way and that at whim. Cut them up at interval and cement them back together.

ha! Good one!

Well I tried the hot water method. Did not work and I broke the belt. Tried heating over a soldering iron. This was much more promising but I just could not get the right bends for this. The bend was pretty extreme coming right out of the box and then having to make a 90 degree turn.

I just decided to leave the ammo belt out as they are not that obvious after all the gun parts are in place. I think the kit manufacturer should of molded the belts into the proper shape to begin with.

Well in any case Thanks to everyone who had suggestion. I'm sure this topic will come up again and maybe one of the techniques will work in that case.

BTW the paint did not come off even with all this handling. I used Vallejo grey primer then followed that up with Model Master Brass and Gold.

I used the 30 cal. belt from Tamiya for a m-60 once and just rolled it with a paint brush to obtain the needed curve. Didn't have any breakage and it held the form. Just constant pressure and taking my time not forcing it seemed to do the trick. I don't know what set belt you are using but it may work for it. The paint will chip as the bend goes to it but like Gramps said, bend her gentily and then fancy her up. Not sure what he was really refering to but it should work.

I think the bends are way to complex for anything short of heating or cutting each bullet apart and re-gluing. To bend it I would need to build a form to shape it too all at once. Seems each time I heated it the previous bend would change on me. It was a object lesson in frustration.