Has anyone noticed how weird the plastic is in this kit? It's like a cross between styrene and vinyl--soft, flexible and difficult to cut from the sprue without having to do a lot of cleanup and filling at the attachment point.

It seems to glue OK with Testors liquid, but is the strangest stuff I've ever seen.

Haven't tried priming it yet and wonder how well it will do with Tamiya lacquer primer.

Just an observation but wondering if I got a bad run or if this is normal for the M35A2. My AFV Club WC51/52 is OK and is molded from an entirely different type of plastic.

Hi Bud, Having built a few AFV kits myself it`s pretty much their styrene of choice. My only complaint is it pretty prone to dissolving if you use too much glue (wait until you have to put the fine details on) ask me how I know !.
Other than that I`ve found its no more difficult than short-run stuff plastic.

I don't really like their plastic either. But they make some very nice kits, so it's just something to deal with.

Let me ask this question-- is this one of the older AFV club M35 kits molded in olive drab plastic, or one of the newer releases in a kind of tan color? I've built the older M35 kit in the initial olive drab release, and never found anything different about the plastic, except it was a little brittle, but that was nearly 15 years ago.
Maybe you have a kit exception where the plastic hasn't cured properly, or too much mold release was used in the mold (that can cause some issues sometimes). If that's the case you may be able to go back to AFV with the kit for a replacement, because the condition won't improve over time.
VR, Russ

It's molded in olive drab--I didn't realize there was a run in tan plastic. Additionally, some of the parts are short shot, especially the fuel tank halves. As I stated, my WC51/52 doesn't have this problem at all; it's the only other AFV Club I've built.

Perhaps I should contact AFV Club or maybe Sprue Bros (where I purchased it) because otherwise I like the kit and they're not easy to find. The plastic is really terrible and doesn't lend itself well at all to trimming or sanding. It is also very soft, almost like vinyl.

I just bought the kit a couple months ago

Bob,
I've built several AFV kits, the Churchill, M5A1, M38, M35, M42, M41, M36, Tiger 1, Scorpion, and last year I bought an M60A1 (I used to be a TC in one). I never had any short shot or suspect plastic in any of them. Merit International is the US distributor for AFV Club. I think if I were you, I'd contact them and explain the issue. I used to work in a LHS, and whenever we had any issues they were always quick to respond. From the sounds of the plastic, it seems like it's not cured properly or the formulation is off.
VR, Russ

Their od plastic reminds me of Revell's stuff. I built one of their Strykers and the M10. I encountered no problems, when using the Testors stuff that comes in the plastic bottle.

Thank you everyone for all the input.

I know AFV Club has an excellent reputation, so I was really surprised when I started working on this kit. I've been building models off and on since the 1950s and have never run across plastic like this, so there must have been a problem when the kit was produced.

As an aside, I do have a fondness for things Taiwanese, since I spent the 5th and 6th grades there when my father was assigned to MAAG as chief communications advisor to the Nationalist Chinese Army. I was pretty lucky; it's not every kid that gets rides to school in the morning with his dad's jeep driver. And the PX had a good selection of models.

I'll contact Merit International this week to see what my options are.