I'd like to know if anyone else has attempted any MiniArt buildings. They have a choice of 4 or 5 various European buildings in 1/35th - mostly a facade with partial walls in ruins. Their choice of buildings is interesting and the finished product is probably attractive, but the walls and facade are all vacuum-formed in 2 parts - an outside face, and an inside face, which have to be glued together. Once the parts are cut from the backing, you're left with almost paper-thin edges to align and glue together. Due to warpage from the thin plastic, and almost non-existant glue contact surfaces, I'm finding construction very slow and frustrating. This is my first attempt at any kind of vacu-formed kit. Are there any special techniques to make construction any easier?

The best technique I've found is to avoid them like the plague.......sorry

Vinnie

I build just one of them till now. And this first Miniart building will be my last one, you can bet It was a very time and nerve consuming kit. Just keep away from them.

I know PlasticBattle has also built one too, wait for a post from him.

My idea is to get a piece of styrene and make your own 'tabs' Make either a long strip about 1/2 the total thickness of the assembled walls. Glue one 1/2 of the strip to the inside of one wall. This should slide inside the opposite wall and give you an area to apply glue, struture to support the wall and more structure to help hold gap filler etc. The strip could be short strips if you don't want a long piece to deal with.

I like the tab Idea alot, that should work. You may also want to fill the void with some expandable foam to give it some strength. Just an Idea - never tried it myself.

:-)

I am going to try one of these soon.Someone suggested just coating them with mold release and casting plaster parts from them,lose the styrene after.
I have both sets of Russian troops and they are a lot nicer than I thought would be.ICM/Dragonish with great poses and options.
cheers!

I 'm working on the park gate from miniart.
My fingers get stuck most of the time, but you can find surface to glue the part together by cutting the part by letting a little strip of plastic more. Then you can cut the excedent after you glue the parts. If holes remain you can fill it with putty. These kit are not easy to do, but really chaeaper than one in plaster, like verlinder for example. And they have a lot of accessoiries. My favorite goes to custom dioramics for the beautifull range of builduing they have at a reasonnable price. I will try to post some pics of the gate later.

Bye
Julien

Where would one start? This is the Ukranian building kit. As suggested earlier .. you need tabs... loads of them. All the excess plastic you cut off will do. Theres not too many edges that meet nicely.

Below is the ruined wall section when joined,


I had to rebuild the surface with milliput. Using a square rod, just add brick shapes.


Not all sides join so easily. Some you´ll have to build up to get a smooth joint.


The most vacuuformed areas are so thin that a paint brush could push them in. Instead I cut them out


.... and filled them with milliput. I sanded them when dry. I will brush these areas overwith Mr. Surfacer to make sure all edges are neat before painting.


The windows and doors will hide most of the inner joints,


but they all have to be sanded down slightly to fit.


The big advantage is that you get really nice detail on both sides, but theres a lot of work to get it there.


This has been sitting on the shelf for quite a while. I have also made up the street lights .. these are no easier.
The house does look good though IMO. And for the size its very light, probably 50% milliput at this stage though. I read that the later houses were much better and fitted better.
I will be making this into a dio with the GAZ 67b I finished last month and also a SU76M I completed last year. Ive bought a few sets of miniart figures as well. They look great, but cant say anything about the fit ... yet! I had planned on doing a build review .. and still do ... but this had to have a rest.
If you have any other questions ... let me know.

One other thing ....
The walls were covered in these little "pips". Must be for grip or lining up. These need to be shaved off. Not a big job, but they look terrible if left there.



I bet you´re sorry you asked now!

I bought one of there buildings the other day it's the Belgian one I found them to be great with the details but there is alot of filling in that has to be done.

But all in all I'm very happy with the kit especially if you are on a budget .

Ron

I have one, thanks for the photos, Frank, nice job and tips. I believe approaching it like any other vac-u-form kit would be advisable. Tabs along gluing surfaces to strengthen and align parts, filling thin areas from behind with epoxy, or CA, internal bulkheads, etc. With the extra work of cutting out, strengthening from the inside, aligning parts, rebuilding edges, certainly not something I'd recommend for a beginner to tackle.

OH, those little pips, are from the air holes on the female mold, used to suck the air out, and the plastic down into the cavity, to inpart the detail.

Wow - I thought of PMing just PlasticBattle with this, and realized that everyone should realize the effort.


Frank - your post is awsome, it's an article in its on right. Well done. Thanks for the input. Very nice.

Thanks to everyone for their input, and especially to Frank for his brilliant article. Using plastic strip splicers on the joints and lots of filler seems to be the way to go. I am doing the 'Czech City Building' - I hope it's one of their later releases which will fit better. It's an interesting piece of architecture. It seems the only really positive point to these kits is that they come packaged with a bonus set of DML figs now.

To be honest, I would buy/build more of these. I thought it was fun, fixing it up. Its a great idea and with the accessories, nobody will beat the price for what you get. Although custom dioramics, verlinden, etc, have some great items, Im always a little dissapointed because of the price and the amount of work that is still needed to dress them up. At least here, you get the full package. Would also like to think that their architectural designs are so much better than anything the afore mentioned companies put out.
The light weight of the finished building is another advantage in my book.

Scott .... this will be an article some day .... scouts honour!!!!

Im actually starting to get interested in this again. Thanks Biggles :-)

wow thanks for the great article. I was looking at these just today, it would appear the detail is really good from what I've seen, though it comes at the cost of ease-of-construction...but I guess you get what you pay for there!

Thanks for the heads up Frank, I have the Polish Building to do, I only bought it 'cause of the price, and with all of the goodies included I couldn't pass it up. Still looking forward to doing mine, but now I know what to look for....I wonder how casting the pieces would work....

is the detail on the outside of these kits reversed on the inside as i expect from vac-formed kits?

Thanks for posting your question Biggles and thanks Frank for your post. I have two of the MiniArt buildings in my stash waiting to be used and had no clue what type of effort they will require. However, I am looking forward to giving them a try.

Keith

I have built a few of the mini-art buildings, and find them no different than any other styrene "model". One thing I recommend to help align the edges is to put a few "blobs" of clay inside the walls... it helps hold things in place while you align edges. Also - I use CA glue and ZapKicker to put major edges together. I then coat the edges with spackle paste, and when everything is dry, i sand down the edges... the finished product looks just great. Another trick I use is to cut strips of sprue to melt over certain areas to add bulk to the thin plastic... works well. These kits are a lot of fun, have tons of detail, and are quite inexpensive.