I want to pull apart my ISD, but don't want to break the hell out of the model and ruin a perfectly good spaceship. Has anyone pulled one apart, and if so, is there a right way and a wrong way? Or at least a way that doesn't end up with me sad about a pile of plastic fragment?
Thanks!
My suggestion, pop the ship in the freezer and wait for a few hours. The cold makes the glue brittle so that you can use a sturdy knife to trace the seams to find the peg 'joints' and pop them one by one with little to no surface scratching and deformation.
I'm fairly certain it was the Canadian cold en route to the post office which caused more than one FFG model to break in the box.
My suggestion, pop the ship in the freezer and wait for a few hours. The cold makes the glue brittle so that you can use a sturdy knife to trace the seams to find the peg 'joints' and pop them one by one with little to no surface scratching and deformation.
I'm fairly certain it was the Canadian cold en route to the post office which caused more than one FFG model to break in the box.
This.
The ISD is a bottom body plate, a top body plate, and then every step of its raised section is a separate step. Which means, between that and the engine block that comes out the rear, you're looking at like, 8 pieces in total to completely disassemble it - not counting removing the engine vents or shield generator domes.
Thanks! I think (hoping) I just need to remove the bottom piece and can leave the entire top intact.
I heated a small area up with a hair dryer then used an Ofal knife to separate the glued portions. Worked great. Except around 2 and 4 inches from the front on either side there were solid plastic tabs that went into slots on the bottom half and were glued in. Those I actually had to slowly work the knife through the solid plastic. There is a similar situation at the very back corners as well. Just heat constantly and go slow with the knife and don't pull it apart in a hurry or you run the risk of breaking the top half.
Hmm to freeze or heat.... I will do both and have them compete in the modification hunger games to which is truly the easiest way to destroy an expensive model.
Why chance destroying a $60 ship...............sorry not for me. But to take it apart to modify it seems a waste of a good model
As I stated in the ISD-I Conversion Thread...
... It was already apart.
Got stomped on by a Toddler. So taking it completely apart was the first step to repairing it.
Step one is buying the ship for $20ish rather than $60. Step 2 is making it the coolest cool ever in the history of cool. I'm not going to let the cat out of the bag as to what I am doing yet, not to build suspense AT ALL but mostly just because I am not even close to convinced that what I have planned with be either feasible or end up looking like anything but utter garbage. Besides, cutting an ISD in half to put it back together doesn't hold a candle to some of the chop shop creations others put out on this board. Wish I could find a link to that post that had the Uglies in them haha.... now THAT was some modification.