Baking PostWar Cars and Accessories

[tumbleweed56]

Has anyone ever baked postwar plastic cars and accessories when painting them? Was it worth it? What's a good temperature to bake at without damaging the cars? How long?

Thanks

[Roger Bielen]

I'd be afraid of warpage.

[Jim Duda]

Tumble - I'll ask the obvious, "Why would you want to bake the paint?" Are you brushing it on or using an airbrush? What kind of paint and reducer/thinner are you using?

As Roger noted, I'd be afraid to leave 'em in a closed windowed car in the summertime where the interior temp approaches 120 deg F., for fear of warping the plastic.

[Anonymous]

Could you possibly use a hair dryer if you want to dry them faster? Plastic warps real easy. I remember I tried to make some HO boxcars look like they had been in an accident by heating them but they ended up looking like plastic boxcars that had been heated in an oven. John [8D][8D]

[Anonymous]

As others have said, I'd be very careful if I were you. I friend of mine had bought a set of Marx NH E7's that had been stored for many years in a chicken coop (you can imagine what they looked like when he got them). He cleaned them up and was drying them on top of the stove. The B-unit ended up getting bent into a U-shape. Miraculously, he was able bend it back while it was still hot and it was impossible to tell that anything happened to it afterwrds. I think that the chances of being that lucky are one in a milion, though!

[Anonymous]

I've found that simple air drying is the best for any plastic train car or accessory. If you really want to add some heat to speed up the drying process, hang or place them in a sunny (not windy) place to thoroughly dry.

The only thing you should bake in an oven is food.

BillFromWayne
www.modeltrainjournal.com

[Dave Farquhar]

People bake tin cars to get a nice, hard enameled finish, but that's not the look that postwar is going for. Don't use your home oven for this: build a wooden box heated with a light bulb, and do it in the garage or outdoors to keep your house from smelling like baked paint.

Older plastics can warp even under the heat of a hair dryer. If the item is already warped, this can be a good thing, as you can use a hair dryer to try to get it back, but I wouldn't use it to try to dry paint.

I use acrylics to paint figures and they dry pretty quickly. I've never tried acrylics on cars but I imagine they would do pretty well, and they dry flat so they look realistic. Try some acrylics on a car you don't care about and see how you like them.

[Buckeye Riveter]

I tried this on a car model when I was a kid. It melted the plastic and I had to throw away the car.

[ben10ben]

I most definitely would not bake plastic bodied pieces, even in a light bulb oven. I've seen some American Flyer passenger cars that have warped just from the heat of an attic. Although most other pieces are usually quite a bit more stable, it would still be best to keep them out of the heat.

If you're dealing with Bakelite, though, you don't have to worry about any heat short of a couple hundred degrees. It's not affected by much of anything, including most solvents and heat.