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Hey guys, li'l help.

I need to melt a plastic accessory piece to make it fit for a conversion. I've never done this before, and neither has the person who suggested it.

Anyone done this and can tell me how to do it without destroying the piece and the model?

Ta

Whats the part? I would suggest filling down as a first choice every time?

Parts should be cut and gaps filled for conversions. Don't melt the plastic, that's just a bad idea.

If you're just trying the "bend" the plastic piece so that it fits into whatever position you decided for it, then try boiling the piece.

What I mean by that is take a sieve, boil up some water, place the piece in the sieve and place in the water. Keep the plastic in the water until it turns from its original grey to an off-white. That may also be too much depending on the thickness of your plastic, so take the plastic out every couple minutes --->seconds to check malleability. Once at the desired level of softness, bend the piece with a pair of rubberised pliers (alternatively wrap some rubber bands around the end of a pair of needle-nose pliers, scotch tape works as well) to the desired position, then glue!

I'm not sure if this is what is done commonly, but I did it with an ork's hand to make him look as if he was giving the finger. Worked well. Not sure how well it would work for thicker plastic though?

So I just bought some cloaks I need to bend around to create more fluidity and had no problem using a lighter / candle... Obviously this can easily burn the plastic but if you hold it 3-4 inches away and keep the area you want to bend moving over the flame for a few seconds it's usually ripe for the shaping. Keep a lil tub of water near you to dunk the part in once you have the shape but hold it while you're doing it. If you aren't comfortable working with an open flame, I've also used a hair/blow dryer. Both methods can result in a very hot piece of plastic so be careful. Most importantly, be smart, playing with fire may result in getting burnt!

Posting a pic of the part you're trying to bend would probably let us give you more suggestions.

Try not to burn the plastic, the fumes let off by it are toxic. If you must, do it outside.

hair dryers are good

There's an article here about using hot salt to melt plastic - it's about bending termagaunt tails.

Yeah, describing what I was doing prolly would have helped, huh?

I'm putting together rough riders, based loosely on Australian Light Horse. So I've got the Fantasy Pistolier horses and want to use the larger, flat bedrolls from the IG tank accessories to lie across their flanks. The bedrolls are just a little too wide and stick out just a bit too much either side of the horse, so I want them to conform to the shape of the horse.

I'm not using the small, round bedrolls because I'm keeping the barding on the horses as it already looks similar to the leather straps the horses had to hold on various bits of equipment.

The larger pack rolls in this image? If they're the ones from FW then they're probably resin, which is much easier to heat / bend than plastic... Still, being that thick you might want to consider filing down the side that's going on the horse to start the "bent" look then try heating it... Using all the previous advice about not letting it burn, I would pinch the roll between my index and thumb then heat the center, slowly applying some pressure with my fingers to encourage bending. This will tell you when it's hot enough. Once it starts to bend you can push it over the back of the horse then drunk it in your tub of water so cools and it holds that shape.

Sometimes I set stuff on fire for modeling, but only if it's a big chunky piece that I want flatter or if I'm creating damage, such as a hole blown in the side of a tank. My experience with plastic is it cools off really quick and you got to move fast if you want it to have a shape. I don't know about resin though.

No, no the plastic GW ones but look similiar to the ones on the tank accessory sprues which I conveniently won in the Boxing Day raffle at the same time I was deciding to make these guys. I guess in the upper left hand corner would be closest - large and flat.

Underneath they're not filled in, they just have 'slats' so I was gonna snip triangles out of those to help them bend.

The advice has been awesome guys. If I don't destroy the lot, I'll post pics.

You can SOFTEN (do not melt!) plastic in hot salt.

Oh yeah - someone's already mentioned hot salt. I'll look it up, it sounds a bit more controllable than water or flame.

I won't have a chance to have a bash at it for a week or two.