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I'm tryign to user a wrecked land speeder as a scenic base for a model.

My plan was to damage it and mayeb melt some sectiosn to show catastrophic damage......btu ia little worried.

if i just hold a lighter under the plastic model i'm assumgin it will soften a wilt a little - what about (and i realise this might be stupid) toxis fumes from the melted plastic? Is this an issue?

A friend of mine has offred to lend me a soldering ron which will cut through quicker so mayeb this is the better option?

The soldering iron will be more controllable, and less likely to burn you or areas you don't want melted. Also, the lighter could leave scorge.. er, scorch (see my sig)... marks that you will have to clean off before painting.

I would go with the soldering iron.

Soldering iron for controlled application, lighter for something a bit random and uncontrolled maybe, might be nice looking to damage an area with the lighter and then puncture it with a soldering iron?
lighters will probably leave soot marks too, these should be cleaned up as said above

My plan was to paint it and THEN burn it. Soot marks would actually be good as it supposed to be a crashed Speeder.

In that case, to achieve soot, try it out with a trash object first, but hold it moderatly high above the flame, Its only styrene plastic so I'm thinking its going to melt really fast. Experiment on some sprue or something to get a suitable technique first (if there is one)

Also try a heat gun or a hair dryer on high. The heat gun will melt the plastic higher up without scorching it to bad.

If your trying to get a scorched effect via a flame try candle soot from like a bee's wax candle or a kerosine lamp. all of which are highly dangerous so be careful.

Or invest in some black pigments from MiG, Vallejo, Secret Weapon or any of the other fine pigment makers. That'll make soot look like soot and you can even put soot on parts you didn't intend to melt, like tops of windows, jet exhaust etc.

I would highly recommend doing any physical damage to the model before painting. Soot can be easily done with a drybrush after the fact.