Just how crazy do you want to be?
Model Building Tools *required
*Basics
An understanding wife
A place to work
A place to store all of this stuff
Patience
Safety
*Brain
A box fan at the end of the workbench, set on low, with a cheap 20x20 in. furnace filter on the inlet side of the fan.
*Small first aid kit or at least a few Band-aids
Box of nitrile gloves (usually colored blue or purple).
A pack of dust masks.
*At least one pair of eye guards.
A quality respirator.
Cutting tools
*More than one X-Acto #1 knife with a sharp blade
*A spare pack (or two) of #11 blades.
#2 X-acto knife (like the #1, but bigger and with a thicker handle) and a pack of #24 blades (Like the #11 blades, but larger and stronger).
Single-edge razor blades.
*Strop and honing stone for knives.
X-acto #5 or #6 handle with razor saw.
X-acto miter box.
Scissors, good ones for paper and cardstock.
Scalpels for really intricate work.
Band saw
Dremel
Work surface
*A set of disposable kitchen cutting mats.
A self-healing cutting mat.
*Wax paper.
*Parchment paper, not even CA sticks to it.
*Paper towels.
Measuring / drawing
*A 12" steel ruler, cork backed, inch & mm markings, for measuring and making straight cuts.
Another lighter duty steel ruler.
Architectural and Engineering rules.
Triangle squareMini-square
Protractor
Compasses
*Various tip pencils and pens.
Machinist blocks. Two inch square is good, and three is better.
*Aluminum and brass angles of various sizes (for drawing fin and launch lug lines).
Adhesives
Thin, medium and thick CA glue. Accelerator and debonder.
*Small bottles of yellow glue.
A large bottle of yellow glue (to refill the small bottles).
3M adhesive spray , for paper laminating balsa sheet
Ambroid pro weld- for plastic joining.
Various epoxies.
Contact cement.
A box of popsicle sticks, wooden cuticle sticks, bamboo skewers and a box of flat and round toothpicks, indispensable for applying glue.
Finishing
A "T-Bar" or other sanding block.
*An assortment of sanding papers, with extra 220-grit.
A pack of sanding twigs
*3-M sanding sponges, various grits.
Nail sanding sticks, various grits.
*Fill and Finish, Carpenters Wood Filler, Bondo Spot Putty.
*Old credit cards.
*Tack rags.
3 oz paper bathroom cups to mix Fill and Finish and epoxy
Orbital palm sander for smoothing balsa sheets and sizing fin stacks
A bench top disk/belt sander.
Painting
Assorted artists brushes.
Craft level brushes, many uses, also essential for lifting , turning, unfolding and pushing decals into position.
A good air compressor, 5-6 HP, with a good regulator.
Several inexpensive airbrushes for colors, and at least one or two larger detail guns for spraying primer and base whites. Don't use any gun with multiple types of paint; only use one type of paint with any one gun or airbrush to avoid gumming internally.
Two or three dozen fresh 1 oz jars to fit the airbrushes, and several jar adapters...
Paint thinners by the gallon. It's much cheaper...
Plastic squeeze bottles, premix Fill n Finish and always have a bottle ready.
Lazy susan for painting
Decal film, decal solvent, and decal set .
Glad press n seal, great for masking for painting. It really sticks but is not sticky so no taping off necessary. It can even be used as a mask when rubbed down and trimmed. Use it to seal bottles of paint, glue, epoxy cans ..etc (also reusable).
Designing
A computer with a good graphics program (Corel Draw, Photoshop, The GIMP) to create patterns.
#110 cardstock, to create templates and patterns made with your computer.
A decent color printer.
A notebook to sketch ideas.
EMRR
RockSim
Misc
A scrap bin, to catch bits and pieces of discarded balsa and tubing.
*Trash can.
An office "cubbyhole" shelf unit for holding your cardstock, decal sheets, etc.
Hobby mini vise
At least one dowel of every diameter that you can find.
*Spent black powder engine casings - at least a half dozen of each diameter and each length.
A quart of acetone for cleaning up CA and a bottle or three of 91% isopropyl alcohol - dissolves and helps clean up uncured epoxy.
*Estes marking guide and fin marking guide.
Swingarm lamp, preferably with magnifier.
Building cradles - a few different sizes.
Plastic totes- shoebox size , for keeping all those unfinished projects in.
Numerous holding stands; wooden base with a dowel and an expended motor casing on one end, or some empty CD/DVD spindles.
A roll of DR. SHRINK heat shrink tape is great for making nose cones fit tighter.
T-Pins.
*Wooden clothespin clamps. Some with the wood pieces turned upside down.
Rubber band clamps.
Small one-hand "pressure/tension" bar clamps.
Lots of rubber bands and/or cheap plastic spring clamps.
Hemostats
*1/4,1/2, 3/4 widths of masking tape.
Electrical tape
Scotch tape
Packing tape
Fin guide fixtures.
Multiple boxes for LPR, HPR, recovery, avionics, efc.
