When my Fujimi kit arrived I was so excited, that I couldn't stop myself from starting yet another new build. I've already had some ideas on converting that curbside kit into full detail model with help from MFH. I've started planning for conversion as soon as F1 road car kit was announced by Fujumi. I even got spare resin chassis from MFH F1-GTR kit ahead of time. When my Fujimi kit finally arrived, I've completed build plan and finalized my ideas for conversion. Main idea is to use chassis, engine and suspension from F1-GTR car. First task for me was to make copies of some parts from MFH kit. According to my sources F1-GTR chassis was the same as the one of road car. So, I set out to replicate number of extra components from F1-GTR kit to use in conversion.
First I had to make molds. I've prepared box, made from Lego blocks, and mounted parts to flat sheets of plastic using double sided tape. However by oversight I've used mixed resin instead of silicon to make molds. I've only realized my mistake when resin started to harden. It's a fast process and I was only able to partially free parts from resin. First photo is of the rear inner fender embroiled in resin. I had to spend first 7 hours of this build carefully freeing parts from resin. Quite a bit of sweat and even some blood was lost over that task. Next day I've bought proper silicon rubber to make a mold and repeated my attempt. Final molds are far from perfect, but I think they are better than molds, I've made in the past for my previous tasks. I've also got different silicon this time, with lower viscosity and some decent transparency. Transparency of the silicon helped me do proper cuts in molds later. Because I've made one part molds, some details of originals could not be captured and I needed to cut molds in strategic places to be able to remove parts on de-molding. One of the boxes for mold making was leaking rubber, so I had to compensate for volume loss with scrap resin blocks, visible on the photo. Second photo shows cured molds before de-molding was done.
Last photo is of cleaned up copies, I was able to make using my molds. They are of much lower quality compared to original parts, but I think they will be usable for my goals, patched with putty and some extra material.
First I had to make molds. I've prepared box, made from Lego blocks, and mounted parts to flat sheets of plastic using double sided tape. However by oversight I've used mixed resin instead of silicon to make molds. I've only realized my mistake when resin started to harden. It's a fast process and I was only able to partially free parts from resin. First photo is of the rear inner fender embroiled in resin. I had to spend first 7 hours of this build carefully freeing parts from resin. Quite a bit of sweat and even some blood was lost over that task. Next day I've bought proper silicon rubber to make a mold and repeated my attempt. Final molds are far from perfect, but I think they are better than molds, I've made in the past for my previous tasks. I've also got different silicon this time, with lower viscosity and some decent transparency. Transparency of the silicon helped me do proper cuts in molds later. Because I've made one part molds, some details of originals could not be captured and I needed to cut molds in strategic places to be able to remove parts on de-molding. One of the boxes for mold making was leaking rubber, so I had to compensate for volume loss with scrap resin blocks, visible on the photo. Second photo shows cured molds before de-molding was done.
Last photo is of cleaned up copies, I was able to make using my molds. They are of much lower quality compared to original parts, but I think they will be usable for my goals, patched with putty and some extra material.
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