With today’s technology, we expect crisp and clean injection-molded plastic parts in our model kits. So we are disappointed to find kits of any era molded with flash on the parts. I have found a use for that pesky extraneous material. Rather than use putty, I use flash to fill ejector-pin marks that are sometimes unavoidably present on the outer surfaces of parts. Putty does not always sand and polish smooth enough to do things like apply a natural-metal finish.
I punch out discs from the flash and use the tip of a hobby knife to place them in the ejector-pin mark. Plastruct Bondene (a very aggressive liquid plastic cement) softens the thin styrene so I can conform it to the kit part with the knife.
I wait for the glue to dry overnight, then shape, sand, and polish the filled areas with sanding sticks or sandpaper. Now, I have a continuous plastic surface.
Tip submitted by:
Don Frankfort
Hot Springs, S.D.