About 17 years ago, after a long absence, I returned to aircraft model collecting, but was not very happy with what was out there---the ready-made wooden models, in particular. Since my interest was primarily to obtain reasonably realistic replicas of WWII era warbirds and I wasn't willing to go the kit-make route ( with a number of exceptions ), I came up with the idea of creating high quality solid resin castings made from rubber molds that would allow me to obtain multiple examples of each plane so I could paint them in many schemes. The process involved a lot of kit bashing , inscribing and other work to create 1:72nd scale "master copy" of each plane. This was used to make a two-part ( top and bottom half ) rubber mold of the master. After that, it was a simple matter to pour in hot, liquid resin under considerable pressure, cool the resulting model, trim and sand it, fill in a few air holes and provide add-on parts like tail wheels, antennas, guns, bombs, etc. The result was a solid casting with many panel lines and other details, ready to paint and decal. For a while I entertained thoughts of launching a business in competition with the wooden model guys, but the advent of Chinese made low cost diecast products caused me to drop that idea. All told, I replicated about 150 WWII and Interwar warbirds in this manner for my growing private collection and once they are dusted off and minor repairs are effected, many are still quite attractive today. The following pictures show how four fighter plane models look in their ready to paint mode. Finally, I show examples of the same models after they were painted.
