I've spent months finally putting together my models got lots of OOP and newer stuff to paint. I bought a stegadon off Ebay a whilst ago and only opened the box today and the person selling it has glued most of it together (badly) and often in the wrong places. Is there any way to separate the glued pieces? Plastic model and it looks like poly cement glue. Any help would be great.
Super glue can give out fairly easily, especially if treated with chemicals (like those for stripping paint). Poly cement glue is going to be trickier :/ I've use a bit or force and an xacto knife in to pop small glues off but it's not going to go too well for anything big. If you have a picture of the damage maybe we'd have a better idea how much trouble it's in?
The super glue will become more fragile if it's cold, so you could try leaving your models in the freezer before you try and separate the joints with a hobby knife. (carefully) On your metal models you can try nail polish remover, (to dissolve the glue) since it doesn't melt them like it does the plastic models
That's him lots of gaps between sections and my main problem is that the howdah is attached so i can't paint under it. Tried prying some bits off with various degrees of success. I've tried acetone/nail polish remover on metal models before after asking for advice on that previously. This is plastic though and not sure if its polycement or superglue.
Well the steg itself should be pretty sturdy, even if you break the howdah, it gives you a perfect excuse to mod it somehow. Or just fix it up with green stuff and glue and call it battle damaged.
The steg is a fairly gappy model anyway really. As said before you can use green stuff pretty well. If you're careful you could cut the platform off at the top of the poles to be glued back later, but that would be a last resort. You could even get a new howdah from bits sellers if it gets tottaly destroyed.
To fix it I´d suggest green stuff, don´t even bother to try to break it toff because you´ll make matters worse. The howdah cut it like @Phoedinn suggested, and i for whatever reason you break it very badly, I would´t try to build it to be a playable mini, but rather some piece of scenery. Good luck with it.
Cheers for the advice i managed to remove it with minimal damage. I cut the struts with an xacto knife and then levered the howdah off with a file. =)