Many visitors to the scale forum at RCU have expressed an interest in vacuum forming techniques to assist in detailing their airplanes. While I am certainly no expert I have done a fair amount, not only for my RC modeling, but also in my profession as an architectural model maker. While my techniques are certainly not the only way, nor the most technically advanced, they have proven to work well in most applications and require no exotic materials (in other words, it's cheap!). To get started using my methods will require the purchase and/or creation of the following:

1. a forming box, easily constructed
2. a source of vacuum, I use a shop-vac
3. a frame to hold your material while heating and forming
4. a source of heat, I use the household oven
5. a method of holding your frame and material off of the oven rack while heating

Below is a picture of my smaller forming box. The outside dimensions of the box are 9x11 inches and it's approximately 3 inches deep. The size of the box is really unlimited so long as your source of vacuum has enough capacity to evacuate the box quickly. Mine is constructed of ¾ inch MDF (Medium Density Fibreboard) but plywood or particleboard, etc. will work just fine. The forming bed of the box is ¼ pegboard. The box needs to be as air tight as possible so silicone sealer is used in all corners and for attaching the pegboard for a tight seal. Also visible is the hole for inserting the vacuum hose. This is just a slip fit but it must be a good one so cut accurately. I also have a larger 12x16 forming box but have not found much use for it as of yet as the small one is adequate for most scale details. Just for reference, a small 1-gallon shop-vac is sufficient for the small box but inadequate for the larger one. However, a regular shop-vac works fine with the larger box. All in all very simple, no voodoo here. (continued)