Flying bases.

I don't know if anybody else has experienced this problem but I have found the transparent plastic of the flying base very difficult to stick to the black plastic base.
I have used superglue to find that it didn't stick at all. I then used a vast amount of superglue and, surprisingly, that worked for a couple of months but then, when picking up my Razorwing to inspect it, the base broke again.

How do you keep the base stuck together? I'm not sure if I should pin it because of the brittle transparent plastic or just kick it into my neighbour's garden and use the model without the base.

In order to let my bases disassemble to flat, I glued a ceramic bar magnet to both the top of the (now painted) plastic base and the side of the clear stem. If I was continuing this, I would add a second set per base on the opposite diagonal; I know pictures would help. Now, I've had similar problems where the glue holding the magnets on was brittle, and occasionally they would fall off. I'm upgrading to a neodymium magnet set into a drilled hole in the center of the bottom of the clesr stem that will stick to a neodymium bar set into the plastic base. The top is exposed to let the stem attach there and the bottom is exposed to stick to my display board.

Don't use the model without the base! The base is half of the aesthetic for fliers!

I don't have any pics of mine, but I used green stuff and glue. The stem on mine(and I suspect all of them) doesn't sit flush with the base and only touches at the four tips. Mine has been dropped...more than once, but has never broken. When I convert my Nightwing from a Razorwing JF I'll post a pic in my log if it helps.

Cheers guys. I'll try out ESE's method on my current Razorwing as I do have plenty of glue and Grrenstuff to spare, but whe I get around to purchasing another I will try the magnets and make up my mind on which is most effective.

Thanks.

I didn't have any issues about gluing my Razorwing base together. A good rule of thumb that surprisingly many people overlook when gluing fallen off pieces is scraping off the dried glue from the spot, so that the new layer of glue sticks to plastic, not, well, glue.

Yeah, I've heard some people don't do that. Something that I've also learnt is to just breath a little on the side that has not got the glue on it, as superglue sticks/dries well with moisture present.

GS or something I have used in the past to great effect on many projects - Chemical Metal.

You can get it from Halfords for about £7. I have used it for models, a broken porcelain lamp, fixing a hole in a core plug in a Ford Sierra engine - I even managed to stick a metal plate on the sill of my car and using a teaspoon created the effect of an arc weld after it was painted.

Would chemical metal work on plastic, though?

I used it on Tamiya WWII kits years ago without problems. There should be a few bits of old kits about somewhere that you could try it on first if you have any doubts.

Thanks for the advice. I do have plenty of old sprue parts lying around too that I could practice on.
I shall have to try it out If I cant get glue and Greenstuff to work. Cheers.

I know it doesn't sound all that helpful, but all I've ever done is file the clear plastic stem so it sits flat on the black base, and then attached it as usual with a generous helping of regular plastic glue or poly cement (same thing really). It works fine when you are just attaching plastic to plastic - it's when you want to glue the transparent shaft to the base after you've added sand/flock/debris/paint that I encounter problems.

I've found poly cement not to work on those two plastics together. It might just be the brand that I am using but it doesn't melt the clear plastic stem. For large things like that, and plastic models that I would be upset if their arms fell off, I do use poly cement.

Did you file the stem flat on the bottom first though? That increases the contact area, and seems to get the glue through the laquer-like outer layer of the transparent stem, and on to raw plastic where it can actually work.

I was forced to file it down, yes. When I first got it only the edges touched the base so I increased the surface area. That was going to be the first thing I did after I stopped being amazed at the awesome model. All I found that the poly cement did was leave white streaks, which slightly perplexed me.