Heller are known for molding the frames (and other surroundings) of vehicle windows as part of the panes’ clear plastic. Which in most cases is just a matter of masking - but things get difficult when any wipers are molded in a position away from the frame; I at least can’t paint them to get the effect I can create on other manufacturers’ models by replacing the “glass” with acetate and scratchbuilding separate wipers. So, how do my learned modeling colleagues treat this problem - unless I’m the only one who’s seeing a problem here?
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Ah, wipers. The bane of almost all projects - armor, soft skin, aircraft, even locomotive.
One very good example is Revell’s 1/48 scale CH-53. The wipers are molded onto the clear plastic. I had to vary carefully shave them off, and then polish the clear plastic underneath. You can get PE and 3D printed subsitutes now, but back then I had to scratch them.Either way it looks far better than the original.
Another similar case that does not involve the clear plastic piece is the Tamiya M151A1 and M151A2 kit. The wipers are molded onto the windshield frame, with the blades parallel to the bottom of the frame. Of course I have not photographed every M151 out there, but I’ve photographed enough of each version to tell me the blades don’t sit that way. Yet no one I’m aware of ever fixes that problem. It’s one of the reasons my build take so damned long. 
This is how they look:
This is what you get:
At least their box doesn’t have them parallel:
Latest conundum - the AK Trabi. Separate wipers, so good on them.
But few people in Berlin ever left them on due to theft. Still looking for photos. Do I remove the wiper from the arms and leave them pointed up or lying flat? 
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If you mask the glass with thin transparent tape, press it down around the wipers with a toothpick, and cut the tape on the wiper free with a sharp X-Acto blade, you can paint them with care.
KL
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Tried masking with several Tamiya 1/48th Jimmys, (masking & Painting) didn’t work for me, (bleed under, & just didn’t look ok) so I stowed the screens flat & covered with canvas.
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Tried what? Painting them or removing them? I find that when I used to paint them, they looked, well - painted. There’s a lot of detail missing when they’re simply cast onto the clear plastic.
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Now scratchbuilding wipers is not my problem - see what I’ve done on an Italeri CCKW353:
But getting the brittle clear plastic “glass” with its molded wipers out of the frame is - any ideas how that can be done without breaking the “metal” parts?
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Lay it flat for maximum support. (Not as easy on a helicopter windscreen) Use a brand new X-Acto chisel blade. You can round the corners slightly to avoid gouging the plastic. Lay it as close to parallel to he windshield as you can and chisel off the wiper. With luck the whole thing peels off with one go. Finish with decreasing grit films until you’re down to 2000 grit or so. You can also use a meat packing tray. If you can’t completely eliminate the scratches (there shouldn’t be many) hit it with a clear coat. Weathering (and your scratchbuilt wiper) should hide the rest.
Excellent wipers by the way. What did you use?
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Thank you - the wiper arms are stretched sprue, the blades thinnest available sheet styrene with a double layer of OD paint on the side that meets the arms.
Thanks also for describing the way to remove the molded wipers; however, I’d prefer to cut out the not-to-scale panes to replace them with acetate (bubble pack) between “rubber seals” of stretched sprue, like this first seal:
Just how can those panes be removed with minimal risk for the frame?
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Edited my post
Tried masking with several Tamiya 1/48th Jimmys, (masking & Painting) didn’t work for me, (bleed under, & just didn’t look ok) so I stowed the screens flat & covered with canvas.
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Tried masking with several Tamiya 1/48th Jimmys, (masking & Painting) didn’t work for me, (bleed under, & just didn’t look ok) so I stowed the screens flat & covered with canvas.
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Ah. Your method is even better - using acetate to replace the kit part. While I have used acetate for thin door windows and such, I have never attempted to remove the windshield and replace it. I assume you’re talking about a windshield cast within the clear frame? That’s an interesting problem.
Okay, after thinking about it, I might go about like cutting out any other opening. (I can post photos later) Make the frame’s interior as straight as possible. Using flexible nail files is great for this as they’re much wider than needle files. I’d cut the acetate as close to perfect as possible and install it with PVA. Now here’s the (somewhat) untested part - make your rubber seal around the windshield with acrylic paint, or maybe rubber gasket material (?) if you can get it to squirt through a hypodermic needle. I did something similar a few decades ago to make welded on numbers on a tank turret. At least I think it was gesso. It was clear and rubbery. It might just work if you can ton it it first. I’ll bet there’s something at Michael’s already that I don’t know about that will probably fit the bill nicely. It makes me want to fish around for a suitable kit and try it out.
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I think I remember that Tamiya’s M151 kits contained a pre-cut piece of acetate for the windshield; my models all get “glass” from that material and replacement wipers as described above:
And now somebody please tell me how they cut rectangular holes in styrene of about 1mm thickness.
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See what you mean…
H.P.
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To cut the openings on thick plastic, first drill a series of holes around the inside perimeter. The closer they are to each other the better. However, leave a slight bit of material between the holes and what is intended to be the finished interior opening’s edge.
Connect the holes using whatever tooling process that is most convenient - cutting, carving, sawing, etc. to remove the bulk of the material.
Clean up the inside of the opening to the finished edges, again using the most convenient tooling processed - carving, filing, sanding, etc.
I usually carve to the finished edges using a new X-acto blade (taking thin cuts) and finish using a Flexi-file (unhook one end of the tape, pass it through the opening, then re-hook it to the handle). Since the frame will be painted, repair any damage using your normal processes for gluing, filling seams, etc.
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I would use a “laubsäge”
or the jewellers variant, juweliersäge, which can use shorter saw blades.
Fine toothed blades, saw slowly to avoid heating the plastic,
very energetic sawing can melt the plastic and make the saw blade stick.
There are different blades for metal, plastic and wood with different teeth.
Test different blades on scrap plastic to find the best one AND to practice sawing.
The saw shall NEVER be pushed into the cut, the sawing action is on the
pulling movement. The pull is ALWAYs vertically downward with the rear
end of the bow held between your arm and your ribs.
The board is clamped to a table, the sawing is done inside the hole at the
tip of the V-shaped notch. The sawing hole on this board is too big for 1/35
windscreens.
Make your own board or make a smaller notch and drill a smaller hole.
The workpiece is held over the sawing hole and rotated to cut in the wanted direction.
The teeth of the saw always face in the same direction (away from you).
Your sawing hand moves the saw up and down and the other hand rotates the
work piece. Don’t push or try to force the saw (easier said than done), the teeth
shall do the work.
Drill one hole in each window pane, insert the blade from through the hole and fasten
it to the bow. Make sure that the side of the work piece that you need to watch to
steer the cut is facing upwards and the saw teeth are cutting downwards.
Blades will break. With a juweliersäge you can use the broken bits …
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That method works extremely well. But if I can get away with it on larger openings I use a rotary saw. It’s much faster. And I have a jeweler’s saw set as well, but I like to use it for separating fingers on figures and very fine work.
The CH-53 below is an exercise in brute force - cuts down the long sides, smaller incomplete cuts for the short sides, and then an X shape. It took less then ten minutes to get this far. Just need to clean up the corners with a round file:
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The problem here is thick plastic (the windshield) that needs to be separated from thin plastic (the windshield frame)
Isn’t that backward?
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Big piece of clear plastic (red), sturdy thanks to large area, needs to be
separated from the narrow strip (pink) around it.
The large area will become junk and the narrow
frame around it is the valuable part.
If the windshield frame isn’t too complicated it might be easier to build
a new frame from styrene profiles.
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Yeah, I kinda get that. My question is: Isn’t the frame thicker than the windshield?
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