I recently helped out a friend by showing them how to cut a RC body. I thought I would show people how I do it.
My shell is the GOODYEAR Racing GRX130 Mark X by Yokomo.
Firstly, the tools you will need. I use a set of heavy duty scissors and a hobby scalpel blade.
Shells come with a large flat tab around the base.
The first thing I like to do is remove this tab with the scissors.
While not absolutely necessary, I find it makes it easier to work on the rest of the cutting.
When cutting a shell, it is important to grab a brand new blade. This makes the job a lot easier.
I begin with the straight sections first, such as this side skirt between the front and back wheels.
Using the blade, I score the plastic, following the guide line in the body carefully. The idea here is not to cut through the plastic, and the key here is to TAKE YOUR TIME. I ruined a lot of shells early on in my hobby because I would get really excited about seeing the finished product and not taking my time to make clean straight edges.
At the end of each cut, I cut a line to the edge of the shell. This makes it easier to work on one section at a time.
The next step is to bend the lexan body backwards along the cut. This cracks the body along the line already cut into the body.
This allows the unused section to be peeled away from the body. You always pull in towards the body so that the separation occurs along the score line created earlier.
After this, I sometimes get sections where the cut has not been right where I want it to be.
The solution is to take the scalpel again and carefully slide along sections that need to be cut further.
Here is the shell with all straight edges cut away.
Next, I cut and peel the wheel lines using the same method.
Super sharp scalpel blades. If I don’t knick myself at least once during cutting, I am very very surprised.
The finished product. Much better than using curved scissors!
Here it is on my trusty old Tamiya TT01, which I now only use as a display chassis. I hope this helps! With practice, you will be cutting super awesome shells in no time!
Wazza Out. =D
How do you know where to drill your holes if you ain’t using stealth mounts
mounts? I ruined many shells when I started out. Now I have a set of cut down old post for placement. I am sure there is heaps of other ways.
There’s no easy way to do it.
I found lining up the car as carefully as possible and factoring in for different heights of body posts (for instance when the rear posts were higher) was the easiest way. But in saying that, stealth mounts are far better looking.