Profil 1,0 x 4,8 mm

A strong flat strip 1.0 x 4.8 mm

A millimeter of thickness puts this strip among the more robust flat profiles on offer. The combination of an almost five-millimeter width and a full millimeter of substance gives a material that will not bend under your fingers and will hold a suspended part. That is exactly what sets it apart from thin films, which serve more to suggest a surface than to carry a load.

Where it proves itself

• Mounting plates under engines, pumps and machinery in dioramas
• Load-bearing flat bars and doubler plates on steel structures in larger scales
• Bulkheads and ribs inside hulls, where the halves have to be brought level
• Backing strips for fixing a model to a base

Cutting works with a knife, but at this thickness it is better to cut with a saw or to score the profile and snap it over the edge of a table. The break is then straight and does not have to be trued. The joint holds with ordinary cement for polystyrene; on parts under stress it helps to widen the contact area by gluing a shorter piece across it.

Converted to 1:35 scale, the section corresponds to a flat bar roughly three and a half by seventeen centimeters, that is, an honest piece of iron. In 1:72 it is already a massive beam, so there it suits bridge and crane supports rather than details on equipment.

One strip measures thirty-five centimeters and is sold separately. White polystyrene takes acrylic and enamel paint alike without priming first. The surface of the strip is smooth and without texture, so riveting or a weld bead has to be suggested afterward, with wire or with drops of thick glue.