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New member searching for advice restoring old Stutz model


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Hi, I have been away from modeling for some years. I recently purchased an old model of a Stutz Bearcat in pieces on ebay. I have the hope of bringing it back to life.

When the parts arrived I was delighted to find it was mostly complete and just needs to be repaired. But I am not sure where to begin because amazingly, I can not determine what it is made of. The body panels are extreemly thin, and the borders of the fenders have fine wire imbedded in them. I believe this model was built in the 1950s. It looks like the Aurora kit in 1/16 scale offered back then. The wheels look to be plastic with rubber tires so they may be from that kit. But most of the parts appear to be made of wood not plastic. Inspecting the edges of the fender pieces that need to be repaired it looks like they may actually have been made of a thick paper stiffened with something. The running board and splash apron look to be very thin balsa wood.

Does anyone have any knowledge of this sort of construction. Specifically I need advice on what sort of adhesive to use to reassemble this car. I like the patina so I want to do as little damage to the existing paint as possible.

Any advice on repair or knowledge about how this model was built would be appreciated.

Fosco

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That's the old Hudson Miniatures kit, which consisted of wood, Strathmore board (a very fine grade of card stock) with wheels/tires, radiator, headlights and a few other smaller details molded in acetate plastic.

Hudson Miniatures was a line of 1/16 scale kits introduced by Oscar Kovaleski Sr. in 1948, and lead to the founding of the original Auto World hobby shop and mail order business made famous to thousands of Baby Boom generation model builders back in the 1960's/70's, by his son, Oscar Jr.

Art

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