Chuck Kourouklis

Get outta my head! 😁

Man, I love that XK-SS so, I might just tolerate the E-Type to get another copy...

Was gonna say, the model wheels don't entirely match what's on the box cover. Still in probably for two...

Um, yeah, guilty as charged. 😁 Just one thing - it might look as if that was all about the kit (and maybe it MIGHT AS WELL have been all about the kit). But actually, this kit became THE poster child of how wrong a model could be and still get blindly defended, and it was brought up so constantly in one thread or another that said defenders got sick and tired of hearing about it. So eventually, I was like, "fine, then, The Kit That Shall Not Be Named", and apparently that stuck in some small measure or another. Two things can be true at once. One of us might say, "well how big a deal is it really to fix this roofline", and the other might say, "decals for a world-famous sedan in a coupe kit, how DUMB is that - *sigh*, might as well fix it". And somebody could come up to either of us and say "but you shouldn't HAVE to fix it" - and begging everyone's pardon, but that does not count as a personal attack. Not on the order of someone insisting with aggressive stupidity that you're criticizing the kit only 'cause you're too lazy or incompetent to fix it, which was the primary dialogue that always started the fights around here. All of which is not to say we on the other side didn't finally go overboard and devolve in our own responses. If "rivet-counter" is name-calling and juvenile, "shill" most certainly is. Which is one reason I'm stopping here with the relitigation of it all. The other is that Revell is now deploying tools with the potential to put these issues to bed. I might have wished they'd used LIDAR on this Mustang (and who knows for the future, stranger things 'n all), but I'm also happy about the Mustang that eventually got the treatment. Meantime betweentime, radically right call, Dennis! Before, you would have made a heap the best it could be, but now you actually have something worthy of your effort, imagination, and considerable skills. 😎

Chassis is up on all fours: Because the rear axle has two hard mounting points and the coil-overs further holding its position, I decided to let it dictate how the frame settled over the central mount of the front leaf spring, to make sure each wheel touched down on a flat plane.

I mean look, it's not for me to wave my finger and tell anybody what to do or not; I can only state what I (and any aerosol can manufacturer) emphatically DO NOT RECOMMEND and leave it to those reading along to draw their own conclusions. Honestly, if you've developed a method to keep everything within a fifteen-foot radius puncturing a can, that alone implies a skill for which I can grudge a perfunctory measure of respect. For the life of me, though, I just can't comprehend why anyone would risk the integrity of even an apparently depressurized can when there's an alternative approach that has every practical advantage in terms of simplicity, convenience, and common sense, and decisively so. As for letting decanted paint settle, in my case, it's not so much gassing the paint out as it is letting it come back to room temperature. The straw method allows you to fill your jar at such a flow rate that the paint cools down (that good ol' PV=nRT, in case anyone remembers It from Physics class). I've had the paint so cold that it actually boiled when pipetted into the airbrush cup. But hey, back to the creamsicle... 🙂

MOCK-UPS! What a great idea for a topic! Mind if I play? Tamiya cars with two metal axles mock up pretty quickly. Just wanted this '88 Turbo as a reference for another project. More involved story with this one. Dangedest thing about Hasegawa cars is that not only are they fat and looming in Tamiya's rearview these days, they're kinda cheap! Great new tooling in the $22-24 range when you order thru the usual Japanese vendor suspects. So I wasn't too aggrieved when fixing a warp in the first one went horribly wrong - just kept the rest as extra parts for the second one which has gone considerably better as you see. 3.0GT Turbo JDM, another '88. These two are idling at the moment for the same reason: they both present some hatefully obvious non-prototypical seams in the body work. The Countach, at the rear roll pan where it meets the rear quarters on both sides; and the 300, a chasm tracing under the rear DLO windows to split the greenhouse from the rest of the bodywork. Filling that has been started on the SL. Back when I did the '50 Olds reviews, I was carving up a couple shells for the McGriff sedan concurrently with the factory stock Adler Green car, which was close to its final stages when I first tried the sedan body on the coupe's running gear. And here's a mock-up of something percolating nicely right now.

See, that thought about the wells occurred to me, Jim, but I dismissed it at first. hmmm... Thanks much!

Bil! Your weathering is M A G N I F I C E N T!

I've had admiring commentary about the hair on my knuckles (except, of course, where they drag). 😁 Thankya, Rooster James! Pricey, as Monty indicated earlier, but Semple has an online store: https://www.culturehustleusa.com/products/mirror

One of the other advantages with more compact surfaces is that you don't get so much wave in the surface that primer and guide coats are mandatory - certainly not in the newer tooling, anyway. And yay, this tooling is clean enough in the body shell that I can apply color directly to the plastic, once some parting lines are gone. Today’s object lesson (with only the profoundest respect and apologies to Maya Angelou): when a can of Tamiya TS tells you what it is, believe it the first time. So there I was on a little post-Christmas modeling recon at Big Al Gerace’s Hobbies Unlimited (highly recommended whenever you’re in the greater Hayward/San Leandro area!), with a can of TS-56 in one australopithecene mitt and a can of TS-34 in the other, carefully pondering the cap colors. From the look of things, my ideal envisioned color would be a sorta ambery split between these two. I mean, I am going to decant the paint for airbrushing – which just reminded me of one of the most unbelievable discussions I’ve ever seen on any forum, btw, a choice thread about the best way to decant a spray can! Would you BELIEVE there are adherents of using a pipe tap to pierce the can? Instead of just, y’know, using a drinking straw in front of the nozzle into a jar? Actually, let’s review this for a minute. Pipe tap: - You weaponize the pressure in the can - You must empty all contents of the can at once - Assuming they aren’t already all over your walls, ceiling, shag carpet, cat, and pretty little face (OH, doing it in the garage? Alright, all over your bench, vice, lawn mower, garden hose, band saw, tool chest and pretty little face, then) Drinking straw: - You use the can’s pressure as designed and intended - You only empty the amount you need at the moment - You can repeat the procedure all you want till the can is empty - Drinking straws are silly-cheaper than pipe taps - You DON’T VIOLATE the safety warning printed on EVERY AEROSOL CAN I mean, you can get all deluxe and spend about 90 seconds molding some poster tack around your straw to seal it, or you can cut a small arc across the straw so it fits the nozzle curvature better and just hold it at the nozzle over your collecting jar. But if you’re seriously gonna punch a hole in a pressurized can, why don’cha just toss it in the nearest dumpster fire first, run for your life, and save yourself a little grief? ANYWAY TS-56 and TS-34, right. I suppose, since I’m already planning to airbrush it, I could just decant and mix the two. But then what if you run out, and you don’t match the ratio exactly on the next batch? Nah, the whole point is to move this thing along, and if the CAP is any indication, TS-56 looks closer than a hand grenade fer sure. But there’s more than the cap color, isn’t there? There’s also the label. Which nakedly and explicitly declared it was “brilliant orange”… …and that’s how I ended up with this creamsicle. Decanted and shot thru the color-dedicated gravity feed pistol-grip Grex thru a .3mm fan tip, then GS46 clear cut around 30-40% with Mr Color retarding thinner thru an identical Grex reserved for clearcoats (gift for an artist ex-girlfriend given back to me, long story). Guess I coulda just gone with the Camel Yellow. I was thinking to give it a beige finish on the upholstery, but you know what? We got wide whites, we got white pinstripe decals, and a Dutch-style white tramp stamp on the decklid. So hellwiddit, might as well lean into the 50/50 Bar look with pearl white seats and pleats, then.

Sure thing, Craig! In this case, it was just getting the decal in position, and then liberal application of Micro-Sol with a soft brush. There's a MIGHTY temptation to get after the wrinkles with a cotton swab, but in this case, you'd just brush on the Micro-Sol and let it dry, then brush on some more and repeat the process till the wrinkles shrunk out on their own.

Isn't that an interesting question. I was surprised how it tolerated lacquer thinner - it shot just a wee duller, more like polished aluminum; but that bit was thinned carelessly, and I supposed it'd be better with a more disciplined cut. So if it can handle a chemical reaction with lacquer thinner, maybe it's enough like an enamel it can deal with a hardener too. They say it's solvent-based.

Sure thing, Monty - yup, I love Barbatos! I actually thought he might've tried Semple's paint out, but that may just be an assumption rather than a firm recollection. If the stuff would just harden all the way on plastic, I bet many modelers would prefer it to kit plating. Untouched, it's just that wee bit muted and more genuinely metallic-looking by comparison.

So Revell released that revised Rat Roaster '32, sparking some discussion of it here in Kit Reviews. On queries of what it's like to build, Tim Boyd helpfully tosses up his recent review build and a brief note or two, and just for grins I put up my review Roaster to offer a contrast, and some commentary on how trouble-free it was to build. By this time, I've been stalled on that other project for a year. And I suddenly had a hankering to do a hot rod. Love to do that new '32, but none of my pushers have brought it in. But what did I have on hand? Why, one of these '30 Ford retools. Hmm. I tend to move faster through rods, 'cause you can gang-paint a lot more parts body-color than you do factory stock and on top of that, there's less surface area on these more compact body shells to collect airborne schmutz. Got a holiday week coming up. How much of one of these could I get done? SO, the roof and the body need to come together first, for sure. The fit is generally good, but the alignment tabs and the voids for them inside can open up the seam a bit, particularly on the driver's side. A smearing, sanding, and re-smearing of a little Vallejo putty from the bottle for that - and maybe some more aggressive globbing for some of the sink marks on the outside of the frame, knocked down, re-globbed and knocked down again, then a little Mr Surfacer white to smooth it all out. One other thing: Witness these, shiny and chrome. Being a little underwhelmed by Stuart Semple's Mirror paint at first, I decided to come back around for another little try. We've all been waiting for a near-as-soddit chrome paint that can tolerate some handling, and well... we're still waiting. Although if you want something that doesn't blow off its black substrate in a sneeze like Alclad chrome, or something that hazes over with ANY sort of handling as does Molotow ink, the Semple paint is just a bit more robust, behaving like your classic oil-based enamel that refuses to cure. It even takes a drop-wise addition of lacquer thinner to airbrush a little more smoothly. So for my money, it's the closest so far. Not that Revell doesn't already rain chrome parts all over you like a plating plant explosion, but this kit has prodded in me a little extra greed for shiny objects. More anon.

Ah, Revell decals... Love 'em, love 'em LOVE. THEM. How good are they? Consider the wheel directly in front. Ever since Revell/Monogram ditched that obnoxious worse-than-cellophane carrier some 22 years ago, R/M decals have been utterly transformed. Even so, I've been unsure how they'd conform to the complex curvatures of a tire sidewall, so normally I just use a compass-cut card stock mask and some airbrushed white interior dye. But this project was supposed to help break a long slump on another one, so I soaked and slapped these whitewalls on, starting with one of the rears - that very wheel directly in front of this shot. Not too promising at the git-go, so I slopped some Tamiya Mark Fit on it and started centering the decal. Did this on assembled wheels, you see, 'cause I didn't want to risk mangling a decaled tire over a one-piece rim, and just as I was starting to stretch and center the decal... I realized it was on the wrong side of the wheel. That sucker came back off the tire in the water cup, and then, about as mightily as you'd expect, fought the tweezing of it back out of the water - till it occurred to me to get the backing paper back under it for the transfer. And so, not even sure if I had it sticky-side down and with solvent already working on it, I slid it onto the correct side and teased it into place. Switched to Micro-Sol and just brushed and waited, brushed and waited, brushed and waited, till all wrinkles and seams disappeared, now indistinguishable from tampo or paint. Micro-Sol did the job on its own for the other three. 'Member that late '90s Revell Deuce article from another publication (mighta been Doug Whyte?) showing you the relief cuts you had to make in a fender flame decal with that nasty old Monogram carrier? Right around Y2K, decals went from the worst aspect of a Monogram kit to the best of a Revell/Monogram kit, as they are in this one. But let's back up a bit...

Oxblood, man, oxblood oxblood oxblood maroon, I just LOVE THAT COLOR. I'm going to need to do something very close to that.

It would be If Revell consistently printed that black frit area on the inside surfaces of the windows, but on the C7R, for instance, they printed it on the outside. A nice flat black. In that instance, I woulda rather just done it myself.

Fwiw, I think Chris has been clear with his mandate from the start, and he'd be the first to admit he's not building to win contests. Situated as I am right between top modeling competency and the lowest levels of what's actually good, would I aim for my models to be better finished, and my reviews more critical? Absolutely. BUT, do I have ANY such video beyond a couple things in a private proof stage? NNNNOPE. Would I be anywhere near as productive as Chris? Nuh-uh. If I ever retire, we'll see; but right now, no way. If you want to see what's in the box and then get an idea how it goes together, HPI's the most prolific out there, and I find his videos plenty informative for those purposes. Keeping my own counsel and research on finishing model kits, it doesn't bother me so much if Chris goes a little off book here and there with small accuracy concerns and a little orange peel. Imho, he does more than well enough to show you the potential of a kit, and that's no less than what he promises.

The upcoming Mustang is an example of subject matter coming into play. It's targeted straight at those who grew up building their favorite US-domestic subjects almost exclusively in 1/25. Exceptions of the day were the kits from Monogram, who had long established themselves as a 1/24 manufacturer for automotive. The 8th-gen Corvette was developed in part to aim for a younger, more global consumer. A 1/24 C8 kit tracks with that, and I hope it follows suit. Gonna enjoy parking one next to a Monogram C4. 😎

Not necessarily metal axles (recall the C7 was a <50-piece kit) - I think I'd look at the Revell McLaren 570 and Mercedes AMG GT from a couple years ago for a forecast on what the breakdown will be like for this kit, especially if it's Revell AG doing the design. Maybe we'll finally get a Z06 after the E-Ray's been out a few years, but hey, baby steps... 🙂

Coronet & Charger for me.

Slick! Purty ride there, Tim! I can tell you the Roaster built up just fine, so Tim's results are no surprise. Been my experience that the initial Deuces - the 3-window and the Speedwagon from '96, the roadster from a couple months later - were all delightful to build, even with the slight deficit of refinement as compared to this version from 17 years later. Those were rude, paintless fit-assessment builds for the ranking article of the year and I've lost track of them, but I can flip up the Roaster for a contrast with Tim's... Huh. Only now, 8 years later, do I realize that I never blacked out the exits of those side pipes... As for the later '96 tooling variations like the 5-window and the sedan, I haven't done those yet and I'd be a little more circumspect about them; retools often invite new fit problems. I'd welcome a correction on that, though...

Not to derail, but I just HATE that. The big nasty horsefly in the ointment of AMT's '55-7 Cameos was all that honking unfinished space around a featureless interior bottom, scuttling the effect of a reasonably detailed frame and drivetrain - vastly more annoying to me than a DLO sweep corrected by a few minutes with a couple files and some Plastruct. On the blurred box, the 5-hole wheel design seems to match Monogram best, and I can't make the little Revell sunroof out or those wonky fender flares; so I'm ever-so-slightly inclined to the Monogram Bronco for "Gone Fishing". Not at all certain, though - it was the Revell Bronco for that Yamaha boat set, so there's precedent for that one in a set.

I was actually gonna say... 😁