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Welcome to the 1955 T-Bird design study build. I am going to take you through the entire process of scratch building a car from the plans stage to the final display. This will be done is small increments that can be done in less than an hour or two. Each stage will cover completely the materials used, the tools required, and the process to get to the next step. Anyone with a few models under his belt and some small scratch building experience will be able to complete this project. I encourage those following along to post pictures of their progress, to ask questions, and to offer up alternative methods. I would like to have an exchange of ideas, and ways of doing things. What I am offering up is by no means the only way to do this, but rather the way I am doing things at this time. During the build if you see better ways or different ways of doing something I encourage you to post this. Feel free to modify the plans to create other variations of this car, Can it become a pickup, convertible or something that is rusted out and falling apart. Maybe it could be used as a platform for something entirely different from what is presented. I am hoping to accomplish at least to things here. First to show others that scratch building is not as hard as it looks, and second to have fun with it and exchange ideas. The drawing is of a concept for the Thunderbird done in 1955. I have a few photos of a quick design study taken from this drawing. It is by no means a finished model but rather an assembly to find out the problems that we will run into and to try to make the process easier. It is rough and is not intended to be the quality I hope to have when we get done. The first installment will be in a few days and cover creating plans from renderings or other drawings that you may have to create layout patterns to make your model. I will have a set of plans in PDF format that you can download that will print out in scale. This is very rough and not detailed out. The windows are held in place with masking tape. There are some obvious problems, it is too naoorw and the front end is too clunky. All this will be fixed for the build. This is the reason for the concpet build, to find problems and fix them. Note that I have lest than 10 hours in this build at this point. You will need to order a sheet of plastic from http://www.usplastic.com/catalog/item.aspx?itemid=22883&catid=715 Item number 43332. This is .40 thick and is what I will be using. If you don’t want to order an entire sheet I can sell the required amount of plastic for a small fee plus shipping. Let me know via message for details. I would like to have some idea of how many are interested in this project so let me know. You don’t have to do the entire car and can just work on some areas. I will cover the body, interior, frame, wheels, and motor. Even if you don’t follow you may find some interesting ways of doing things. KennB More photos: http://photobucket.com/T-Birdconcept