Hello - Firing up the builds again

[chasracer]

Last week I sorta jumped into it with a few trades here. I appreciate all of those that trusted me and traded with me. I am looking forward to the different kits that will be showing up soon.

I actually started building model cars when I was about 6-7, I remember my first model was a 1958 Chevy Impala that had a body made in multiple pieces. I finished it but it was just white plastic, chrome and clear plus the warped sides were lopsided from trying to glue them to the upper body. My next kit was a 1957 Chevy that had a one piece body (I learn quickly) but had opening doors, hood and trunk - it turned out better but I was probably in over my head on that one with the hinges and stuff.

My Father was a prepared food salesman operating his own distributorship of the products in Virginia. We had a small rental house in Richmond and he enclosed the small side porch with plastic to keep the rain out and that became his "warehouse". At 6 years of age I went to work making $.10 a week keeping the warehouse swept and cleaned up. I saved up most of those dimes to purchase more model cars down at the local grocery store. I also started using a little bit of paint but didn't get the whole cleaning the brush routine until I ruined a couple of new brushes. From that time until I was about 12 or so, I built kits pretty regularly. I had moved to the point of swapping parts between kits, had a huge plastic bag of spare parts (wish I still had that!) and starting doing some minor detail (plug wires with black thread). At 12 I was starting to get involved with 1:1 cars and really began my lifelong association with them and racing them. My Father purchased an old '62 Ford for me to work on - just to keep me away from mom's Chevy. With my focus shifted I stopped building model cars. Real cars, girls and going to drag races was far more fun and took up most of my time and resources.

I married young after starting what I did not realize at the time was a 40 year corporate career beginning at the phone company. I have four children and when they were in their childhood to mid teen years, I hardly had a dime to do anything else. No car stuff, no racing - just being a father running from one after-school event to another one. Somewhere around the time they were all teenagers and no longer spoke to me, I picked up modeling again. I built a hand full of car kits, then got into German Armor for a bit and then moved into building 12th Scale electric racing cars. My detailing skills from the modeling really helped with the paint and signage on the clear plastic bodies - which you paint from inside but it also helped me build chassis that were very light. To make weight, I would have to secure coinage to the chassis with double sided tape - nice thing is that I could put the weight were I needed it. I did the electric car thing for a number of years and really enjoyed it then one day on the way home from work I went a different route and passed a '66 Chevelle that was setup for drag racing and was for sale. That's an entirely different story but except for collecting a few kits I haven't built anything really in 30 years other than helping a couple of the grandkids put together a Snap Kit.

So, I still drag race today with my three sons - my daughter lives in Florida so I only see her maybe once a year now. We have four race cars with a 5th one in the works - all of them are in the 5 second and quicker range in the 1/8th mile. Even with building a new car, I find that my retirement years now have a lot of dead time in the evenings so I have decided to break out a few kits this winter and see what happens. I build for my own pleasure as most of this stuff will be tossed in the trash when I am gone. I don't expect anything great in my skillset to improve but I do hope that I can still build a kit that has a little bit of detail and represents the subject material.

[57olds88]

Welcome Charles. Look around and enjoy. Some great people on here and willing to help.

[Tom Geiger]

Hey Charles-

Welcome!  Your story is pretty typical for us guys!   Most of us started as kids, quit for years and rediscovered the hobby later in life!

Your paint brush story triggered memories!  I remember buying three 15 cent containers of Testors paint, wanting three colors rather than two colors and the bottle of thinner!   I had one 10 cent brush, so I'd paint one color, then plunge the brush into the second color and paint on the side of a model box until I had worked out all traces of the first color!   That brush was toast at the end of the day.    Then I discovered my mother's stash of Q-Tips and painted with those!  At least they were disposable!

Edited October 16, 2019 by Tom Geiger

[PappyD340]

Welcome to the forum Charles!

[89AKurt]

Welcome!  Your story, if I had a dollar for every time.... much like real cars, someone would say "I had a [fill in the blank], sure wish I kept it."  Even though you don't expect the models to survive, pictures of them will on this forum.

[Hotrod 97]

Welcome aboard, Charles!

[misterNNL]

Glad you are still building. Don't worry about building anything other than what pleases you. Enjoy your retirement, I certainly enjoy mine!