Model building experience benefited another project. Anyone else have their experience be beneficial?

[Sledsel]

Been searching for a grill for my car for months with no luck unless I wanted to pay $600+ for an NOS. I located 2 broken grills and decided I'd try to make one.

It was pretty successful IMO. A bunch of cutting, super glue, epoxy, some extra bracing and I am pretty pleased.

Anyone else have their model experience benefit them on another project?

If wondering, the car is a 71 Monterey 2 door hardtop. 

[thatz4u]

nice work Andy, looks real......😀

[webestang]

For sure, kit building gave me the skills to do a full size car. 

My 88 5.0 went from this.........

To this......

 

And my 85 went from this......

To this.....

 

 

[Sledsel]

26 minutes ago, thatz4u said:

nice work Andy, looks real......😀

It is real... LMAO! 

 

[Sledsel]

11 minutes ago, webestang said:

For sure, kit building gave me the skills to do a full size car. 

My 88 5.0 went from this.........

To this......

 

And my 85 went from this......

To this.....

 

 

Very nice.... Those Fox's are a breeze to work on too.

 

[Tom Geiger]

Back in the day when I worked for evil corporation number one, I got a panic call from my director to come to his office. On his desk was a twisted mess of a model of a sculling boat. 
 

The VP we worked for had decided that a sculling boat was the symbol of his division’s teamwork.  The directors had ordered this boat to be built in our company colors, complete with lettered glass display case. They ordered this from a company in England who did them for sculling championships.  And it arrived smashed to pieces! And he had full confidence I could fix it!

I had a phone conversation with the company in England. The model was all cast in pewter. The body was heavy and had come loose and smashed all the delicate parts.  They sent me a full set of the outriggers and several tins of Humbrol matching paint.

It was a real pain! All the outriggers had broke clean at the body and the stubs needed to be drilled out. I blew through a bunch of drill bits. A couple weeks of spare evenings with a deadline for presenting it to the VP.. no pressure there!

i got it done. Presentation went well. All 5 directors each gave me a “Spot Award” which included a $100 Amex gift card. 
 

 

 

 

[Snake45]

It's a rare week I DON'T use my modeling skills, experience, tools, and/or materials on some non-model project around the house, car, or work. 

Probably what I use most is my "modeling mindset" to reverse-engineer a project, starting with the desired finished result and working backward to find all the steps I need to take to get from here to there. If you stay with it long enough to get good at it, model-building will teach you practical and logical problem solving! 

[von Zipper]

This is an interesting topic, great job on your grill repair Andy !

another 'hobby' i have is old Schwinn bicycles, I have been looking for a tear drop reflector for a bike thats been built from my stash. I've seen new/old stock reflectors sell for $150.00 and after market repops sell for $50.00. 

I went to a garage sale and bought this girls bike for $5.00-

this is my bike before and after, took the reflector apart cleaned/polished the lens with Novus painted the housing with Dupli Color chrome

the girls bike also had the right era reflector on the rear wheel hub shiner so i replaced the luggage rack reflector too

 

[stitchdup]

I made new control knobs for the heaters and rescue boat crane on the boat after a passenger stole them. They werent pretty but they did the job until the new ones arrived from somewhere in asia

[von Zipper]

 

[alan barton]

9 hours ago, Snake45 said:

It's a rare week I DON'T use my modeling skills, experience, tools, and/or materials on some non-model project around the house, car, or work. 

Probably what I use most is my "modeling mindset" to reverse-engineer a project, starting with the desired finished result and working backward to find all the steps I need to take to get from here to there. If you stay with it long enough to get good at it, model-building will teach you practical and logical problem solving! 

You nailed it right there, Snake!  I am always fixing or improving things at home using modelling skills and often my modelling tools.  My wife actually comes to me saying "Can you use your flux capacitor (or whatever) to fix this?"  Mind you, she is pretty handy herself and has been known to tell me when I got home what she has used to fix a problem.

But back to Andy's questions ( great save on the grille, by the way, I did the very same thing on a 72 Holden, decades ago)  probably the most unusual one was to do a favour for a friend.  He was converting a late seventies Dodge Ram pickup to RHD.  Those of you familiar with my models on this forum would know that I convert most of my models to RHD, being Austrlalian and all!  Paul came to me with two dash inserts ( full width of the dash) and asked if I would like to tackle it as he knew I converted models.  A bit of a stretch but he did have the correct hi-tech plastic adhesive to do the job which made it a lot easier.

But...... While this dash looked perfectly rectangular in every aspect, there were actually no parallel or perpendicular lines anywhere on it, a designers trick to make it look right when you are sitting in the cab.  Ended up being a big job but it is still in the truck to this day.

Cheers

Alan

[Snake45]

Several times now The Lovely Mrs. Snake has dragged home a broken ceramic nik-nak from a friend's or sister's home, and I've been able to superglue or epoxy the pieces back together (sometimes it's like a 3D jigsaw puzzle) and then touch up the finish with hobby paints. Besides cars I also do military models, so have a wide range of colors available--especially greens of all sorts. 

[NOBLNG]

I made some styrene sheaths for our knives in the RV and a fridge door holder.

http://www.modelcarsmag.com/forums/topic/162846-other-styrene-projects/?tab=comments#comment-2431485

[Ace-Garageguy]

"Model building experience benefited another project. Anyone else have their experience be beneficial?"

Yup. Pretty much everything I've had my hands on for the last 5 decades has benefitted one way or another from my model-building experience: an easy familiarity with tools in general, an understanding of materials, finishes, and adhesives, a confident can-do attitude (not being hopeful that a project will "turn out" well because I KNOW it will...including knowing what to do correct something if it doesn't), and the patience, self-discipline, and honest self-criticism required to achieve consistently excellent results.

[Tom Geiger]

On 8/27/2021 at 8:55 PM, alan barton said:probably the most unusual one was to do a favour for a friend.  He was converting a late seventies Dodge Ram pickup to RHD.  Those of you familiar with my models on this forum would know that I convert most of my models to RHD, being Austrlalian and all!  Paul came to me with two dash inserts ( full width of the dash) and asked if I would like to tackle it as he knew I converted models.  A bit of a stretch but he did have the correct hi-tech plastic adhesive to do the job which made it a lot easier.

Ha! I know that story well! And that very Dodge pickup was in my driveway in New Jersey!  Hope Paul is doing well!

[Lunajammer]

If I may take the liberty, I would have to answer this in the reverse. 20-years of working in Photoshop every hour of every day has benefitted my model building. Using the Photoshop airbrush has trained my eye regarding color blending, pressure, coverage and technique. For as little as I use my Badger airbrush, I feel like I go to the single action tool with a certain degree of unearned knowledge and comfort.

Edited September 2, 2021 by Lunajammer

[webestang]

21 minutes ago, Lunajammer said:

If I may take the liberty, I would have to answer this in the reverse. 20-years of working in Photoshop every hour of every day has benefitted my model building. Using the Photoshop airbrush has trained my eye regarding color blending, pressure, coverage and technique. For as little as I use my airbrush, I feel like I go to the single action tool with a certain degree of unearned knowledge and comfort.

I guess I could say the same thing. After 15 years doing pro-darkroom printing my job went to photo retouching around 1998 with PS-5. It still amazes me what I can do with PS-CC. But I think I can say that PS has helped with kit building as well. 

Here is a favorite retouch I did for a lady who lost her son in Nam. 

[peteski]

That looks great Scotty!  I'm curious about how much of the retouching was using some automatic PS features, and how much was done manually?

[Carmak]

30 years ago when I started as a design engineer for a medical device company I would scratch build my own small concept parts in ABS plastic. In the mid nineties we got an SLA machine and my skills became obsolete (at work). 

Carmak

P.S. Sledsel, I love your 58. Saw it a few years ago at the Des Moines Good Guys and talked to you for a couple minutes about which headlight bezels you used.

 

[Snake45]

11 hours ago, webestang said:

I guess I could say the same thing. After 15 years doing pro-darkroom printing my job went to photo retouching around 1998 with PS-5. It still amazes me what I can do with PS-CC. But I think I can say that PS has helped with kit building as well. 

Here is a favorite retouch I did for a lady who lost her son in Nam. 

Fantastic job! I'll bet she cried when she saw it. You can be VERY proud of that work. 

[webestang]

14 hours ago, peteski said:

That looks great Scotty!  I'm curious about how much of the retouching was using some automatic PS features, and how much was done manually?

Thanks! I'd say that 95% was manual. I restored it as black-n-white and added the color afterward. This retouch took about 4 hours. 

[webestang]

3 hours ago, Snake45 said:

Fantastic job! I'll bet she cried when she saw it. You can be VERY proud of that work. 

Thanks! Yeah, she cried like a baby but they were joyous tears. 

[peteski]

59 minutes ago, webestang said:

Thanks! I'd say that 95% was manual. I restored it as black-n-white and added the color afterward. This retouch took about 4 hours. 

Very impressive.  You also just gave me a new trick to try: fix the cracks and scratches in grayscale mode, the re-color afterwards. Brilliant!

[Sam I Am]

I also have used techniques from model building on the 1:1 as well.  My favorite was the instrument housing on a 63 Fairlane.  I thought I had pics of the actual cluster but this is the best I could find. Let's just say that it is a little difficult to source parts for a 62-3 Fairlane.  We were rebuilding this 63 for a customer and the housing for the instrument panel was in really bad shape.  Originally chrome, it was dull on the places it had not worn through to the plastic underneath.  I told my boss I had an idea...

I disassembled it, dunked the housing into everyone's favorite paint stripper,  primed it with tamiya ,wet sanded with 600, and painted it with tamiya silver leaf. I also cleaned the instrument faces with a cotton swab soaked with novus #1, and polished the clear plastic panel that goes between the housing and gauge panel with novus products as well. In the picture (which does not do it justice) , the panel to the right is factory aluminum with chrome trim. It really looks good and blends well.

Edited August 31, 2021 by Sam I Am

[Ace-Garageguy]

I would posit that anyone who develops a skill that requires good eye-hand coordination, visual judgement, and a self-critical feedback loop (including PhotoShop etc.) would find some cross-benefit to every physical activity they engage in, particularly any kind of "making".