1971 Mustang Mach 1 (AMT 1/25th scale)

[bh1701]

Here is my latest completion - an AMT 1/25 scale 1971 Mustang Mach 1. This was put together using 2 kits from the 1970's that I had built as a teenager. I included a photo of the original cars. The bright green one supplied most of the parts, but the silver one did donate some parts that were broken or missing on the green one. I used some aluminum tubing for the exhausts. Chrome trim is hand painted.

The color is Tamiya TS35 Park Green. I designed the decals myself and had them printed on a laser printed at the local Fed Ex Office store.

Thanks for looking!

Bart

[cobraman]

Nice work, looks good. I'm working on a 1/12 scale version of that same car.

[TransAmMike]

Very nice job there Bart👌

[vamach1]

Very nice work. Great color and contrasting white interior. Hopefully you can build a second one with the other one.   I’ve built a few of the MPC and AMT kits over the years. 😉

[Plastheniker]

Excellent work, great colour choice!

[Dragonhawk1066]

Looks pretty good!

[Kah puts]

That looks marvelous. 

[ChrisR]

Looks great!

[Bainford]

Good looking Mustang. Nice resurrection of the old build.

[espo]

Great looking dash and interior. Bright and smooth looking paint job. 

[PappyD340]

Super nice Mustang!

[kymdlr]

Nice build. I’m curious what are the steps for laser printing at fedex? Do you put your design on a usb drive and supply your own decal paper to fedex?

[bh1701]

18 minutes ago, kymdlr said:

Nice build. I’m curious what are the steps for laser printing at fedex? Do you put your design on a usb drive and supply your own decal paper to fedex?

I create the decals using PowerPoint and/or Adobe Photoshop. I found images of the stripes on the website of a company that makes them for the actual 1:1 cars. Photoshop is primarily used to erase any background colors that may be on the original image. White backgrounds are OK to leave since printers do not print white.

The final decal images are placed into a PowerPoint slide that I then export as a PDF file. I will adjust the size of the images, as needed, so that everything is the right size.

I will usually add a 1" x 1" square box on the slide somewhere. The reason for this is to ensure that the decals print at the correct size. I have found that when I print the slide from PowerPoint that the images are all a bit undersized. The PDF - when the printing option in the PDF viewer is set for "actual size" - prints them at the exact size needed. Checking that the dimensions of the box are really 1" x 1" will confirm that all is good.

I will print the PDF at home and will check my measurements, and will adjust the images in PowerPoint if needed. 

The PDF will be loaded onto a USB drive and taken to the local FedEx Office.

When I get to FedEx Office, I always work with an associate instead of printing them myself on one of their printers.

The settings for their printer in PDF need to be "Actual Size" and the paper type needs to be set to "Transparency". Also, they need to print on the correct side of the decal paper - show them which side needs to be printed on and they will figure it out!

I have them print a sample on plain paper so I can double check the measurements one last time.

You will need to supply them with decal paper.

Once last thing - I will fill the PowerPoint slide with as many copies of the decals as I possible can. There will be times that something goes wrong with the application/positioning of a decal and you will be glad that you had extras of that decal. Trust me on this!

The cost at FedEx is usually in the $1 range. Sometimes they charge for the test print on plain paper, but I have done this enough times at my location that they know me now and only charge for the printing on the decal sheet.

Hope that helps - let me know if you have any more questions!

Thanks,

Bart

 

 

 

[slusher]

Beautiful Mustang!

[TNT]

That looks great. Love that color.

[Oldcarfan27]

On 5/30/2022 at 5:07 PM, bh1701 said:

I create the decals using PowerPoint and/or Adobe Photoshop. I found images of the stripes on the website of a company that makes them for the actual 1:1 cars. Photoshop is primarily used to erase any background colors that may be on the original image. White backgrounds are OK to leave since printers do not print white.

The final decal images are placed into a PowerPoint slide that I then export as a PDF file. I will adjust the size of the images, as needed, so that everything is the right size.

I will usually add a 1" x 1" square box on the slide somewhere. The reason for this is to ensure that the decals print at the correct size. I have found that when I print the slide from PowerPoint that the images are all a bit undersized. The PDF - when the printing option in the PDF viewer is set for "actual size" - prints them at the exact size needed. Checking that the dimensions of the box are really 1" x 1" will confirm that all is good.

I will print the PDF at home and will check my measurements, and will adjust the images in PowerPoint if needed. 

The PDF will be loaded onto a USB drive and taken to the local FedEx Office.

When I get to FedEx Office, I always work with an associate instead of printing them myself on one of their printers.

The settings for their printer in PDF need to be "Actual Size" and the paper type needs to be set to "Transparency". Also, they need to print on the correct side of the decal paper - show them which side needs to be printed on and they will figure it out!

I have them print a sample on plain paper so I can double check the measurements one last time.

You will need to supply them with decal paper.

Once last thing - I will fill the PowerPoint slide with as many copies of the decals as I possible can. There will be times that something goes wrong with the application/positioning of a decal and you will be glad that you had extras of that decal. Trust me on this!

The cost at FedEx is usually in the $1 range. Sometimes they charge for the test print on plain paper, but I have done this enough times at my location that they know me now and only charge for the printing on the decal sheet.

Hope that helps - let me know if you have any more questions!

Thanks,

Bart

 

 

 

That's a great idea. All these years and I never even thought about having them print out a sheet. Price is definitely affordable. 

Do they do colors or just black?

[bh1701]

10 hours ago, Oldcarfan27 said:

That's a great idea. All these years and I never even thought about having them print out a sheet. Price is definitely affordable. 

Do they do colors or just black?

They can print in color. That's what I generally do since I will also load the decal sheet with decals for other kits that I may be working on. The only color that they cannot print is white - since the assumption is that you are usually printing something onto a piece of paper that is already white!

Here is a sample of the decal sheet file that contained the Mustang Decals, as well as decals to replace some old, yellowed decals on my USS Voyager starship. Use every available space for decals!

The Voyager decals were scanned from an original decal sheet from the Monogram model of the Voyager. My neighbor had this kit and never built it. That hardest thing about the Voyager decals was removing all of the blue background that was on the entire decal sheet. That's where a lot of patience is needed, as well as using something like Adobe Photoshop and their "eraser" tools! 

Thanks,

Bart

 

 

Edited June 2, 2022 by bh1701
Correct typing

[vamach1]

Great idea and a great way to get decals you want at a very low cost.  One thing I did notice was the stripe below the trunk goes down to the bottom of the end caps.  The ones on one of my builds isn’t correct either as it narrows to much at the bottom and is too wide where it begins to curve down.  I think they were old Fred Cady decals but I’m not sure.  Anyway, these pictures should show what I’m trying to say.  I know I probably sound picky but when you own the real car you tend to notice these things more than usual.

[bh1701]

1 hour ago, vamach1 said:

Great idea and a great way to get decals you want at a very low cost.  One thing I did notice was the stripe below the trunk goes down to the bottom of the end caps.  The ones on one of my builds isn’t correct either as it narrows to much at the bottom and is too wide where it begins to curve down.  I think they were old Fred Cady decals but I’m not sure.  Anyway, these pictures should show what I’m trying to say.  I know I probably sound picky but when you own the real car you tend to notice these things more than usual.

That's cool that you own a real one! I am jealous!

You are right that the stripes under the trunk do not go down far enough. Also the one on the left side under the trunk (not visible in my photos) has a more correct curve at the top corner to my eyes. The one on the right is a bit more angular at the corner. I remember that I had to make each of those corner strips using 3 different components - some of it Photoshop and some in PowerPoint. I am also not convinced that the proportions on the AMT kit in several places were a 100% match to the real thing.

And I can also be a critic of my own work - as you will now see:

1) The stripes on the side of the real car appear to be thicker in height towards the front and become slimmer as they work towards the rear. Mine are uniform in height all the way.

2) The stripe on the front fender that drops down was also a pain. The side marker lights on the AMT model didn't look to be as wide as they are on the real car, so I had to alter those stripes to be about the width of the marker light on the model.

3) You'll also notice that the stripe doesn't extend below the marker light on the front fender; that was going to way too small of a decal to work with. When you print your own, you have to cut the decal extremely close to the size of the actual decal shape. Remember that the entire 8 x 10 sheet is just one single, giant decal!

Finally, I don't think the proportions of / details on the AMT body are all 100% accurate. That makes it hard to shrink an image of stripes for a real car down for a model that may be off in some places.

But, I am very happen with the overall model the way it turned out and most people wouldn't pick up on some the inaccuracies that exist with the decals.

Thanks,

Bart

[vamach1]

2 hours ago, bh1701 said:

That's cool that you own a real one! I am jealous!

You are right that the stripes under the trunk do not go down far enough. Also the one on the left side under the trunk (not visible in my photos) has a more correct curve at the top corner to my eyes. The one on the right is a bit more angular at the corner. I remember that I had to make each of those corner strips using 3 different components - some of it Photoshop and some in PowerPoint. I am also not convinced that the proportions on the AMT kit in several places were a 100% match to the real thing.

And I can also be a critic of my own work - as you will now see:

1) The stripes on the side of the real car appear to be thicker in height towards the front and become slimmer as they work towards the rear. Mine are uniform in height all the way.

2) The stripe on the front fender that drops down was also a pain. The side marker lights on the AMT model didn't look to be as wide as they are on the real car, so I had to alter those stripes to be about the width of the marker light on the model.

3) You'll also notice that the stripe doesn't extend below the marker light on the front fender; that was going to way too small of a decal to work with. When you print your own, you have to cut the decal extremely close to the size of the actual decal shape. Remember that the entire 8 x 10 sheet is just one single, giant decal!

Finally, I don't think the proportions of / details on the AMT body are all 100% accurate. That makes it hard to shrink an image of stripes for a real car down for a model that may be off in some places.

But, I am very happen with the overall model the way it turned out and most people wouldn't pick up on some the inaccuracies that exist with the decals.

Thanks,

Bart

You summed this up very well.  The kits (MPC and AMT) have their flaws for sure.  I think I have the most sets of decals possible for these kits (Marks, Cady, Round2, ARII/Doyshua, original AMT/MPC, Rays kits and one other custom made set.). I’ll post some pictures later of the various sets for comparison purposes.

[RAMBENNA]

very nicely done, looks great

[Bills72sj]

I like the stripes on the seats. When I built my (only) modified diecast I striped the seats too.

Regarding decals, I have been making mine at home for some time. I use MS paint and keep the files in .bmp (bitmap) format.

I do this because it has no file compression which keeps the resolution and sharpness maximized.

Also MS paint allows me to reduce size via "print size" which is much better than file size reduction.

Here are some samples:

[vamach1]

It’s looks like Round2 made a pretty good set of accurate decals compared to the original issue kits and the Fred Cady decals.  Keith Marks and Rays are a good alternative to buying the entire new kit which is really an MPC kit under AMT branding.

[Bob Ellis]

I like the AMT version of the 1971-73 Mustang better than the MPC version.