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An absolutely stunning build there Tom. Those wood decals look really good.

Love that color. Looking good so far - keep up the good work.

I love this rod. Nice quilted interior and great attention to detail.

Simply stunning! Nice job on those wheels - well done.

Wow - love this Celica.

I love this rat rod Steven. The welds look amazing!

Love these two cars! Thanks for sharing the pictures with us Matt - you've done a fine job!

Hi Nels, I'm afraid that I could not recommend a single place in the whole country. It seems one-by-one all the good shops have closed down over the last decade. The best approximation to a model shop we have now is Modelzone. I don't know why this forum wont allow me to copy/paste a link to their website here, but you can find their website on google. I tend to buy most of my stuff on line from the US and Japan.

Looks great so far. If I remember correctly the Bob Glidden kit does not have a supercharger - did you source that from another kit?

What a cool model. I've always loved the RS500 and the Cosworth that its based on. I wish I'd bought a 1:1 when they were still reasonable money, but now they are mega expensive and the values are only going up! Polishing the plastic is a simple and good way of working if your lucky enough to get a good example - its not cheating in my book. I got this in my stash along with Tamiya's XR4. One day I'll get round to building them both.

Thanks for those pics Jonathan. Nice to see tyres with some side wall markings. Cant wait to receive my kit.

Nice work. I love the colour!

My first major re-think on this project has had me up nights thinking about a new hood. Can you believe it - a rummage through my parts box reveals a Thunderbolt style hood. I think this is from AMT's 1966 Galaxie (below middle) - but I might be wrong. I also found the hood from the first 1965 Galaxie that I built, nearly 30 years ago (below right). Yes - I know - it's pink! I must have had some crazy ideas when I was a kid. The 1966 Galaxie hood almost fits the 1965 body. Overall it is a little too long and the front lip seems to be too curvaceous. I put a lot of work into the white hood with 'square scoop', but the Thunderbolt one really appeals. I'm not sure if this style hood was ever used on the 65 Galaxie, but the style seems to be correct for that period of Ford. Despite the work put in to the first hood - I will give this a shot. I have combined the '66 hood with the old pink hood to get a good fit into the 65 body shell. This way I have the old hood to fall back on if this idea does not work out. I've cut-n-shut the two hoods and added a little styrene strip to either side. I really hope this pays off!

Time for a little progress update! I've removed the rear cross member - it was not working out as I had hoped. After the moulded-in exhaust was removed this part never quite looked right. I will scratch a new chassis cross member later on - probably in round section styrene. The floor does not quite meet the inner body panels flush, leaving a slight gap in areas - particularly around the rear wheel arches. This seems to be the way with a lot of older kits. I'm pleased to see that this small issue is not a problem with most of the latest kit releases. I'm using some scrap styrene off-cuts to fill the gap... Now the floor panels make a nice tight fit with no gaps. I think it looks a little more realistic.

The subtle weathering really makes this Porsche. An awesome model!

What an awesome Roadster. I LOVE it!

Nice work on that fuel pump! Model looks amazing in the NNL show pictures.

Thanks for all your positive comments. It can be easy to lose interest or get side tracked with long projects like this, but all your comments help keep me focused. Bruce: Those clamps were purchased from a local hobby shop about 20 years ago. To be honest they are not very good and I should invest in some better ones! Rob: I was seriously considering a Ross Gibson Mountain motor. So much so that I ordered one from Meggahobby. It took weeks to get here (I'm in the UK) and by the time it did, I had already invested quite a bit of effort into the Boss 429 engine. I will use the Ross Gibson engine for something else real soon.

Another great project Geoff. I am sure this will be in the same league as your recent Mini. I wasn't sure about the Revell kit (already having a Tamiya one on the shelf - waiting for me to get round to it), but your detailed pics make me think it's definitely worth picking up. Keep up the good work!

A little more progress in the form of a scratch built cage. I don't want a full cage in this as it is supposed to be just a hot street car, so I'll be keeping it quite simple. Here are the bolt-down feet which I have cut from flat styrene sheet... I made a template of the main hoop from cardboard and used this as a guide to bend styrene rod. The bends were achieved with gentle heating over a candle flame. I haven't used this method for years and forgot how easy it is to over-heat the rod. After several practice runs I got a hoop that looked OK. I found the trickiest part to get the ends of the tube cut with a correctly profiled and angled 'fish-mouth' to fit onto a rod. There was quite a few scrapped attempts before I got this far. In the end I have not used all four bolt-down feet. The ones on the main hoop will show, but the two at the front will be under the floor carpet so will not show. I've never done a scratch built frame before, but if I can get to grips with the bending method a bit better I wouldn't mind doing a complete space frame for a future project (another ideas for my already over-ambitious list!).

I keep coming back to this thread to look at your Ferrari Jason - it is fantastic! Do you have any tips on painting wood effect - as you have done on the steering wheel rim?

Thanks for sharing those pictures of your Green Monster with us Darryl. What a great story to go with it. Looks like yours is nearly finished - its gonna look really good. I've often thought that I should build some models of my old 1:1 cars, but I don't have anything quite as interesting as yours in my past.

What did you use to get in all the nooks and tight spots to sand the texture away from the floorboards? I need to do this on a car I'm working on. That's a good question Jesse. I used a sanding stick as far as possible. To get right into the nooks I used a combination of two methods... 1) Cut a pies of fresh 320 grade wet & dry paper with scissors for sharp edge and sand as far as possible into the edge. This is difficult as it is impossible to apply pressure over the last 1-2mm (not with the size of my banana fingers), so you have to rely on the rigidity of the we & dry paper. 2) I use a No 17 Xacto blade (flat square head - like a chisel). This is held perpendicular to the textured surface and gently scraped side to side. This is a really good way of getting right in to corners and giver a real sharp edge. I used this method to carve the detail into the underside of the hood too. Hope this works for your project Jesse.

Super work there Art. I love the scratch building....amazing! Looking forward to seeing more.

Progress on project Galaxie has been embarrassingly slow. You know how it is; work, family, life... they all get in the way of our hobby . Anyway, with excuses out of the way, I thought it was about time I shared some progress with you all... I will be building the interior with no rear seats so I've had to fabricate the floor structure - where the seat would have been. The first thing is to add is the cross rib. The rear fire wall is not really the right shape. The kit part is completely flat and sits about 2 scale inches too far forward. Fine, if it were covered with the seat. In the pic below you can see that I have pencilled where two curved wheel arch bulges should be. I have decided to remove the rear parcel shelf. It will not be used in the final build. I cut away the rear fire wall and fabricated a new one a couple of millimetres further back. More good use of Milliput... ...and here it is looking roughly how it should! The area ahead of the rib will have the normal carpet. I've sanded away the 'texture' so I was thinking of using some flock. Now, I've never used the stuff before and I see there are many different brands - most coloured. Any advise on a good brand of flock material from you guys would be appreciated. It needs to be really fine - so that it looks in scale.