Nacho Z

Such a beautiful model of a beautiful car!

Simply sublime!

Very nice!

Now that is one sweet Mustang!

Jason brings up a good point about the cloths. I also use what Jason is talking about, cotton flannel, (at least I believe that is what it is). My wonderful wife bought me a ton of it and it will last me many years. I even go this far; I cut something like a 6”x6” square of it and put a little color dot in the corner of the square to correspond with the particular compound that I will use. This way I will never “cross contaminate” the cloth with the wrong compound. When I’m done polishing I will cut away the used area or just toss the whole thing. Lastly, I have a 4th cloth just to wipe up an leftover compound or haze on the body.

Hi Ron, I’m going to assume that you are using the Micro Mesh cloths. When I paint I always try to make that last coat a heavier, wetter coat. This seems to give me a smoother surface. I generally start at 4000. I have dropped down to 3600 to get stubborn boogers out, but 4000 is my normal starting point. Like you, I run up to 12,000 and then I use Tamiya polishing compounds. If all goes well, I will skip the Coarse compound and start with Fine. Hope this helps.

Ron, sounds like you have a good regimen for polishing your paint. The three responses above mine are excellent. I would believe that there is piece of grit causing havoc. The only thing that I would add is do you really need to start at 3200? Might not seem like a big deal, but I would try to eliminate the coarser grits as much as I could. Just a thought.

Bob, I just have to say that I really have my doubts that these were hydro dipped. The top car looks like the work of a guy named Ken “Bondo” Brickell. I could be wrong but it looks like his style of paint and build. The Foose pickup, to my eyes, sure looks like it was painted and polished the conventional way. Any chance that whoever told you that they were hydro dipped might have been pulling your leg?

Outstanding!! As a kid back in the late ‘60s and ‘70s, I loved these crazy paint schemes. What an awesome model!

Very nice, Simon! She is a looker!

Good Lord, Jim, this is absolutely fantastic! This weekend was the first time that I’ve taken a look at this thread. I’m not sure why I didn’t before this. How impressive is all of the work you have done so far?!?! Thank you for posting all of the work you have done and the great photos and explanations to go along with them.

A beautiful model of a beautiful car!

Such a cool model and, in my mind, it has a bit of nostalgic importance . I consider this kit and the ‘55 Chevy Street Machine to be iconic, again, to me. It is great to see it built up. You did a very nice job with it. Thanks for sharing!

That is one sweet looking Chevy! Love the color.

Once again, I have no idea how I did not comment on this when you posted it back in July. I’m sure that I saw it. ?‍♂️ I’m glad that it was brought back up again. She is a fantastic model and you did her proud. I’m hoping you will share the awards that Bruce mentioned in the post prior to mine. I’ll just go ahead and say congratulations ahead of time!

Doyle, BCC stands for Buster’s Custom Colors. Google The Sales Shack or The Model Hut Sales Shack. He has his paint listed there as well as other things.

Thanks, Doyle! I think that I will probably use the Brandywine. I am going to try it over a slightly darker metallic color. It looks good over gold, but I was hoping for a slightly darker hue. It is hard to tell how it will look on such a large body. On the other hand, those nail polishes are such gorgeous colors, but once again, I'm not sure how they would look on that big 'ol trike.

I'll share a couple of pictures of my spoon stash. I really started this as a way to see the difference between blacks, grays and metallics. I constantly go back to the "spoon ring" to check colors. Then it became an exercise in how different bases will affect final color. For that purpose, I have both white and black spoons. Finally, there are a ton of spoons that I never take pictures of that were used for compatibility between different paint purposes. I am way behind on getting spoons mounted on the key ring. I have a second key ring and I think I will make one for colors and one for blacks, grays and metallics.

What a great looking Monte Carlo! This model just has the right look to it. Very well done!

Wow, Garry, she is a beauty! The paint job is great and your foil work is absolutely fantastic!

Thanks, Jim! I’m pretty sure that I will go with HoK Brandywine. I appreciate it, Jimmy! I was pretty excited when I saw that it was coming out. Hopefully it will make a nice Halloween themed build.

Absolutely wonderful build! And that paint job and color!

She looks darn good to me, Garry! You did a great job on this.

This is very timely, Marcus, I just posted my WIP of this kit a little bit ago. I can only hope mine turns out half as nice as yours! I really like the extra touches that you added to yours. Very cool!

Next up on my bench is the 1/8 scale Evil Iron Trike. This is for a Halloween themed FB group build. It is about the only group build that I take part of. I have one month to build it. I am going to try to make it a halfway decent model with a minimum of added detail. Preliminary fitting of parts show that the body is going to take a good amount of work just to not have massive gaps around the 4 parts that make it up. It is a big kit and will take up a chunk of my work bench build space. Here is what came in the box. I realize that I forgot to take a picture of the decals. If anyone wants to see them, I will take a picture of them and post it. Now, what color to paint it??? I want to keep it a darker color. I reached out to a few of my buddies and one of them suggested House of Kolor Brandywine. He even provided a link to Scale Finishes, who carry HoK. Looking at their website, I was also intrigued with Wild Cherry so I placed an order. BTW, the paint was here in just a few days. Great service from Scale Finishes! On to the spoon test. I used Tamiya gray primer and Tamiya Gold as the base. First picture is just the paint, second picture is with a quick shot of clear. No prep and no polishing, I'm just looking for the color. I'm not sure that I am happy with either color for this build. Don't get me wrong, both colors are gorgeous, I'm just not 100% sold on them. My wife and I were out and about and I picked up some fingernail polishes. Here are the results. I'm really digging the reds on the black spoons. You can disregard the pink one. Finally for this first post, I will show you the body pieces put together. If you look at some recent YouTube videos on this kit, you will see that the poor fitting body panels are not just in my example. The first picture has a 1/43 Camaro in it for a little size comparison. In this picture of the rear of the body it should be noted that I have already began to fill seams. I used Tamiya liquid cement to glue everything together and I use CA glue with kicker as my main filler. I will try my best to be consistent with updates on this one. Thanks for looking in! I'm open to suggestions and comments about the build. Cheers!