jbwelda

thanks for the comments everyone and thanks again for the pics. looks like that purple one has had some pretty extensive work done on the rear to make it look that good. mine will look more like yours probably! so i take it you painted yours to resemble what i think was a later paint job, kind of a candy gold? right now im having a hard time settling on a paint color to try to get the original kind of light lavender purple candy. i dont use an airbrush so i am limited to spray bombs, but i think i will go with some candy grape from boyds over maybe a light blue or something. or i might just do it in the model master deep purple pearl i shot the motor with. that was my original plan to to tell the truth i would rather get something more subtle like the original was...

what the??? the box art showed a spriget but the body inside was the frogeye? wow thats kinda strange! but the scale you say is about right for 1/25 but maybe also for 1/28... 1/2 inch scale is 1/24. no wonder i didnt recall the aurora one, i always thought it was 1/32. in fact i have a body i was putting on a slot car chassis as well. randy if you got more slot car projects you should post pics in the slot car section, its pretty dead over there. for a while and period of about 5 years i was doing a lot of 1/32 slots, many conversions from static models. i for one would love to see some of yours if that frogeye is any indication!

thanks folks, what i really need is a set of rear wheel wells. i dont really like them chrome but this current car i am making them as original, chrome. but for the second version i was going to strip the chrome and paint them body color. does anyone *please!* have some? i have other parts to trade! pm me please! alright so sorry about the grovelling there, thanks for posting those photos gramps, they will be valuable reference. and i see your muffler has the same dimple i was talking about earlier...i think im going to try to fill it and then foil it but i sure wish the piece was better. one thing, could you please post a photo of the back end? thats where the body, underbody piece, and both rear wheel wells all meet up and a very delicately shaped piece has to fit for the taillights. i figure thats what going to be hardest about this one: making the back look good with the pretty nebulous mounting points ive seen so far. that rear axle was a struggle in and of itself and ive not even got the shock absorbers mounted yet! i am probably going to try the king t next especially since i knew don tognotti a bit and he even awarded one of my models as his favorite one time (a thames panel made from simple simon pie wagon, that i had turned into a lotus parts delivery truck and put a twin cam lotus motor in) and i want to display the king t model with the plaque. also the newly restored king t was just at the autorama and i got a bazillion photos of it for reference! thanks again folks, any tips or help sincerely appreciated and dont forget to contact me for those wheel wells!!!

wow thats muy cool! where did you get the 409, or did you build the heads and valve covers?

well thats a lot of questions, but let me just say that painting is an art, and its something you have to get used to and get your own rhythm and procedures down to make a successful paint job. lots of other people here have better cred to talk about painting than i do but i wont let that stop me! the secret to deep black paint like you want is a super smooth but light while still covering well, coat of the color, black. under that though, the body should have been primed and smoothed (any wrinkles in the body work are going to show up big time with shiny black) and then the primer polished down with 6000 or 8000 grit polishing cloth. then the color, in as light a coat you can do with good coverage. this is where the airbrush comes in because with an airbrush you can precisely control the flow of paint and build up a super smooth but thin color coat. if you use a spray can, like i do, you cant really get smooth light coats so you have to approach it differently and thats where the sanding between coats comes in. with a can at some point youre going to have to attain a glossy surface and that means you will have to basically "flow" on a color coat. and often that builds up too much paint, or you get a phenonom called "orange peel" where the surface of the paint resembles the surface of an orange peel. in both these cases you probably want to sand with some fairly aggressive cloth, 1000 - 2000 grit to smooth the surface, and then maybe shoot another coat if you think you can get it smoother. typically with the airbrush you can control the depth of paint that you probably wont have to sand. remember: especially with "glamour" finishes, sanding means the possibility of burning through the paint and total disaster, esp in the later coats, so in part thats why there are clear coats. typically i again use canned clear coat, testors model master or my favorite tamiya clear. you can build up some paint depth on your thin color coat with the clear, and get a nice sheen. now at this point it depends on what youve got and what you want. your paint job might look good now, but it looks like "paint" instead of a "finish". this is especially important when you want to get a deep deep black...this is what gives it its real "look" of depth. you need to get a polishing kit consisting of like 8 or 10 micro polishing cloths, and polish the clear once it is good and dry. follow the instructions that come with the kit and by the time you have worked your way down to the 12,000 grit (yep thats fine!) you will be amazed at what you are looking at! it will be mirror finish, deep as a well and if your body work is up to the challenge, smooth as silk! hopefully this wasnt too boring but do realize paint is what most probably find the most challenging thing to a model, so youre in with good company!

that is SO NICE, and no real alfa ever saw a paint job as beautiful as that!

its name got changed and now its (X) with future shine or something like that. a must for any worktable, seriously. but anyway not to get off onto that, do a search youll find out a lot about future. that sprite is gonna be super, keep posting updates!

Well on the eve of NNL West 09, I am posting some pics of my next project, this time the classic show rod, Wilhelms Wild Dream. You may remember this kit from your childhood, I am building the one from the issue alongside Don Tognottis King T, and let me tell you, this is sort of testing my patience! lots of ejector marks, dips in the plastic (like right on one of the chrome mufflers, i seriously dont know what i am going to do about that yet), but i am persevering! heres some pics: first the box top, bring back some memories? end panel showing nice illustration: then the one i like; i got it on sale! heres a shot of the painted interior, no details yet, and the primered body shell: and a pic of the frame im currently building, with the motor block alongside: heres a close up of the frame, showing the partially finished rear axle assembly. frame is painted tamiya light blue pearl: a shot of the partially done motor. i had to build the shortie distributor to hopefully still fit under the minimum clearance hood while giving a small bit of extra detail: a shot of a (dag nabit!!!!) ruined body shell that i wasted but also the other body components. the story on the "test" body is that it was the one with this kit and i was primering it after prepping the parts, and the darn body shot off the tamiya paint stand i was using and hit the floor. i picked it up and it looked like the primer had dried enough to not really pick up any dirt so i thanked my lucky stars and put the body up to cure a bit. that night i was getting ready to sand the primer down a bit when i noticed, whats this! the durn fin tip is busted off! it had to have landed right on the tip. well i was pretty bummed but i did have another body shell that i could use if i stripped the paint off it, so thats what i did. unfortunately i was hoping to use that body shell for a "custom" version of this car i was going to build next! oh well maybe i can rescue it somehow, but its pretty micro thin and will be difficult to build to a tip that will take some handling. ah well heres the pic: ok, finally, heres where some blasphemy comes in. if you notice in the photos above of the box, the real car ran, for some reason, big slicks on all four wheels. i cant take that even if it was the way the real car was, so i had to deviate and find some smaller tires. to tell the truth i dont really like those "turbine" wheels much either, i would much rather see some american five spoke mags or a set of halibrand spokes in the front and some deep dish halibrands in the rear and thats where the "custom" version was going to differ. regardless, i think this car will look a lot better with the big and littles on the not really so bad looking turbine wheels: well its off to the NNL West tomorrow; after that i plan on putting some serious time in on this, or serious effort anyway, to get it done in a reasonable time. thanks for looking!

that is really nice and you can see how the gold affected the red, really sharp paint job! who made a 1/24 frog eye? aurora? what you gonna do for wheels?

cool car! both the altered and the stockers. altered looks really sharp, but could have used the stock grille shell instead of what looks to me to be a ford t shell in the front.

that is just too cool. coolest thing ive seen all year. love that body style and the customizing just added to it. fantastic.

i agree, i would let the first dry for at least overnight, and i would use decal solvent of the appropriate type on the first one to get it to lie down nice and flat. the next day i would apply the second layer and would probably try to keep the water to a minimum and then solvent the stack.

very nice and aggressive stance! hope to see it in person at NNL

post a pic of it mocked up with the big tires if you could.

yeah, see thats what i mean. it seems like its a distributor thing though, when one place stops stocking it, it seems to disappear everywhere it used to be. at least around here and in my experience. like the distributor stopped carrying it so it dried up everywhere they were distributing to.

wow thats a sweet set there raul! on the subject of getting old, being currently single, my biggest problem is i keep getting older but those college girls stay the same age! im dying to see what hossains got under his belt this year. will surely put my meager offerings to shame.

i did pretty much the same. just bought a cheap one at target, cut away the inner trays to give some clearance, and put on the lowest temp to begin with. dehydrators dont just work by heat, they work by sucking out humidity. one time i *did* warp a body but it was a long and stressed rectangle sort of body (land rover station wagon) but thats been about it after 10 years or so of usage. really helps on the testors enamels, i dont use it for tamiya paint nor really any quicker drying laquers. of course though i live in california where its not humid to begin with, so where it is you might want to use it for them too. but the dehydrator is a must for enamels especially if you want to polish the paint after dry. typically i use it most for drying small parts ive brush painted with model master enamel bottle paint. works great but i run out of tweezers etc to hold parts!

that part about not covering worth a darn is a hidden blessing, it means they are very thin and it takes a few coats to build up. thats good esp with the primer stage to keep the paint depth down. anyway i love tamiya white primer for a final primer coat as its extra fine and talk about not covering worth a darn! but it builds up nice over a few coats. like mentioned, expensive though, like 8$ at my LHS for not a very big can. i really should search out some plasticote. like you have mentioned, i have found a good product only to have it disappear from the shelves seemingly forever right afterwards. frustrating.

wow that is a nice job of what looks like a daunting kit. ive only opened mine a few times but never got brave enough to start it! let me ask you, i know these cars sat high in real life, and yours i take it was built with the out of box suspension without modifications. but how much effort would it be to lower this car realistically, that is without gluing tires to the top of wheel wells etc? do you have a "in process" thread somewhere that shows the suspension being built up? reason being, i think that when i build mine i will not make it true to life but rather lower it down more, maybe a lot more. many thanks and yes man what a great job you did of it. that hood is awesome.

alright, thanks for all the kind comments! awb, so those are johan slicks? they do have a distinctive look to them, and now that you mention it i do remember them from my childhood! i forget where i got them but maybe Satco? see ya at NNL!

>ORANGE WITH LOTS OF PEARL ah, kind of subtle then! but its gonna get scratched up on all that manzanita out on the trail! nice work man, i want to see it done.

Many thanks folks and thanks for the link to inprocess shots too. I will take some more pics tonite and post them here later. And in those the wheel disks will be centered better! Jairus I am thinking about taking the train out to SLC for GSL but I am not sure I would bring this, not sure its up to the level that is shown there. It looks good in photos, but...not sure I am up to the level that is expected. But I do hope to make it to the show nonetheless. I wonder if there is anything going on at Bonneville that weekend? Probably still be too wet out on the salt.

I just got the January issue and I just have to point something out...I pointed this out in an obtuse manner last issue but evidently no one noticed... Alex Kustov's Challenge Stradale build is featured on page 17. Great car and great build! But for the second month in a row, "Ferrari" is spelled "Ferarri"...which wouldn't be too bad except its spelled like that right there in 72 point type in the headline! For the second month in a row! Better luck on part 3? Maybe you ought to stick to Fords! Anyway keep up the good work but maybe a bit more observation when it comes to the big print! I am available for proofreading services and stuff like this just jumps out at me! Its a curse!

Finally ready to call this done so here it is! I will post some more pics later on. its done, but i do want to add a couple more things: a push bar with a raul special drag chute, an aluminum tonneau cover, clean up a couple of details, but for now its on the shelf! its also amazing what you see in photos that you didnt notice in real life: i centered that right rear wheel disk after seeing it in the photo! thanks for bearing with me! see ya at NNL West next week!

well slickpaint, that paint job sure lives up to that name! looks great!