jbwelda

you had to know someone was going to do it... ok heres mine: d*mn i hate when that happens!

barnabas in collinswood, baby! it was a dreadful sight when he bite sista joyce you shoulda heard her bawl "jesus christ!" he a de best in a de business! man he chew your neck like a wrigleys!!! yeah i know it dont mean much to most of you out there but in honor of halloween...

yeah theres something to what you say milt, but in my case i wanted hand lettering that there is no way i could do or would want to put the time into doing. real artwork in scale. i would suspect the client of the porsche just likes the cars and either doesnt have the time or hasnt really achieved what their minds eye sees in a finished model. so he tries to find someone to do the paint for them. i know and im sure youll agree that paint is perhaps the most difficult part of building, sometimes even deceptively difficult like this decalling job might be i know i dont and im sure whoever is the current client wouldnt, say that i did something that plainly i had contracted out. if i ever show the model he did for me it will be with a sign or card or something crediting the graphics to the artist. then theres the part about having jairus paint your model and as he is a regularly published artist, not to mention art director, thats pretty unique right there. i am with you though, generally we do our own paint most of the time if not all of it. btw jairus, i and others i know are still in awe of the art work you did, thanks again! that will probably get completed early this fall and i will send or post a pic.

ps: of course if i ever need any more contract work, i will completely disavow ever saying any of that jairus!

i think if you make them roll you need to add extra detail. like being able to fill them from a mini-compressor. yeah now youre talking scale model. in other words: no, i glue them, i dont want them rolling around and think it adds absolutely zero to what im trying to do.

i dont understand the question. does the guy want you to just paint that body a base color and then apply those decals, and clear it? if thats so then i think its more or less beneath you, jairus. if i were in your position i would make that apparent by charging a lot and then if the guy insists, go to the bank on it. i dont really see why any model builder couldnt just do that themselves, applying and clearing decals isnt that hard in my experience. by the way i thought i got off with a bargain with the 250$ i paid you for all the hand lettering, even though much of that was a tip. personally i think you sell yourself a bit cheap but i realize that its hard to find customers willing to pay what artwork and paintwork is worth, in 1:25 as in real life.

>carefully storing the kits and has no intention to build them i think i see a problem.

very cool obscure little car. ive got a 1:32 scale one in my stack to convert to a slot car! now i just wish someone would make one of these: its a nissan figaro, a "boutique" car from japan. took the photo in london, man if these were imported to the usa i would be the first in line!

ive come to love these s13 more and more. ive got a 96 series two 240SX (aka silvia in japan) that i bought new, lowered and souped up a bit esp in the suspension dept but increasingly like the looks of the earlier versions of this car. ive built a later silvia (im not good at the designation numbers, s15 maybe?) but builds like this make me awfully tempted to build a s13. keep us posted on progress!

heres some progress shots just to rep a little bit and also i could have this sizing biznezz licked: seats, fuel tank, floorboards in place! and from the back: a close up of steering wheel, polished steering column, aircraft seats (will have pillows in the bottom of them) and floorboards and finally, a close up of the fuel tank. it turned out pretty good. note level gauge hanging off the side: now im off to kauai for a week to attend to some business, aloha!

im out of town until saturday of this show so i just thought i would bump it to the top! hope all near sacramento will come out and bring your models to show and shine!

thanks for clarifying that marcos, i may try this technique one day...your lines do look very nice in the photos you posted. so the lines stay dark somehow even after the color has been sprayed on? i take it you use an airbrush and can control the amount of paint you squirt. unfortunately im using cans, tamiya mostly these days...wonder how those lines stand up to that?

i also always felt johan was a poor second cousin to amt and never really thought much of their kits. in fact i still dont think they were "ahead of their time", but in some ways that is true: the real world of rodding sort of caught up with them as the more popular subjects disappeared from the used car lots and junkyards and that left the less desirable mopars, american motors and other lesser models and brands to be rodded in real life and all of a sudden the johan "ugly ducklings" became more representative of what was going on in the real world and thereby the real world indeed "caught up" with johan. i picked up a perfectly built 62 dodge dart convertible with engine under the hood, box and all the extra parts for about 5$ at a swap meet a few years ago, strictly because i thought it was a cool throwback and well built by whoever did so...i almost thought it was a factory assembled promo. showed it to a friend of mine and he flipped out over it, like i had found a holy grail or something. it *is* cool and i see what people mean when they talk about scale fidelity of the body, but to me back in 62 or so it would have had pretty much zero appeal compared to what revell and amt and even mongram were doing. but looking over the custom and competition parts, i see they were ahead of their time with them (even though many of them are too ridiculous to use then, as now) but the myriad fender skirts, mirrors, spotlamps, grilles, louvers, interior accessories are very neat to see now. this one i picked up was built completely stock, and all the extras were in the near mint box, as were the instrux, and decals. as i understand it, this may have never been reissued so it has value just from that, but it really is neat to see what these were like back in the day when i ignored them so... just goes to show: if you put out a quality product, it will be appreciated if only belatedly... i also wish i had picked up some of those competition cars, but i was out of modelling by the time they appeared...besides no one in their right mind would want a pinto back then...at least not me or any of my friends. the idea of a pinto race car was just beneath consideration (even though i guess they were pretty strong with the 289 in them, but they just didnt register as "cool" with anyone i knew), but these days these more obscure things interest me much more than a 40 ford or 55-57 chevy, thats for sure. and who ever thought back then anyone would anyway think a rambler was cool??? i remember even snearing at american motors attempts at "youth market" cars but i can think of a number of them i would love to have now!

> The main purpose of advertising is to draw attention to the product. thats not strictly true; the purpose of advertising is to SELL the product. they sure arent going to sell me a chevy misusing a song like this badfinger one. if anything it makes them a laughing stock in my eyes and implies they know no more about their hoped for audience than they know about the music they are using to try to sell to that audience. but im sure it goes right over the heads of 99% of that audience. just thought i would bring it up because more and more im struck by the irony of modern life. by the way i didnt know that was groucho who said that joke about the dog/god. thats one of my all time favorites.

marcos im not sure i understand your technique there, maybe im missing something? so you scribe the lines very deep and then sharpie them from the back so the black shows through. then you flow metalizer (you didnt specify a color but when i think metalizer i think silvery color) into your panel lines. then you primer and paint, and sometimes add more metalizer between coats. so...im unsure what youre left with then. the metalizer somehow doesnt get covered by primer and paint? if its covered by the metalizer, what use was the sharpie on the inside of the scribed lines? how does silvery metalizer end up looking dark like a panel line? i see your photo there so its obvious your technique works but im kind of puzzled how it works.

if you want it here it is come and get it but you better hurry because its going fast. thats the paul mcartney produced badfinger song used as the theme for the movie the magic christian back in the early 70s (or maybe late 60s), and now GM is using it to shill their cars. did they ever watch that movie? its hilarious in its irony i tell you...the point of the movie was that people are driven by greed and would dive into a vat of s*it to get to money stirred into it. a perfect picture about greed and averice and the song says it all. and now evidently GM thinks its appropriate to sell their cars. actually they are quite right but thats where the irony comes in. or maybe they think people who remember things like this are irrelevant. or maybe they think we all got big benz's by now and wouldnt stoop to a mere GM product. maybe they are right. i wonder how much they pay smirking suits to come up with this stuff? to me its a spoof on the order of selling a car called a "nova" in spanish speaking countries. "no va" in spanish means "no go" from what i understand. come to think of it, that was truth in advertising too. maybe they are on to something here. but at least they left out the other lyrics: did i hear you say that there must be a catch? would you walk away from a fool and his money... honey? edit: feel free to move this to the rants section but im not ranting, im observing.

i built one of these back a few years ago, straight out of the box except some wiring and details i took from my friends 63 etype, but i have one on the shelf to build as a lightweight special one of these days. youre an inspiration but im afraid i got too many projects on the burner at the moment to start another. maybe when summer leaves and it gets cold around here i will go for it! one love jah bill

since its available as a replacement part i would definately recommend that, but ive restored unobtainium clear plastic pieces a couple of times with pretty good results. first ive dipped them in future floor wax to avoid the fogging that will be coming from the super glue i attempt to flow into the crack after the future had dried. this sort of assumes a pretty good break, by "good" i mean it can be fitted back together with few obvious gaps or anything. then i let that dry very well, a day at least, maybe strip off the future with ammonia, and then sand on the crack that remains with descending grits of polishing stick, down to the 12000 level. at that point the crack has pretty much disappeared. adding a coat or two of meguires or novus plastic polish will complete it. as i said i have personally repaired at least two windshields like this, and in the case of one of them i never thought it possible but was totally amazed what i managed in a couple hours. but if i could get a replacement part, would i do it? i sure would do it!

bump to the top! Note our club meeting as noted in the original post is coming up week from tonite, Tuesday, Sept 25. All Sacramento area builders, come on out! And don't forget the NSRA model show and contest, Cal Expo, October 5 - 7

that wrecker is really kool looking too. got any more detailed pics of it?

that tempest was one of the coolest rods there. i got on site too late to enter any models. as soon as i can i will see what my buddy jerry got on digi film and post something too, im pretty sure theres a very bad looking henry j in there.

coming up this weekend...not to be missed!

so now its got floorboards: and a slightly different shot: next up is finishing the body, making a turned alumunum firewall, a fuel tank, and a pair of 6-volt batteries...

i like that, clean and simple and to the point. and that ardun flathead looks way cool too. where did those heads come from? did they put ardun heads on a 49 merc?

i use Elmers glue diluted about 50/50 with water or Future floor wax...lately ive been leaning more toward the Future.