Pete J.

One piece of advise. MOVE! Man that looks like photos my grandparents took in the 40's of the dust bowl days. That must be heck on everything especially the real deal cars. You probably don't have to worry so much about rust with a free daily sandblasting.

Gunzi kitted the Isetta in a several different forms. They had both a regular and High Tech version with the latter being a bit higher priced. They also kitted it with the Messerschmitt/KR in regular and High Tech. I have often found that the regular version with the two kits is surprising the least expensive to buy. They seem to come up with some frequency on eBay. If you set up a search, you can often get the double kit for less that $40, although most times the sellers think they are unreasonably valuable, like now there is one in Japan that is selling for $93.

Common sense is the least common of all.

I have the urge to call him up as say, "Dude, is that as good as you can do?" and then give him this website!

Generally I have to say that I am lucky, I do one or two custom jobs a year and that pays the hobby bills. How much is that? Well, I would rather not say, but it is enough to keep me comfortable in my past time.

Art, I agree with what you are saying, but I personally just don't have the space to tape off an area of my garage to paint in. In this case small is better, thus, the clean box. After all I am not painting a full size car, only a few model parts and having a small box to put the fresh painted pieces in and closing it up, uses less than a couple of square feet of space and keeps the stuff from settling on the parts.

What is it with Electrical engineers and battery chargers? I was at Sears the other day and there was a EE in there raising hell about the same thing. A friend of mine was trying to take care of him. Hooked it up to a multimeter and everything checked out perfectly. He even checked the multimeter. Guy insisted that it was defective and they gave him a new one just to get rid of him.

Doctors, engineers, and lawyers not in any particular order! As a group, these people are generally well educated relatively intelligent people. I concede that. What annoys me, is when they think they know more about everything than anyone else. The general arrogance of this group is just unbelievable at times. When I was selling appliances I tried very hard to learn everything about what I was selling and pass that information on to my customers. I wish I had a buck for every time one of these smug turkeys would come in and spend hours reading the signs we had posted, trying to make a decision when 10 minutes of Q&A would have sufficed. Then you try to help them and you get the "Well, I'm a ______. I don't need any help." Really? As a proctologist you are an expert on dishwashers? You condescending twit! Just because you went to school a little longer doesn't mean that you know everything about how everything in the world operates. Get over yourself!

Jim- I respect your professional opinion and I am sure that you gave the poster a good technically correct method of building a sophisticated system that will work for him. I reread your posts and mine and I probably did a poor job of wording my suggestions. I don't think that what I am suggesting is all that different from what you out lined. I have a "clean box" that I have been using for years to allow my models to dry free of dust and critters. It is simply a box with a Honeywell house air cleaner that has a HEPA standard filter. It blows well filtered air into the box and keeps the contaminants out and allows an air flow to assist in drying. Simple but effective. I have wanted to add a paint spray booth using a similar bottom half for a while but don't have the space. My suggestions were based on this. I was suggesting using this format as a base with an paint booth type fan over the top with the airflow balance to keep from sucking dirty air in from the room. No where as sophisticated as what I am sure you can design, but similar principles. Perhaps you can suggest improvements that won't break the bank with expensive purpose built equipment.

I can see that, but with one difference. Abarth is more know for their Fiats. I can see it more as an Alpina/Dinan/M-sport, but what the heck, it's your model, if you want Abarth, then Abarth it is! Great idea and execution.

Model builder, miniaturist, artist, table top machinist, museum display builder, commercial artist, historic diorama artist. All things you can call those who participate in our hobby. We do things that are far beyond the nerd buried in the basement for hours on end playing video games that have no tangible evidence of success. I look at the people I know that build models and they are about as far from being nerds as I can think of. Business owner retired(owned a BMW repair shop), Rocket scientist(well respected engineer at JPL), Auto mechanic, Race car builder, the list goes on. One little story. In the 70's the first job I tackled out of college was US Air Force pilot. Flying fast moving multiengined jet aircraft with guns and bombs attached is about as far from the image of a nerd as I can think of. Pilot training was 53 weeks long and three phases. In the middle of each phase, the flight commander would hold a model aircraft building competition. There was no prize, just bragging rights, but just about everyone joined in the fun. The ultimate result was a ceiling full of plastic aircraft. A bunch of nerds? No, not really.

Oh? You have one fan blowing pressurized clean air into a box and one sucking it out at the same velocity or slightly higher. What laws of fans or air flow are being violated?

I will give you a slightly different slant on this based on your problem. The primary purpose of a paint booth is to exhaust paint fumes out of the room. To do this they work like a vacuum and suck the air out and blow it out of the space. This is not your problem. Your problem is that you want an environment with clean, dust free air so it doesn't wind up on your fresh paint. The ideal way to do that would be to blow clean, filtered air into a box and keep it slightly pressurized to keep the dirty air out. If you think this way then providing a slightly pressurized source of air for the box and a slightly lower volume(ideally identical) exit volume would do the trick. Since you want to build it yourself I think a system that flows upward would work best. Perhaps a box with a fine screen mesh in the bottom to set your parts on would be a good place to start. Get a good HEPA home air filter(Honeywell makes some good ones)and attach it so it blows air from the bottom of the box. The do the usual exhaust fan style on top of the box with a variable speed fan to exhaust the air. A furnace style filter would work to keep wet paint particles from encrusting the fan. When you set it up, use some visible medium, such as smoke to set the exhaust fan speed so that it is just taking all of the air that is coming from the bottom out. This way you have clean air coming in the bottom and just enough pressure to keep the dirty outside air from entering the box. I don't have the same level of problem with that dirty of air but I kept getting bits in the paint. I build a box with a home filter in the bottom and a top that I could seal with exit holes for the air. In short, I have a very small clean room. It works well for me, but it does nothing to help keep the room free of paint fumes. I just open the garage and get a good breeze going for that.

There not that hard to make! Get some angled plastic(Plastruct or Evergreen both make it) and some round and build a couple. Or if you wanted to go whole hog, do it with K&S brass. Good experience!

The way people in general will hop on any band wagon that happens by and ride it off into the sunset regardless of how outrageous it is. I remember sitting in a waiting room for lab tests and one old fart(yea I know, I just got my Medicare card so I are one)stated that the weather changes are being cause by Chinese nuclear testing. Well there were several others who immediately chimed in and it turned into a slam the Chinese for everything on the planet. Not saying that they don't do some stuff that isn't right but nuclear testing, climate change? Where do you get that, the latest Godzilla movie? Come on folks!

I did a respray on a die cast for a customer and don't deceive yourself it was a real pain! Stripping the beast was not fun. The trim all failed when I removed it so I had to replicate it with plastic and the metal work on the body getting all the file marks off took days to do. I did no interior work. The paint job was no big deal. I replicated all of his stickers and badges and he was a happy camper. I charged him $500 and wouldn't do it again for less the $1,000. I considered it a learning experience. Here are some before and after photos, So don't ever think respraying a die cast would be easier than building a plastic kit.

It doesn't have to be a piece of @@@@@. Just do what you do to the best of your ability. My point is that if the customer wants a car the same color with license plates to match, then give it to them. If they want an interior exactly the same as their car, that costs more. I can do a very nice job of spraying a body in a couple of hours. A paint job I would be proud of. If that is all they want and it makes them happy, then that is good. That is not what I want on my shelf, but if he wants to drop $100 on that then fine. I am getting paid for my time at a rate I can live with. If he doesn't care about the interior, black out the window, do a clean job of gluing it up and done. Save the ultra detail for the person who wants it and is willing to pay for it. Instead of the old beauty line, success is in the eye of the customer. Chris, when you are working on aircraft that is a different issue. The exterior has profound impact on how it performs as I am sure you are aware, but you wouldn't spend the same amount of time on an expensive sailplane as you would on a J-3. Unlike the sailplane on a J-3, you tear the fabric off, stitch on a new one and spray down some aircraft dope and you are done. No sanding, no buffing just new fabric and paint. That is what the customer needs and wants and the aircraft works right.

Welcome back to the hobby! I think you will find a lot has changed. There is a lot more stuff out there than there use to be and you can go as simple or complex as you want to. Browsing through this website will give you the extremes and everything in between. There are a lot of online venders selling everything from ignition wires to full on replacement engines and bodies. As you get into it you will find the internet is really your friend. For general aftermarket stuff I would suggest this web site. They have a lot of stuff for American car models. http://www.modelcargarage.com/store/pc/default.asp If you have questions, this is the place to ask them. There are plenty of people ready to help. Oh, about paint, if you have some leftovers from you full sized vehicles, that can be used on models with a good primer. Good luck and have fun!

Great observation! I never thought of it that way! All of my "for pay" builds have been to my standard to people who appreciate that sort of thing. The average guy who may want a build, would be happy with a "toy" the same color as what he wants. Probably wouldn't take a ton of time to paint up a body and do a basic build. Nothing even close to contest standard but presentable. A couple of hundred or less for that would not be a real problem and would be "good enough". That gave me a different perspective on that kind of build. Thanks!

Boy if that is a model it is a great one! Everything about the rims looks spot on and the is a determinant for me!

Wow, that's going to be tough without a picture to look at!

One story about building a model for a friend. He owned a 69 GTO judge Ram Air IV when he was young. I built him a model and really put my best effort into it. He thought it was very impressive, but about every couple of years or so he would bring it over and ask me to fix it because some how it got broken. After the third time, it was apparent that he didn't really think as much of it as I did. It has now been sitting on my bench for 10 years waiting for repair. "Yea, I'll get to it one of these days"

$10 and hour?? Man are you cheap. That is barely minimum wage for a skilled job. When I do a custom job I consider two things. First is do I want to build it? That is a big factor. I don't keep a lot of my builds and don't have a display case. For me the fun is in the build. If I decide it is something I could enjoy, then I figure cost. Some times it costs a lot, some times not so much but $10 an hour? Never, that is just way to cheap!

I see two issues that detract from it in my eye. The first is the lighting. Your background has very sharp delineation of shadows and light. If you can't match that with your foreground it is going to look off. Also the trees in the foreground of the photo look way to large. My eye says they are about the width of a car. Now if you are in a redwood forest that would not be bad. Perhaps if you lowered the background until the ground line in the very back of the photo was just at or below the level of the house it might correct these issues.

I wonder if that is something new. My paper is a couple of years old and try as I could, I couldn't find a film to take off of mine. I may have to call the company and ask. Pete