Pete J.

I found this web site earlier and all I can say is WOW! This is one crazy model. The guy has a real way with Healey's. If you had show a photo of the engine bay, I wonder how many would have chosen "real".

I suppose some of you will jump on me for being a nit picker, but I really find the use of the term "Zero Emissions" for electric cars, disingenuous and misleading. The only such vehicles are peddle or animal powered and there is a case that could be made for methane emissions. All the electric cars are emissions transfer devices unless you have solar panels on your roof to charge the car. The electricity is made some where and even here in California where we are over the top with emissions, 60% of our electricity comes from either gas or coal fired plants. That is not Zero emissions, that is just sent someplace other than where the darned cars are being driven. So lets deceive the average Joe into believing they are doing something good for the environment by spending way more for personal transportation and driving around in a car loaded with heavy metals that is going to be a real pain to dispose of when it is worn out.

I have to agree with Dale. Baby steps. No one just jumps to the head of the line. Everyone on here brings something to the party. If you have been doing this a while, I would bet that you have developed some unique techniques that all could benefit from. As to budget, well we all have one. For some it is thousands of dollars and for others it is pocket change. Regardless, this hobby is really about doing the most with the least. Yes, you could buy hundreds of dollars worth of after market stuff, but I personally think it is fun to make stuff and repurpose it. For instance you could by a branded packaged set of ignition plug wires at the hobby shop of $5 for 7 or 8 feet or you could do a little research and decide what size wire you need and go down to an electronics store(or online) and get 100 feet for $8. Look around you. I would bet you will start seeing all kinds of stuff you could use. Remember, this is a hands on hobby. Once someone tells you how they do it, it is still all about sitting at your bench and figuring out how to make your fingers do the magic. I don't know how many techniques I have adopted, used, modified and discarded but the list is probably long. I think that is one of the great things about this hobby. You get to learn new things every time you sit down at the bench. Welcome aboard and don't ever be afraid to ask questions or show off you work. A lot of good people here to help.

Ah, the miracle mustang! Why a miracle? Next time you watch the movie, pay close attention to the scene were it drives into the alley up on two wheels because it is too narrow to drive through on all four. It goes in on the right side tires and comes out of the alley on the left side tires. Half way through they spliced in a interior shot where they change sides. Pretty neat trick Mr. Bond!

Wow! That is some serious scratch building! If he had used a smaller weave for the carbon fiber, I know he would have fooled me. That is the only thing I saw that I didn't like. Great craftsmanship!

Mark, great work. I particularly like your homage to Tim Allan and Home improvement. Binford tools indeed!

I am going with model on this one. The carbon fiber looks out of scale and the orientation doesn't look right. Of course it could be that it is fake carbon fiber on metal and that would just have me all confused. I'm so confused!

This is the barrel mounted to the white metal breach. I have not cut the inner barrel yet as I am still not sure how I want to mount it. This is just pressure fit for now.

So, I was looking at the white metal parts and decided that I didn't like the gun barrels. They are suppose to be pieces of rod wrapped with a sticker to look like the cooling shroud. Not ever realistic to my eye. So I broke out the mill and lathe and here is what I came up with. This is the rod that I cut to .055" and drilled out to .022". This shows the mill drilling the .017" cooling holes. Here is the finished part. This is the .022" stainless steel tubing inserted in the cooling shroud. The stainless will be the gun barrel.

Oh yes, I do remember that, you had quite a handful of it. Yup, scratch built wire! That's the stuff.

Ok Mark, for the next one, I will show you how to draw wire and you can get some of that plastic handle dip that the tools stores sell and you can make your own wire. Oh, wait, that won't satisfy some, until you dig the ore out of the ground and smelt your own metal and drill for oil for the petrochemicals to make the insulation. Ya, just can make everyone happy, so like you say, just make yourself happy! Ignore Harry!

Ok, here is a new one------S is for----- STRAWBERRIES! The local berries are now in season $7 for three pints at the local farmers stand and oh are they sweet. To heck with the fires, I'm eating fresh strawberries!

Hey, he's got a contract with the city. He does what's on the schedule, period, done deal!

Works for me! I am trying to get this done in one month. Wish me luck!

Thanks! The kit is available for about $300 (30,000 yen). There aren't a lot of these out their.

I thought I would throw these up there since there was some interest. These are engine photos I posted on a different thread but they belong here, so this is the white metal engine. I scratch built the cowl flaps since the ones that came with it, are closed and didn't look right.

Then you are in luck. They make both the P51 and the 109. As to how many parts I really couldn't say but I know there are well over 100 white metal parts and 5 or 6 8"X10" sheets of photo etched. You might find this interesting but a lot of the photo etched is prebent. The two halves of the fuselage in the photos are that way. The down side is that the bends aren't dead on like you would normally see in a plastic kit. It takes some creative clamping to make them fit the way they should. The parts that are under stress I used epoxy because it holds better. Getting them to shape was the challenge.

Oh, my!!!! This photo is taken from my house. This is just below where I shot the above video. This is a new fire and it is really burning hard now. It is just above Cal State San Marcos and they have evacuated the school. This is getting really nut's.

Ok, not this is getting ridiculous! Fire from yesterday is 70% contained but four new fires have popped up. I took this video about 30 minutes ago from a hill top just south of our house. When the video opens our house would be in the middle of the frame about half way up. As I panned to the right just pass the second fire, you can see a new fire just starting to the left and below the second fire. The last fire at the far left of the pan just consumed 20 houses and is still burning. You can hear the wind blowing. It is down from the peak but is still blowing at 20 to 30 knots.

Well dang! The 'S' has turned to smoke. No word what has happened but there is a 700 acre fire burning in the middle of town. There are a lot of canyons and hillsides that are surrounded by houses. Those areas have brush in them and it is burning. So far, the firefighters have contained it in the canyons but it is burning within feet of homes. The main area that is burning is Rancho Santa Fe. Average home price is well over 2 million. I can see the clouds of smoke from my house. A shift in the wind from the south and we could be in trouble. This is one of our worse nightmares in SoCal. Worse that earthquakes. Weather over the next couple of days is not suppose to help. High winds and temps in the 90's.

So Cal is back on another one of it's crazy weather cycles. Temps in the high 80's low 90's and winds at 5 mph with gust to 50 or 60. I'm hiding inside until this backs off a bit. I was just looking at the weather charts from NOAA and we have this pattern of the Jetstream dipping further south than normal at this time of year. I comes down the west coast and makes a U-turn over Arizona/New Mexico and cuts across the US. As it moves east it catches the edge of the gulf and is dragging moist warm air north in front of it. These have been very strong and energetic jets that are pushing storms in front of them. If this trend continues and the jet stays this far south we are in for as crazy of a summer as the winter. FYI a jet stream is considered winds over 50 mph so technically we have the jet on top of us here today. Not really good for us is some idiot lights the brush off.

My work bench has a storage shelf overhanging the bench. Until recently I had 8 surface mount halogens to light the surface of the desk. There were two issued with them. The first is that the bulbs didn't last very long and it seems that there was always one burned out. They are a real pain to change. Second, they produced a lot of heat. Enough to heat the 3/4" plywood that I made the storage out of to damage the unbuilt kits stored on the shelf. I recently replaced the halogen with two strips of kitchen under counter LED lights from Home Depot. They were not cheap but they cast a very even light over the bench. The shadows are very muted so they don't interfere with building and generate no heat at all. So far I like them a lot. Very nice change.

IMCTH is the manufacture. They did all the design work and photo etched. I have seen that they contracted Model Factory Hiro for the white metal. Having seen MFH kits, the white metal certainly has all the traits of their work. Joints were soldered where I could get the solder to stick. The joints that are under stress(where the metal had to bent to fit the profile) I used epoxy. The joints that are not overly stressed were done with Poly-Zap. A CA that was made for R/C Lexan bodies. It has more grip and flexibility than normal CA's. Thanks for the interest!

I have been working with photo etched since it first became a mainstream part of modeling over 20 years ago. Since then I have tackled a number of projects that used photo etched an a major part of the kit but were mostly add on part. I have recently taken on a model which is the most challenging photo etched project I have tackled. It is a Japanese A6M2 Zero in 1:32 scale. It is almost entirely white metal and photo etched. I say almost because the tires and canopy are not made of metal. I though some of you would appreciate this kit so I will post progress photos. Front fuselage and cockpit viewed from the rear. Stringer detail Some of the white metal parts for the cockpit.

I forgot all about another glue that I use for this. It is Zap/Pacer formula 560. It is used primarily to glue canopies on R/C aircraft, thus the moniker canopy glue. I believe it is a form of PVA but does a couple of things. First, it tacks much more quickly than other white glues and seems to have a much stronger bond. I dries just as clear as other PVA's and it cleans up with water. Good glue to have in the adhesives arsenal.