Pete J.

Oh lordy, I remember that one. Dad used it to cut the top and bottom of a gallon jug to make a "cloud chamber" for my older sisters science project in high school. Yup, these type of tools taught us a lot about to be cautious without being afraid. Actually, I think I was more afraid of getting blood on the carpet than hurting myself. Mom was nurse and could always stitch me up but the carpet would always be stained!

That is a whole differant ball game than plastic. Some of it good others not so much. Most of the detail pieces I have seen have pins that are melted on the back side. Carefully cut to remove. Not to hard. However the stuff like window trim is an entirely differant kettle of fish. I generally just replace it all with scratch built plastic pieces. As to the paint, I found that most diecast have really thick paint and if you paint over them, you lose a ton of detail. I think most of manufactures dip the models rather than spray them. Once you have taken everything off of the body you can dump it in a tub of acetone or lacquer thinner that will strip it down pretty quickly, but be prepared to do some file work. The reason the paint is so thick on diecast is that it hides the imperfections and pits in the cast metal. A good fine file and some sandpaper will do the job of clean the metal and then a quality body filler will deal with a lot of the other issues. Then a good coat of Tamiya gray etching primer and you are ready to do the final paint. Here is a photo of fender of an MGBGT that I did some time back. You can see how rough the metal is finished and why the manufactures put such thick paint on. Best of luck with your project.

Jessie, nice kit I didn't know about but here is another that probably was from the same era. Do you remember the old wood burning kits? Lets give a kid a block of wood and a very hot soldering iron and tell them to burn a pattern into the wood! What could possibly go wrong. p.s. I've still got the scars to prove it!

Randy, those are the nicest three row Borranis I've ever seen! Great work! Oh and I've already ordered two sets for my pontoon fendered Testa Rossa! ?

For the most part they look like dealer promos. I'm certainly no expert on promos but I do know that some of them can get stupid expensive. I would go on line and find someone who deals in "dealer promo cars" or just "promo cars". They are also for sale on ebay but that is probably not the right place. Collectors want them in original condition and with the box if you have them. A quick check shows that they can go into the hundreds of dollars. A quick search for the 64 thunderbird shows prices from $70 to $135. Research is king!

Practically everyone who has built models knows Tamiya Campus friends. It is one of the iconic issues from Tamiya. But how many of you are aware that Tamiya actually issue a kit with three other scooters besides the Vespa?

Did you know there are actually 4 differant scooters?

I don't remember those but I do know that Post cereals had a scuba diver included in the box, that had a little container at the bottom of one foot. You put baking soda in that and dropped it in water and it would rise and sink. I thought it was pretty cool. They also had a deal that you send in so many box tops and they would send a little submarine that did the same thing. I had an old aquarium that was full of divers and one sub. I use to watch them for hours. That was before we got TV.

When I was a kid we milked two cows every day. We had so much milk we gave the extra to the chickens. The deal with that kind of milk was that it wasn't nominated. We kept it in the fridge in bottles. When it sat, the heavy cream would rise to the top. If you were going to drink it, you had to shake it up before your poured or you would get a glass of cream which wasn't good. However, pour it over your cornflakes and the cream would stick to the flakes and then add sugar and the sugar stuck to the flake as well and that was just killer yummy! I still do that to this day. Corn flakes with a little heavy cream drizzled over the top. Sprinkle the sugar on and the 2%milk. Just like when I was a kid.

Ok, I'm going to back a little further. Anybody else remember the variety packs that had markings on the back that showed you where to cut. You would cut it open with a knife and pour the milk in and the box was the bowl. They had a waxed paper inner wrapper. It sort of worked. Sometimes the inter wrapper would leak and you had soggy cardboard that the smell of really ruined the whole experience.

I love it when someone takes a kit that was never intended to be anything but a quickie cartoon build for a kid and treats it to some serious modelling skill! I built all of these when I was a ki9. I loved them because my mom hated them. Well maybe not. She would buy them for me when I asked. I think she thought she was encouraging my artistic streak.

Right now? Just plain old Kellogg's corn flakes with 2% milk, a drizzle of heavy whipping cream and a half a spoonful of sugar over the top. Simple but satisfying!

At 391 pages long, maybe it is time to start a new thread anyway. Nobody is going to read through all the old posts.?

Tim, always love to see your work and how you did it. The diagram was very helpful. My health has kept me at bay, but hopefully one more trip under the knife next week and we can get back to making some chips fly. Thanks for keeping me occupied in the meantime!

One of my favorites..

Thank you for your service! I don't think anyone who hasn't done military ops in a cold environment can really understand what it takes. I was a KC-135 pilot at Wurtsmith and Fairchild and remember some bitter cold(well below zero) preflighting an aircraft or sitting cockpit alert. The cold just went right through you even when you had the proper cold weather gear on. Working in big aluminum tube at -17 degrees was just crazy and I didn't have to stand in a cherry picker when the wind was blowing. I have nothing but the utmost respect for the guys that worked on the planes in those conditions. There was just no saying no. They had to go. Oh and while I am at it, I will mention the security patrols. Those poor guys, slogging around the alert aircraft in the middle of the night in a foot of snow and 20 knot winds blowing, with an M16 never got the love they deserved.

An early NATO Tiger meet aircraft. Very Cool!

That is so you tell which direction they rotated! ??

Tamiya definitely makes a nice model of it.

The best choice is to clear coat it and then sand the clear coat down. Otherwise you run the risk of sanding through the edge. Here is a video about painting and masking that may help you avoid this issue in the future.

Never had any damage from and earthquake in the thirty years I have lived here. The first earthquake that I remember here was Northridge. It woke me up because the closet doors were rattling. That was over a hundred miles away, but the damage was limited to the immediate area of Northridge. That damage was significant. An interstate overpass collapse and that and the collapse of the Nimitz freeway in San Francisco in 1989 lead the the reinforcing of all overpasses with carbon fiber wraps. Since then there have been a few that rattled the windows but it takes a lot more that a little rattling to actually do damage except some rattled nerves. The damage in San Francisco was unique because of the geological underpinings for the city. A large portion, especially around the bay is built on fill that has accumulated over the last several hundred years. It is essentially water soaked debris that turns into jello when an earthquake happens. It is amazing to me that the city planners are very well aware of the instability of that kind of ground and yet they still build on it. You can fix buildings but you can't fix stupid.

The concept of "The Big One" is overblown by movies and TV. Earthquakes generally are rather localized in that they may be felt many miles away, damage or hazard is relatively concentrated. The damage of the big one does not mean the whole state will be destroyed. Where I live, the nearest fault is over 30 miles away and it is unlikely that any activity on that fault will make any buildings hazardous or uninhabitable. There are many other disasters that happen throughout the US, far more frequently than earthquakes. Frankly, I would rather live here with the EQ hazard than on the east coast where it is subject to a much larger and wider hazard. The Hurricanes that are guaranteed to hit several times every year. In an earthquake, if I step outside away from building, no matter how bad the quake, I am probably safe. You have to run hundreds of miles to get out of the path of a hurricane.

Figured as much because of the lack of a front mounted radiator, thus the Tesla comment.

I will start by saying that we are under appreciated as artists, because what we do is an art form. Some are paint by numbers kind of artists, others are Rembrandts and Picassos. Distinguishing between them is subjective, after all art is in the eye of the beholder. From that perspective asking price is what you think your time and skill are worth. Selling price is what someone else thinks your time and skill are worth. I have done more than a few commissions and they have sold for good money. Several well into the thousands. I always chuckle when I am at a show and someone who sees these as toys comes up and asks me "How much to build....." I use a base estimate of the kit plus $50 an hour. After all, is your time worth as much as the plumber or truck driver? Often, they are shocked and walk away with an incredulous look on their face. Frankly, I don't enjoy building commissions. It seems too much like work with deadlines and expectations other than my own. Most of the commissions I have built are something new for me that I would enjoy and do on my own, so I get that out of it. If it is just a build of something that doesn't interest me, I charge way to much as a kinder way of saying no. I know the guy who build the trucks had more that 10 or 20 hours into them so is his time worth $25 to $50 an hour? Depends on his skill and the buyer. Personally, I don't think he is out of line, but then most of the people who build on this board think their time is worth $0 per hour because they do it for fun. It is like the rancher who shovels horse manure because he loves raising horses. It is his time and he doesn't value it. But if you have to pay someone to shovel it, that sees it strictly as a job, they ain't going to come cheap, because they don't enjoy it!

Here in California, earthquakes are like thunderstorms elsewhere. They happen all the time and we pretty much ignore them. However like thunderstorms that may have a tornado in them, once in a while one comes through that tears things up. That then requires more attention. What happened in Utah was one of those. When they happen in a place that you don't expect them like Utah or Missouri or the east coast, then they get a lot more attention. I felt my first quake in 1967 in Laramie, Wyoming. It wasn't very big but boy did it get my attention. I was a 18 year old away from home for the first time at college. Stressed the heck out of me for a while.