Straightliner59

Good deal, saving the paint. I had to do something similar with my Badman.

Yessir! First time I saw them, and noticed the "Washable/Disinfectable" label, I knew they'd do the trick!

Always happy to share anything I've figured out! Thanks for your kind words, Mark!

You're most welcome! You can bet that if it's on his model, it's correct. I haven't built one, but I have two of them, as well as one, each of the MPC 1/20 scale kits. I guess I like McLarens! Guy is a great builder--one of the best, in my opinion. I tagged him, with the photos, so maybe he'll check in. He doesn't visit this board, too often.

It's been a while since I check in, here. It's come quite a way, since then. Your work is excellent! This is going to be an impressive piece!

Maybe, then, that's where I am confused. Once I resize/resample them to 1024 (long side), when I save them, I click on options, and can slide the quality (I assume) from 100, down. I slide it until it's just below 100k, which could be anywhere. Usually, it's around 80-85, on their scale. I just assumed it was DPI, for printing, but, maybe it's just a meter of quality--or compression. I never worried about what it actually is, because I never thought I might have to try to explain it!

Thanks, Greg! I got the rear, center section done, before bed, this morning, but didn't have time to shoot photos. I noticed that one of my fronts is a tad heavy, so I will have to thin it out, a bit.

I go to Sally Beauty Supply and buy Tropical Shine boards. They come in a variety of grits, from 80-"I can polish this!" They can also be found on Ebay.

It is! That's a beauty!

One front bumper is bent, and white-glued in place. The other has gone from rough to ready-to-bend. For a lot of my modeling life, I would have considered this process drudgery. I've come to where it's somewhat Zen-like, for me. There's a certain calm that comes from watching something come from raw material, right in your hands. Anyway--enough of that! It probably only takes 45 minutes to an hour to make one of these. I'm considering doing one for a grille bar, to reflect the center section of the rear bumper. Once the rear one is done, I can use it, to see how it would look, up front, as well. Thanks for looking!

I use a couple of different free photo editing programs. My favorite is FastStone Image Viewer. That's how I edit all my photos, posted here. I can crop them, resize them, and reduce the DPI. I resize to 1024 pixels, on the long side--in the case of portrait-oriented photos, I go 1024 pixels on the vertical. If necessary, I can reduce the DPI to 72, to keep the file size right about 100k. Irfanview is good, as well, but FastStone is a bit more versatile.

One down, three to go. I decided to give some aluminum armature wire a go, for making the bumpers. They'll polish up, nicely! I'm pretty much decided on this grey. I was going to do white, but I already have three white cars in the display case, and another that's cream-colored. And...I don't have any grey ones, and I've always wanted to do one. I think I compared about fifteen different Humbrol greys, and a Pactra one, alongside the interior. This one looks best, to me. I'm also leaning toward putting the scoop, offset, to accommodate the implied Rochester FI powerplant. To expose the bumper that lies within the wire (thank you, Francis!), I began by clamping the section of wire in my vise, leaving a little less than half, exposed. I removed the exposed length with a 6" mill bastard. I then rotated the wire 90 degrees, and repeated the process. Finally, a 180-degree rotation, and repeat completes the roughing-in process. I should note that the brown phone wire was used to mark the length(s) for the bumpers. The black Sharpie marks denote the front and rear bumper lengths. Next, I superglued the roughly-shaped bumper to the edge of a craft stick, where it was easily shaped and buffed. Next, I'll bend this one, and once I'm satisfied the process is good, I'll move on to the next ones. Comments, questions, and etc. are always welcomed. Thanks for looking!

And, the rest!

I knew I had more of these! @Guy Beaudette's Accurate Miniatures McLaren Mk8...

I think Guasco just died within the last week, or so.

Well, you know--we all need those!

Nice job with this classic kit, Pete! I still have spare parts in my original box, from 50+ years ago!

There are a mess of them on Ebay. All are what I'd call reasonably priced. Scratch that itch!😃

They don't call 'em "Rump, Rump" for nothing!

Francis, you do amazing machine work! I was silly enough, the other day, to ponder the idea of attempting a Donovan for one of my dragsters. I quickly came to my senses! I doubt I could ever keep my cuts and sequence in order. You, Tim and Charlie are in a whole different league! My hat is off to all of you!

You are most welcome, sir!😄

Thank you, my friend! My approach to curbside projects is that, there's not a lot to look at, so, the stuff there is, had better be interesting!

I knew I could come up with a better way to mount the pedals! Duh!🙄 I fixed those, then make a dimmer switch, and installed that. Next, I cut the plate for the four-speed shifter (basically, this car will "have" a '57 Corvette drivetrain). I then sanded the back side of some bookbinding leather, to thin it even farther. I pushed that up through the opening in the plate, and ran a round-headed pin through the crown of the new boot. The leather was then infused with superglue. My hope is that I can trim everything below the plate with a sharp scalpel blade, and the plate will mount flatly to the surface of the trans tunnel. There's enough of the pin left to cement into a hole that will be drilled, for it. I should be moving on to the dash, before too awful long. Thanks for looking!

We'll have to see how this works out: I'm going to attempt to make bumpers from K&S .064" aluminum sheet. I was thinking about just removing the vertical "bars" and "bullets" from the kit's bumpers, and going with those. Instead, I have decided to cut and form them from raw stock. I've started cutting out the front bumpers--they're the glued-together layers with the black Sharpie, on them. It's a decent start, but a long way to go! I think it'll be worth the effort. Also, I got the pedals installed. I'll need to bend the arm clutch arm in, some, to make room for the dimmer switch. I probably could have simplified that assembly, a tad!😁 Thanks for looking!

Thanks, Bill. I had to figure something out, those molded, chromed headlights just weren't going to cut it!😃