StevenGuthmiller

Still do! Steve

It has suffered over the past decade or so. I had excellent results with Kustom Khrome when Bob was running it. Have yet to try it since George took over, but if he's using the same plater as Bob, I have every confidence in him. Steve

They are the "custom option" from the '58 Chevy kit. Perfect if you're looking for '62/'63 Chrysler 300 stock caps. Steve

You can find a set of these exact wheels in the Revell "Skip's Fiesta" '59 Ford kit. I probably have a set if you need them. Steve

Already got it Nick, thank you! I ordered a package of them through ebay. Steve

Then you could go with an even thinner tubing for the lower half of the telescoping aerial. Possibly as thin as 26 or 27 gauge. Steve

Very nice Al. I'm not much into service vehicles but you did a bang up job an this one. Steve

Ok guys, I've been doing a little bit of research & I think I've found a great combo of all of our suggestions to make some really nice antennas. I checked out those "Grandt Line" nuts & washers, looked at some more tubing & some wire & here's what I'm coming up with. If the guitar string fits into the "O" scale nuts & washers, then it must be .02" wire. If we do the exact same antennas that "High octane" & "gtx6970" did with the .02" wire & the "O" scale nuts and washers for a base, you could slip a section of the hypodermic tubing over the wire to give the 2 piece look. The tubing I have is .02" inside diameter, but there is a thinner option that can be ordered from Amazon. They have a 22 gauge .02" ID .028" OD with a .004" wall thickness that would give the lower half a little bit thinner appearance. On another note, for those of us that can't readily pick up guitar string, I did a little digging in my stash & found some .02" "music wire" from "K&S Engineering" that I picked up at a Hobby Lobby a while back, so it should be readily available. I believe that they carried it right in the model section along with all of the other brass & aluminum tubing & rod. So, some Hobby Lobby wire, some Amazon tubing & the "O" scale nuts & washers might be a great answer. Maybe a dab of some sort of glue or epoxy for the tip & you're good to go. Thanks, everyone, for your input. We can do great things when we put our heads together. Steve

The guitar string might be thin enough to slip into the hypodermic tubing. If you knew the gauge of the guitar string you could pick up some hypodermic tubing with the correct inside diameter & Viola, you've got an antenna. As a matter of fact, I might see if I can get some even thinner tubing for these antennas & some very thin wire for the upper part. The thinner the antennas, the more realistic they'll look. The tubing that I have might be just a tad too thick, but when I bought it, I was just guessing. Coupled with the "Grandt Line", which I'm totally unfamiliar with, & a combination of these techniques might be the answer to everyone's prayers. Someone please explain to me what a Grandt Line is & where would I get them. Steve

Here are a few photos of the ones I made in this tutorial on the models. Steve

Amazon carries it. Just go to Amazon, type "stainless steel hypodermic tubing" into the search box & you'll get a bunch of options. If you click on one of the "316" options, a graph will come up with a ton of different sizes. The one that I have is 21 gauge, part # B000FN1SK8. 3 feet of it for $9.43. Steve

Ain't that the truth! I've always thought that, but I guess I never had the courage to say it. I spent around $300.00 for a MIB Johan '61 Plymouth Fury. So nice that I didn't even have to paint it. But I built it, & I'm much more proud seeing it sitting on the display shelf than if it was sitting in a box in pieces filed away in some dark room! Steve

I saw your post in the "What Did You Get Today" thread & as I said there, you completely stole this one! I'll bet the people at the garage sale would be quite surprised to know that they could have easily gotten $100.00 or more for this model on ebay. Looks surprisingly similar to one that I bought on ebay a few years ago. As long as they used a basic enamel paint, it should strip nicely. I had really good luck getting the skirts off of mine as well. Hope your luck is the same. Here is the transition that mine made. Steve

Does that sticker say $10.00 or $1.00? Either way, somebody better call a cop! You stole that!!! Steve

Looking forward to seeing you around more Steve! Steve

Hey Terry, I had some free time today so I whipped together a quick tutorial on how I make the antennas. You can find it in the "Tips, Tricks & Tutorials" section under the heading "Making Antennas". Hope it helps! Steve

I had one of the members here ask me how I made my antennas & he wanted pictures so I thought that I could do a quick tutorial to show how I make them. It's actually a pretty quick & cheap way to make a fairly decent antenna. You'll have to excuse some of the photos. It's a little difficult to create a small part such as this & shoot photos with less than three hands! The only materials that you would need to buy for this project is a length of "Stainless Steel Hypodermic Tubing". I bought a 36" piece on Amazon a couple of years ago for about $8.00. Enough to make dozens of antennas. The dimensions are, 21 gauge, .032" OD, .02" ID, .006" wall. To start, gather the only materials you will need. the hypodermic tubing & a piece of scrap plastic kit sprue. Cut about a 1 inch piece of the tubing. I use a Dremel with a grinding wheel. Next, you'll want to grind the ends of your tubing smooth. A little light sanding on the ends will give you a nice finished end. Take the tip of an Exacto blade or a very small drill bit & clean out the burrs from the hole on the end that will recieve the aerial. Now you have your lower antenna half ready. Set it aside & begin the process of making the upper half by heating some sprue just to the point that it begins to sag. You could also skip the whole sprue stretching process & make your upper aerial half & base by using various sizes of plastic rod & tubing if you wish, but when it comes to things like this, I'm a notorious cheapskate! Your upper aerial rod would need to be .02" or less to fit into the tubing. Not sure if that size is available in plastic rod or not. Quickly, but gently stretch the sprue into a very long & thin thread & hold it for maybe 30 seconds until the plastic re-hardens. There's really no way that I know of to get the correct size other than to just do it by eye. Strangely, I always seem to get the right gauge. It just has to be thin enough to slide into the inside of the tubing. The stretched sprue will be thinner in the middle & thicker on the ends so you can choose a piece accordingly. Cut about a 1 inch piece of the sprue for your aerial. Check to make sure it slides easily into the tubing. To make the little "ball" on the tip of the aerial carefully hold the tip increasingly closer to the flame just until it begins to "ball up" slightly & then quickly pull it away. You should get a nice little tip. You can touch the tip lightly with your finger tip while it's still pliable to flatten it slightly. You can now move on to the base which can easily be made using the end of the same piece of sprue you just stretched. Cut the tapered section of the sprue just large enough so that the tubing will be able to fit through a hole drilled into the center of it. Next, drill the hole for the tubing to pass through. A little light sanding at this point will even up the top portion of the base. Now you can carefully cut your base to the length you want. You can cut it at a slight angle if the fender of the car your attaching it to is not perfectly flat. The base should slip over the antenna tubing. Leave yourself extra tubing under the base so that you can drill a hole in the fender of the model for installation. I makes things a lot easier for attaching it to the fender. Now it's just finishing & assembly. For the purpose of this tutorial I'm using the Molotow chrome pen, but you can finish it however you would like, be it Alclad or whatever. Now it's just a matter of gluing the parts together. Another possibility, if you're worried about the fragile nature of the plastic aerial, is to use a thin wire or pin for the upper half with a dab of some sort of glue for the tip and finished with a little chrome paint, & a larger piece of steel or other type of tubing for the base. There are lots of possibilities, but this is just the way that I've been doing it as of late. So, as you see, there's really nothing to it. I can usually knock one of these out in about 15 minutes, so it's really not as involved as it may seem. There are a lot of variations that could be used to do this, but this should at least give some people a starting point for ideas if nothing else. Happy modeling!! Steve

Thanks Terry. The mirrors are pretty straight forward. On this one I used the 2-piece mirrors from one of the Revell '59/'60 Impala kits to make a mold using "mold putty". Then I just cast them in resin & finish them with Alclad or a Molotow pen. The antennas are easier than you might think. The base is just a small piece of sprue shaped into a little "bead" shape & drilled out to accept the tubing. The lower half of the antenna is a piece of the syringe tubing slipped through that bead. The top of the aerial is merely a thinly stretched piece of sprue fashioned to fit inside of the tubing. A touch of heat melts the tip of the aerial into the little ball on the top. Then the base & the top half of the antenna are either sprayed with Alclad or hit with a Molotow chrome pen. For extra realism, sometimes I'll dip the base partially into a little bit of black paint to give you the rubber gasket between the base & the body. Maybe I'll do one for the "Tips & Tricks" section sometime to show how it's done. Steve

I've on occasion, spent more to purchase a really nice rare vintage kit than most guys would ever care to spend on any build, but that's where it ends for me. I don't keep track in any way, shape or form of how much the actual build costs. I think that I would rather not know. Ignorance is bliss, as they say, & I like bliss. Steve

Only time will tell. Most things, including clear kit plastic, will yellow over time. I've got quite a few old kits with yellowed glass. Steve

There are a lot of us that would love to see some after market mirrors. For the time being, I've had to resort to casting resin copies for some of my builds. As far as antennas go, I make my own using steel syringe tubing & stretched pieces of sprue. this build has both. Steve

That's what I would do. Unless you have a rare kit that you really want to be a show piece in your collection. If that's the case, send it out for re-plating. Steve

If I'm not planning on building it, I'm not going to waste my money to buy it. I'm in this hobby to enjoy the build & the finished product. I'm not a collector. Steve

I like the '67 as well, mainly because it was such a unique design. I can understand why someone might prefer the '68 over the '67 because while it has the same sleek body design, it has a more conventional & more "Pontiac-ish" front end treatment. By '69, I felt the the body on the big Pontiacs were becoming too "bloated" looking. Steve

You can do the same thing with "Laser Bond" glue. Squeeze in a drop, hit it with UV light & it's hardened in a couple of seconds. Steve