Snake45

Exactly what I do except the sandpaper. I rub the halves on a dead-flat 10" fine cut mill file.

I've bought a few I would have bought "eventually" but hadn't really planned to anytime soon--'62 Corvette, '32 5-window, and Bronco Baja. Got them with 50%, 55%, and 40% off coupons, respectively.

I always wondered what a '30 Woody pickup would look like. Thanks for showing me!

Yeah, the product I was talking about was made by Polytek. I recognize the name. And I remember the hardest part about using it was, we'd inject the stuff using some giant syringes. It wouldn't be bad to work with if you could just pour it. Also, I eventually developed an allergy to it. Working with it would give me asthma-like symptoms for the rest of the day. I wouldn't sneeze or break out in hives, but it made my breathing very labored and my heart race for hours. It took me several such incidents to recognize what was causing it. From that time on, I was the only one there who had to wear a respirator using the stuff.

But before that, plenty of kids were building model airplanes out of balsa and tissue, and airplanes, cars, and ships out of solid wood. Most kids today aren't interested in anything more complicated than a Lego kit they can get together in 20 minutes. Can't be off their phones too long--someone else somewhere is doing something FAR more interesting, dontcha know!

Ain't it the truth! Paint availability is my current #1 problem and far and away my #1 future fear.

AH, THAT explains a lot!

I'm in the same boat, old friend, except my HL is only about 10-15 miles away. I also have an AC Moore and a Michaels which are occasionally useful. Last week I got a Revell '62 Corvette at AC Moore with a 50% off coupon, and they told me to take an online survey to get a 55% off coupon, which I did, and hope to get a Revell '32 Ford 5-window with that tomorrow. About a month ago, my son, who's just under 30, told me one of his old high school runnin' buddies wanted to come over and talk model cars with me. This kid's dad has always been into REAL cars and they've restored a '69 AMX and a '74 Corvette, among a few others. Anyway, he brought over some of his stuff to show me. I wasn't expecting much but was EXTREMELY impressed with his work. He airbrushes and his finishes are as good as anything I've ever done--and he doesn't even polish them out, he's getting a fabulous natural gloss! He's also mastered removing mold lines and flash. I was able to give him some pointers on scribing out door lines, and using foil, and a few little things like that, but he is WELL on his way. (Yes, he started modeling as a kid, in the '90s.) But he's the only "young person" I know in modeling. Everyone else seems to be on the bad side of 55, including me.

At my last job, we used to cast things out of a resin called 75-80. It was black, and pretty rigid but a little flexible. I'm sure there are softer variants available. (We bought the stuff in 5-gallon buckets. It was NOT fun to work with IMHO.) ETA: Now that I think about it, the stuff might have been a clear/amber color and we'd add the black coloring to it.

In my whole life, I've only met one serious modeler who built his first model as an adult. Everyone else--EVERY ONE, in both the model car and model airplane hobbies--started building as a kid, in the 1950s, '60s, '70, even some in the '80s and early '90s. We are an aging hobby, and we are dying out and dropping off. How many kids have started building/buying models in the last, say, 20 years? Not very many, proportionally. Not nearly enough to sustain the hobby 20 or 30 years from now the way we know it today.

Did you inherit a Vega mine?

You did great! Model on!

No, I'm sorry, I can't.

I was just looking through my old Summer 1970 Auto World catalog. I was amazed at what all is still available. Most of the AMT and MPC annuals are gone, as are all the JoHans and IMCs, of course, but nearly all the AMT and Revell catalogs are still available, or have been over the last decade. And quite a few of the Monogram and MPC kits, too. If it's not at Hobby Lobby today, just about anything reissued in the last decade is readily available somewhere online. And that's not even counting all the great NEW kits we've seen introduced in the last 20 or 30 years, many of which are much better than the original annuals (and some, not so much). TODAY is truly "the good old days." Well, kit-wise, anyway. I DO still miss the giant AMT and Pactra paint racks available at several places in town. Getting good paint is probably my major modeling problem these days.

I wouldn't re-do it either, though I'd probably spend a couple hours cleaning it up and touching it up and so forth. It's a sweet piece, very displayable.

To my eye, the AMT '64 GTO, '65 Cutlass, and '65 Chevelle have the roof shape right. Their '65 GTO is probably right. The Polar Lights '64 GTO and Revell '65 Chevelle are just wrong, in different ways. I've never taken that good a look at the Monogram '64 GTO but nothing wrong about the roof has ever jumped out at me on the dozens of built examples I've seen over the years.

A nicely built, rehab-able JoHan Scrambler AND a '65 (-ish?) Valiant promo? Oh man, if I have one day like that a year, it sticks with me for a LONG time. Well done, friend!

That's a fairly decent kit that dates back to the late '70s and goes together without any real problems that I recall. You can do it in olive drab and gray, or in overall natural metal with silver dope control surfaces, or in the Navy tri-color scheme, or even in late-war Navy overall Glossy Sea Blue. You can pretty much forget about getting enough weight in the nose to get the tail up. Just use a prop rod of some sort under the rear fuselage.

Too rounded? I thought the complaint was the upper window line was perfectly straight instead of having a slight arch, as it should. That's what I see there, anyway.

Could a good '57 Nomad be made by kitbashing the Revell '57 Bel Air 2DS body with their '56 Nomad?

Didn't Danny chase that one down on a early episode of Counting Cars? I remember he chased down some kind of weirdmobile like that.

If you still have one, you can make a foil copy of it, and fill the foil with epoxy, making a copy of it. That's what I'd do, anyway.

I just did my first "foil under paint" job on a Revell '68 Corvette. Rear panel lettering, SS427 badges on the hood, and the front and rear crossed-flag emblems (not unlike the emblems on yours). I did this with kitchen foil over bare plastic, and the flag emblems, I covered the flags with a drop of Elmer's Glue to mask them before I started painting. I then laid on one coat of Walmart black primer, three coats of Testor Firey Orange lacquer, and about four coats of Model Master Clear Top Coat enamel. During the rub-out/polish, all the chrome got exposed exactly as planned. I'm pretty pleased with the results (photos soon). I did have to pry the Elmer's masks off the flags with the tip of an Xacto, but they did pop right off leaving the flags perfect. I'll be using this technique again.

Apparently, we like talkin' Avantis and don't get the chance to do so all that often.

I own several. Haven't built one, but I don't see any problems. Some don't like the shape of the roof. Others don't see a problem. Biggest drawback to this kit is it ONLY builds a Z16 and can't be built (without considerable modification) as a common Malibu or SS Chevelle. And the real Z16s were only built in three colors--red, yellow, and black (though I've seen some with black vinyl tops). So if you want to build it box-stock AND accurately, you're limited to those three colors.