Snake45

I'd forgotten about those Revell '55-'57 Chevies where everything opens. Those are notorious monsters to build. I actually managed to get the '56 together when I was 14, but I have NO desire to do one of them again, with what's available today. I recently did a minor restoration/rebuild of that '56 and it took about four times longer than it usually takes me to do this with one of my old AMT or MPC or JoHan builds. Whatta hot mess.

Just so you're not surprised or disappointed: It's a pretty bad kit. Prolly why you don't see them built that often. I've considered chopping the roof off mine and making a straight Spitfire out of it. When I was a kid, I had an Aurora Spitfire in 1/32 that went together easily and looked pretty accurate. Shame that's not available anymore. BTW, when I was a kid, I thought the Spitfire was one of the coolest cars around. In high school I had a friend who had an MGB I rode in once, which was enough for me. Later, on the far side of 25, I had a girlfriend who drove an MG Midget. I could barely squeeze myself into the passenger seat, and I'm not what you'd call a big guy. I drove it once and it was a major PITA getting in and out of it. That kinda cured me of all desire to ever own a little Brit sport car. Oh, BTW, your sheet styrene care package is in the mail.

Sounds like Apollo 13, The Right Stuff, or something of the sort.

And, in similar vein: "What's that on your uniform? A PLEDGE PIN???!!!"

I think I've figgered out a fix for the '74 promo headlight buckets, and hope to try it soon (soon as I get a couple other projects off the bench, which I hope to do in the next week). Will post pics here if it works.

I've gotten pretty good and pretty well known for shiny finishes, but there's a lot you can do with flats, too. I've done a couple models in primer and plan to do more of them. They're fun! Right now I have on the bench a build where I'm attempting to portray '60s factory paint, but now 4-7 years old and with little if any shine left to it. One of the Model Master factory colors, un-cleared, seems to be working pretty well for this.

I don't specifically recall it, but it must be from Serenity. Shiny!

Both F-86s and the "flying" F-5A are 1/72. The rest are all 1/48. I'm a real scale slut. ETA: Oops, the Airfix F-84F is 1/72, too.

When I build airplanes, I usually build prop stuff, WWII to Vietnam. But I do a few jets now and then too. Here are a few. Fujimi Mirage III, shown with one of my favorite modeling tools, the can't-live-without-it Sears Craftsman 10" Single Cut Fine Cut Flat Bastard Mill File, the tool of 1001 modeling uses! Lindberg Grumman F11F Tiger, second prototype. F-86E converted to XFJ-2B prototype. Matchbox F-86A. Airfix F-84F. ESCI F-104C. Monogram F-104G converted to F-104A. Matchbox F-5A. Monogram F-5E. Old HAWK F-5A. You know I HAD to build this one in these markings!

Well this guy is sure doing that. He's a drumbot, ferpissake! LOVE him! On the other hand, have you ever taken notice of Kid Rock's drummer? Don't know her name but she's a large Black woman. When she is drumming, she looks like she is having the time of her life. I swear, I have never seen another human being having as much pure FUN at work as that woman. She is an inspiration and a pure joy to watch. I love her, too!

If you want to do a '68 RS, you can do that right now, with a little work. Frankly, for a "standard" '68, I'd rather build the AMT. Its body has problems too but they're easier to fix than the Revell's.

I answer exclusively to Snake.

Uh-uh. I ain't having any of it.

Here's my favorite. I love watching the drummer in this. Headphones on, eyes closed, he never pays one bit of attention to what anyone else is doing. He might be drumming to some other song for all we know. But he never misses a beat, and if you're not keeping up, that's your problem, not his. He's a freakin' machine. I love it! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UZDqLOXDO4

If you're talking shape/accuracy problems, I could come up with a dozen candidates. Some are obvious, like the two Revell '70 AAR Cudas, but the AMT ex-MPC '69 Camaro and Firebird would be near the top of my list. If you mean fit and buildability, every kit seems to have its quirks, some of which have sent builds of mine to the Shelf of Doom for YEARS, but it seems like I can get anything built that I really WANT to. That said, any kit with a flip nose seems to come out of the box with a Death Vendetta against me. I've been working “at” the Monogram '66 Chevelle and MPC flip-nose '57 Chevy since the '70s and no matter how much I file, sand, and mate, I can't seem to make the nose match the body. Same story with the Monogram Bad Actor '60 Chev SD. And I'm just talking the two body parts here, haven't even gotten anywhere NEAR trying to get them on a chassis and make everything line up and work. Have also collected several original MPC Mako Shark glue bombs and I swear I am going to get one of them together sooner or later. The '66 Chevelle I am giving up on and will just chop the front and rear ends off that backbirth and graft them onto a Revell '67 body. The roof looks smashed in on every Monogram '66 Chevelle body I've ever seen anyway, built or unbuilt. The AMT '41 Willys, I gave up trying to make that match up, too. I just glued that front end on VERY solid and then cut the hood out with the black edge of an Xacto #11. This is one of those stupid models where, all the hard work is done, it would be all downhill from here, but I've lost interest in it. I really need to finish this one sometime. But I think my Grand Prize Worst Kit/Biggest PITA Build award goes to the AMT, ex-MPC '57 Corvette flip-nose gasser. The two body halves don't come close to mating in any way. I glued them up solid, then did a buttload of work filling, filing, and sanding to make the two pieces look like they belonged together. Here's a pic of (top to bottom) the kit parts OOB, my “unitized” body, and an original MPC '57 Corvette stock body. Then, using a stock kit hood for a template/scribing guide, I just scribed a hood into the body. This will be a curbside build. That done, I painted the body with Odds N Ends Hunter Green enamel from the bottle. I'd been painting with Model Master and Testor enamels thinned with lacquer thinner for decades, no trouble at all except for some orange peel that needs to be rubbed out. I'd recently discovered that I could thin these paints with lighter fluid (naptha) and get a much smoother flow-out requiring very little polish, so that's what I did with this. BIG mistake. Instead of drying in 24-48 hours as the MM paints will, this stuff stayed tacky for well over a year. When it finally got hard enough to handle, I scuff-sanded it and re-shot it with the same paint thinned with lacquer thinner. THAT dried just fine in timely fashion, but was quite pebbly and orange-peely and required a laborious rub-out. I will say that after all the effort, I got a nice shine on the wretched thing. At this point I thought things would all be downhill from here, but that just NEVER happens, does it? The engine and chassis both started fighting me every step of the way and at that point I sentenced the SOB to the Shelf of Doom, where it sits to this day, having served about four years so far. Might be time to “parole” it and see if it's ready to play nice. We'll see. If I ever get it done, it will have richly earned the name I plan to paint on it: “Mr. Bad Example.”

HAHAHAHAHHAHAHA! "You don't scare me, demon, I was married to your sister for two ****ing years!" I loves me some Sam Kinison, too. How I miss that guy!

I was just thirteen When I had to leave home Knew I couldn't stick around I had to roam

If you really want to do a nice '70 Chevelle, start with the Revell snapper, which has a better shaped body (IMHO, anyway) than the AMT. You'll have to cut out the hood but no biggie. You can put it on the AMT '70 chassis but a more detailed chassis like the Revell '72 Cutlass or the AMT '69 4-4-2 would be even better. The AMT kit you're talking about actually builds into a fairly nice '72 Chevelle.

Very cool! Have you done the Pyro/Lindberg model of it?

Those are relatively simple problems to solve, in a number of ways. Not big deals at all.

I actually thought of putting a rifle rack on the roll bar.

Very nice! What's the paint?

The RS grill from the original AMT '67 annual kit is almost a direct drop-in (some very minor fitting might be required). Modelhaus repops it. It's also more accurately shaped on the ends than the Revell kit grille.