peteski

I always like the looks of that car: wide and flat! Your modifications greatly improved the looks of that model, but since you repainted it I'm surprised that you didn't remove the part number on the underside of the engine cover.

That photo does show the truck very well. I like those panoramic windows - like sitting in a glass booth.

Very nicely done diorama. These cars had plastic bodies (well, it was actually made of resin-impregnated cotton),so there would be no rust. But the IIRC, color of bare plastic was sort of reddish brown, so you might be lucky that your rust on the body parts represents bare resin. ? Back when I lived in Poland my uncle had one of those Trabants. It was white. He and my aunt used to take me on vacations in it (along with my cousin). I also remember that at some point the trunk lid cracked (from the lock tumbler down to the bottom edge. I remember my uncle took couple of flat pieces from my cousin's wooden erector set to use under clamps for repairing the crack. He used epoxy glue. Thanks for bringing up those memories!

I love Foamy (especially the tech support stuff), but I haven't checked for any new stuff for a while. The Starschmucks stuff is also right-on-target.

That doesn't seem quite accurate either. Chine (citizens or even ruling power) are not to blame. The greedy Western company executives who wanted to make their products as cheaply as possible outsourced the manufacturing to countries where production costs were cheaper. You know, to maximize the profits and keep the executives and shareholders happy. China just happened to be one of those countries with cheap labor and no environmental laws. Then, with all that foreign money flowing in, China became wealthier nation and started buying mothballed brand names and, lots of real-estate in the USA. Now they are reaping the benefits, created by all that foreign money from greedy foreign companies. But we don't want this to become political.

The Sham-Wow guy should be a spokesman for this wonderful device! Speaking of scams and shams, did anybody else besides me notice that quite few companies which produced quality of products for many years went out of business and those trusted and highly regarded brand names were purchased by Chinese companies, and they now use those names to sell all sorts of c-rap!. Names such as Bell & Howell, Fuller Brush, Sharper Image, and even German Blaupunkt. There are many more, but those are the ones that just popped into my head after seeing them in fairly recent TV ads. And then there are those "Bionic" self-retracting garden hoses. There is nothing bionic about them - someone forgot to look up what "bionic" really means.

Sometimes there is no substitution for some manual scraping.

I appreciate you guys dong the test. Rockwell hardness test will be nice, but totally meaningless to me, especially with no point of reference. Simple bend-or-snap test is good enough for me. Or even a "fingernail test" (pushing end of a fingernail into the hardened resin to see if it makes a mark which eventually almost heals itself, or if it is hard enough that no mark is left).

I'm surprised that it gets that hard. Could you do a test for me? Run about 1" long bead of your UV adhesive on a piece of aluminum foil. Once it is hardened, peel it off the foil, and bend it. Is it flexible or does it just break? My Bondic just bends. It is not very soft, but not really hard either. The other problem I have with Bondic and the original UV light (and even a stronger UV flashlight) is that while the resin semi-hardens, the surface remains sticky. I discussed this in another thread some time ago. However, when I cured Bondic with sunlight, it not only got really hard, but the surface was nice and shiny (not sticky). The discussion we had hypothesized that the curing lights don't use the most favorable wavelength of UV light, where Sun's light contains a wide spectrum of UV light.

I'm glad you were successful. While 99% manufacturers use the standard vacuum metalizing (thin layer of aluminum) to simulate chrome, there are couple companies that actually electroplate their "chrome" parts. That result in relatively thick layer of metal on the parts which is pretty much impossible to remove chemically. Even scraping it with a knife is very difficult. One of those companies is Trumpeter, and I don't remember the other company. I think they make NASCAR or funny car kits. Salvinos?

That is a very good suggestion, but knowing that automotive modelers have notoriously tight pockets, I recall someone suggested using empty plastic soft drink bottles for practicing. Those are free (or 5 cents deposit in some states). That's better than two bucks-a-pop. Granted they don't have those nice curves the speed shapes have, but they are much, much cheaper. Actually there is some variety of sizes, and some do have more complex shape than just round.

There really is no need for keeping the unit warm. But whatever . . . .

Um, isn't that what the old-fashion carburetor is? Shouldn't it really be called "atomizer"? The next evolution step was to use fuel injectors in the intake plenum to atomize fuel. Nowadays more and more gasoline engines use direct fuel injection, where the injector is inside the cylinder head and under (very high pressure) atomizes the fuel fuel directly inside the combustion chamber.

I find that these UV-curable resins hardened do not harden enough (remain semi-flexible) to be used as fillers for plastic or resin car bodies. That is, when those resins are cured with portable battery-operated curing lights. But the resins become fully hardened when exposed to natural sunlight for several minutes.

Interesting idea, but unless you have water-based acrylic paints (which have "protect from freezing" warning on the label), regular "stinky" paints *DON'T FREEZE*, even in sub-zero temperatures. In your photos all I see is "stinky" paints. So yes, it is a clever place to store them, but no real need to protect them from freezing temps. The gas propellant in spray cans might be less effective (lower pressure) when the can is cold, but warming it back up before spraying session will restore the pressure.

Thanks for the info Mario. Yes, I do have one of the older MPC Eagle kits I bought probably 20 years ago (a re-pop of the '70s kit) and I also few years ago picked up the Deluxe Edition Eagle kits with resin parts in a flat box.

"Shipping Partner". That means USPS is using an outside contractor. That is one of the problems.

Yes, there are some useful "gems" among all the "rocks", but not very many.

There are lots of people in this world totally lacking critical thinking. I see so many crappy devices shown in TV ads (like the swamp cooler for example) which I can see right in that advert that it won't work. Yet all that "as seen on TV" BLAH_BLAH_BLAH_BLAH is still being made and sold. But wait, if you order in the next 20 minutes you get the second one for free (just pay the "fee"). Come on, I was not born yesterday, but enough people out there were "born yesterday" and they keep on buying enough of those things to keep those companies in business (at least for some time). Another one is the tiny heater unit that plugs into the outlet. It supposed to heat the entire room (consuming very little power). Wonders never cease.

Ok, hopefully stainless steel will be safe. As far splashing goes, it is not bubbles from heat - the ultrasonic cavitation effect can cause the fluid to bubble (at any temperature).

Very well done! The night photos are very impressive! I was also a big fan of the show back in the day (and now have full set of DVDs), but I only have the smaller scale kits. I also have the Moonbase Alpha kit. I build one as a kid, and picked it up again when it was reissued some years ago. Now just to find the time and space to build it.

Be careful. Lye is caustic and attacks metal! If the ultrasonic cleaner has a metal tub, it might not be compatible with Lye. Also the liquid might bubble and splash out of the tub.

It is not just the Testors Cement that stays soft and stays soft and shrinks for a long time. It also softens the plastic around it. I would remove the glue and the surrounding plastic, then use some non shrinking filler to patch the sunroof.

As I see it, the debris (like lint) in the charging port (connector) would not slow down the charging process. The connection is either made, or not made. The type of debris are non-conductive (insulators). The slow charging is more likely caused by the battery aging out, or defect in the charging circuitry inside the phone. But batteries usually last longer than a year. You mentioned that you tried new changing cord. Did you try the cable only, or also the charger "cube" that plugs into the AC outlet?

Similar design, but not identical. I don't recall where I bought it. It was likely one of the online cooking gadgets catalog, and I ordered it by mail (pre-Internet times). There is no brand name on it. I also cut out the trays from all the intermediate sections to clear enough room for car and truck bodies. It is sitting on the shelf, with a cooking thermometer stuck in one of the vent slots.