peteski

Cute video. My neighborhood is infested with rabbits. Your kitties must have been well fed to watch that rabbit so quietly.

Yes, you snooze - you loose. Fear (from the talking weather-heads) is the greatest people motivator. Not only for weather related panics, but also for political reasons (but we're not going into that). Even wars were waged triggered by fear, so food hoarding is not all the bad in the greater scheme of things. But it still stinks!.

Thanks! I was half-joking Lee. Well, I grew up in Poland, and back then in Poland not too many people owned pets. Few had dogs, and even fewer cats (compared to USA). There was no such thing as pet food (only table scraps) and while the dogs were given names, it wasn't customary to give cats names. I did have cat back then (a tuxedo cat). When I immigrated to USA, we adopted the one in the photo, and like in the "old country", we didn't name it. The vet wanted a name, so we said "Blackie", but at home we just called her "kitty" or "kotek" (which meant "kitty" in Polish). She would respond to that, but what really got her going was the sound of 9 Lives or Friskies cans being opened!

Thanks! Yes, she was a very cuddly companion (for 20 years) and loved to climb under the covers in bed with me. Her loud purring was a dead giveaway that she was under there.

Yes, that is a very nice model train layout. I dug up one of the photos of my cat. She's been gone for many years (so long ago that the photo is a scan of a 4X6 paper print, and when was the last time anybody has seen a bean-bag chair?. She had no name (cat's don't need or want names), and she was super smart.

Most (if not all) recently produced Revell DE kits have been moulded in Poland (and many are done in white or light gray plastic). That has been true for few years. It is actually nice to see kit production done in my birth country (not in China)>

I own a 1985 Eldorado. Bought the TKM model of it, and it is worse than just "no good". Still sitting in its shipping box. It is too bad as those could have been quite nice models if the master was a bit neater, and casting method was not so primitive.

Wow! The speculations were that the windshield was done this way to make it easier to also produce the open-top version. But if they actually redo the tooling to make this version more accurate, that would be amazing. Major rework of a body shell mo(u)ld is quite expensive!

Washer fluid is water mixed with alcohol and some detergents or cleaning agents. Modelers use it simply because it is very cheap.

That is a beauty!

Most (all?) of Japanese kits have a list of replacement parts that can be purchased on the instruction sheet (if you damage yours, or for whatever reason). Prices and mailing address for the order form are also included (in Japanese). Japanese modelers are lucky that way. Years ago (when I last did it), if some Japanese kit was current, or fairly recent, I would contact Hobby Link Japan , or even Rainbow Ten (I was their customer) with the list of parts I needed, and they woudl order them for me from the manufacturers, and ship them to me. I'm not sure if they still offer this service, but it might be worth a try (to get few sets of those tires).

While not my cat (I lost mine long time ago), I figured you all would enjoy seeing just how graceful and gentle this cat is. None of the small details get knocked over. Amazing!

I would go for Michelins. For some reason I don't care for the tread pattern on the Pirellis. I think the only problem is whether the wheel diameter of enough Ferrari models is similar enough for the tires to be mostly universal fit. Or maybe make it fit the kit with worst factory-supplied tires, like the Italeri (and related reboxed) kits?

It's really is too bad that there is no source for good quality tires for Ferraris of this vintage. I wonder if we could talk Chief Joseph (Fireball Modelworks) to design and cast a set of big and little Dunlop (or similar) tires? He makes excellent tires!

Is this the problem as shown in this thread?

Well, the Chrome BMF is definitely *NOT* aluminum. That is why it works so well. It is much more pliable than aluminum foil. It is some sort of low-temperature alloy (you can easily melt it with a soldering iron). Aluminum foil won't melt using a soldering iron. The color of Chrome BMF is also distinctly different from aluminum. Put a piece of your kitchen aluminum foil next to BMF Chrome, and you will readily see the difference. BMF Chrome has a warm (slightly yellowish) color, where aluminum has a white (even slightly bluish) tone. BMF Chrome looks more like Nickel than aluminum. Anyways, the bottom line is that BMF Chrome is a great product for our hobbies. As far as the crinkling goes, that could also be caused by the resin body shrinking slightly over the years. While ploystyrene used for model kits is dimensionally stable, I have noticed urethane resin items shrink slightly over the years.

Actually this reminded me of another irk of mine. At some point someone came up with this list of "National XXXXXXXX Day" for every day of the year. Why is this a "thing", and why would we care? "National Potato Chip Day"?! Stupid! Gimme a break!

Nice! Some years ago one of my model club members built that kit. I liked it so much that I found and bought it on eBay. But i still haven't gotten to the building stage.

This is my favorite part of model building - when all the subassemblies come together to complete the model.

What irks me? You/wife will not pay, but thousands of others will. So the cable companies will just happily continue charging more and more. Oh wait, this is not "what irked me thread".

Big problem with "water-based" paints is that there are many formulas, so there is no universal thinner. That's one of the reasons I stay away from those paints. Some can be thinned with alcohol, other will curdle. Some can be thinned with water. Actually water is probably one of the safest thinners for all those paints, but not guaranteed to be totally universal. Safest is to use the thinner that is part of the line of paints being thinned. But with cheap craft paints, there usually is no specific thinner available. Some of those craft paints will mention on their label what could be used to thin the painit, others will not. It is a luck of a draw. For me it is still "stinky" paint all the way.

Just to add some info to this thread, if only sections of the "chromed" part need to be repainted, like chrome wheels that have black centers or segments, then there is no need to partially strip the metallic coating. The paint will stick to it well enough.

Yes, Monogram Ultimates were very nice models with a photoetched fret included in the kit. If we branch out to model trains, the factory-assemble brass models used many photoetched parts in them (since they were built out of those brass parts). Those models predate any photoetched automotive model parts by decades.

Photoetching (actually "chemical milling") has been around for a long time. Electronic printed circuit boards are made using very similar method, and those have been made like that since probably 1950s. As far as model parts go, I'm not sure what were the early examples. Since the process can be done at home (I etch my own parts), I suppose some modelers could have made their own parts before they were made commercially. And as far as that Tamiya Lotus 7 goes, I don't have one handy, but I believe it is stamped-metal, not photoetched.

Ah, thanks! I bought couple of bottles, but didn't have a chance to try it yet. I'm glad to know it works for you.