peteski

Lance, the top of the can has a different shape. It is not a smooth dome which can be dented as easily as the bottom.

Nice! I see you still have good taste (in whatever taste buds are still working after eating some of the hellish stuff)! It's a good thing that the filter in this forum does not screen for foreign naughty words.

These kits are rare and they fetch a lot of money on eBay. Does anybody know what happened to the tooling for that kit? With all the recent MPC re-releases it would be nice to see that one brought back too.

Now this is the good mustard! I am a Pollack right off the boat (um, in my case it was a jet airliner), but I never heard of runza in my neck of the woods. Had to look it up. It is of Russian origin and it seems tasty.

Hundred forty five? Eh, you're just a lightweight, with a wicked good arm! This brings up something that I have been thinking about for years: Those agitators are made of glass and when they bang against metal, it might be possible that flakes of glass chip off and contaminate the paint. The ones I rescued from the empty cans (shaken much less vigorously) do show signs of impact with the metal (small flaws). I wonder what the onels in your cans look like. I wonder if you would be willing to cut open one of the cans with defromed bottom (after it is empty and depressurized of course). I'm curious about the condition of those agitators.

Yes, In New England (at least in Eastern Mass. and Southern NH) we also put mustard on pretzels. Unfortunately many vendors only have the crappy yellow mustard. I like it darker with more kick to it.

That is so cool - thanks for sharing! This is probably the youngest kid I've ever seen assembling a model kit (and allowed to use real tools). I have feeling that he will be a modeler for life (with the usual sabbaticals during his teens and when and if he starts a family).

I was thinking the same thing. It seems to be a mash-up of various kit parts (like someone kitbashed a model). It has somewhat Open GT-esque flavor to it (plus bunch of other flavors thrown in).

Wow! This thread has been the most amusing (and interesting) threads I have read in a while! To add to all the other responses, I have been using spray cans for decades and this has never happened to any of my cans. I have also never seen anything like that before this. The above photo seems most telling. I would say those bulges are caused by the vigorous shaking and the agitators hitting the bottom of the can. The distinct depressions are clearly visible. The odd thing is that the tops and bottoms of cans are made from thicker metal than the side wall, so you must have a superhuman strength to be able to make the agitators achieve enough speed (kinetic energy) during your shake stroke to actually dent the bottom of the can! Are you a body-builder? Seriously! I have taken many empty cans apart and they all seem to have couple of glass ball (about marble-size) agitators. The location of the bulges seem to agree with where the agitator would contact the bottom if it was moving right against the side of the can. You are one powerful dude! Ease up on the shaking bro! Or if you have wife and kids, ask them to do the shaking for you (unless your entire family is atomic - then ask a neighbor)!

Like Curt said, making a mask from the decal (photocopy or even hand-tracing) would be the way I would go. Then paint and apply decal after painting. I'm also curious as to why the edge of the paint cannot partially go under the decal (so the edge of the decal defines the demarcation line)? is the decal not opaque enough?

That engine looks YOOOOGE!

I belong to a model club and we lost few members recently. What the club did was to either buy the deceased member's model collection or auction it off. The proceeds then went to the widow. It was a good chunk of change (even if the models didn't fetch all that much). You might also consider selling some of the ones which aren't your top favorites on eBay or some other similar website. That will give you extra funds to buy paints and modeling supplies to keep building (unless of course you already have enough of those too).

Looks like that saying is more widespread than Chicago and New England. https://www.google.com/search?q=You+don't+like+the+weather%3F+Wait+five+minutes

If you are constantly running out of the red-tube Testors glue then you are either building lots of models (dozen a month) or you are painting the entire model with glue. Most kit instructions state to use glue sparingly.

I don't think so! That is exactly what we say in Boston about the New England weather!

It is not about being nice - it is always about maximizing profits.

There was Feeling 43 - they closed shop several years ago. When still in production, the kits fetched from a $100 (basic) to few hundred for the super-detailed kits. They also sold hand-assembled versions of their kits (in very limited quantity) and those sold for thousands. Now, because they are gone, the kits have really outrageous prices! But as you said, those kits are all little gems with gobs of details, but you have to be a true craftsman to build them. They are nothink lils typical plastic kit. But if they are built properly, they are tiny masterpieces,often with more details than many 1:24 models. Tameo is another company which makes really nice 1:43 kits. The pre-assembled models from NEO are relatively inexpensive because they are assembled in China, and they don't have the same level of detail as Feeling43 or Tameo kits. All NEO models are curbside slammers (no engine and no under-body details). Some examples of Feeling43 level of details. This shows you why they are so expensive (they are about half the size of 1:24 scale models).

My preference (in the 80s) was Centerline wheels. Nice brushed aluminum finish. I had the deep-offset (9.5" wide) wheels in the back of my '76 Camaro.

I was one who was afraid to ask. I guess Jimmy prefer to spend a huge chunk of their modeling time to foil their model's trim. But if he is enjoying doing that then that's all that really counts. I prefer the much quicker BMF method. I also never sand, rub down, or polish the car bodies after I paint them. That to me is way too tedious. Jimmy, I'm not sure if you know that if there is any adhesive left over from BMF, you can also easily remove it with Naphtha or the same stuff which works on your foil. I have never heard of anybody stripping their model in purple pond because of a mistake during foil application. You have an interesting foiling technique (which obviously works), but not something I will ever try. Even if there was no more BMF being made, I would rather put some Microscale foil metal adhesive on plain aluminum foil and apply it like like BMF.

Except for the original chrome foil, all of BMF's other foils are simply aluminum foil with adhesive. Gold and black are coated with some sort of dye or ink, but they are still all aluminum (just look at the adhesive side). However, it is thinner that the standard kitchen aluminum foil, but it is quite stiff compared to the original chrome foil. Like I wrote in this post I say say that BMF (original chrome only) stretches much more and much easier than any other plain aluminum metal foil (like their bright chrome foil for example). The BMF original chrome is not aluminum foil - it is some sort of an alloy which is much heavier than aluminum. Just crumple some waste pieces together into a ball and you'll be surprised how heavy it feels. Also, unlike aluminum, it melts using regular soldering iron, so I suspect there is some tin or lead in the alloy (or some other low-temperature metal). For those reasons, BMF chrome is the best foil for complex-curved surfaces. No aluminum foil even comes close. And here is another one of my posts you might find useful.

I wonder what will happen with all the artwork. I never tried them but I heard they were of good quality and printed on Alps. It tales a long time to clean up artwork (and vectorize it) to produce good quality decals.

You know, we never landed on the Moon - it was all faked. There is a book about it.

Nice collection Scott! If you can produce your own decal artwork, there are decal companies (usually 1-man shops) that can print them for you with white ink (on Alps printers). well, then can do the artwork for you too, but that gets really expensive (because it is time-consuming task). But just printing your print-ready artwork is quite affordable. Here is a link to a page which lists those custom decal manufacturers (scroll down to the Custom decal companies section): http://robdebie.home.xs4all.nl/models/decals.htm As far as the artwork requirements go, here is an excerpt from http://www.fireballmodels.info/ No, please do not send me any bitmap artwork. I won't print it. Artwork should be in Vector format for best print results. Color Matching is an art with Alps printers, not a science. For the most part, precise color matching is not possible. Convert all type to curves in the final file that you want printed. This ensures your fonts will not cause problems. Use a neutral-colored background so that the White portions will stand out clearly. The templates have a neutral blue background.

Did you also count the time it takes you to make a batch of your foil? Time is money. Or you could spend it on something less mundane than making your own adhesive foil.

For burgers it is In-n-Out burger is the best (when I am in California, which is not often). Chick-Fil-A is pretty good, but for chicken nuggets the best place is the "Chicken Shack" - little shop 4 miles from my house. They make the nuggets fresh, right in the back of the place. They are really juicy and tender, and the breading is very tasty.