Brendan

Andy, Though I'm not a big drag racing fan, these are very cool-looking kits. Might just have to make one of those. The Cadillac is the one I'm looking at.

Thanks for the nice comments. Hopefully I'll have a 997 out pretty soon...from Profil24. It's going to be a model of the IMSA Performance that ran at Le Mans.

Got some more work done on the Cheetah. Here's some pictures This is a picture of the roughed-in bump for the magneto. Picture of the chassis and frame rail headers and exhaust pipes Dashboard and rear axle Rims All the parts that are metallic are painted in different shades of Alclad paint. I have to get the body painted before I start building up the car. This kit has everything interconnected to the main body. Hopefully I'll have some paint on within the next week or so. Everything has been going pretty smoothly so far. Hope to get more up soon.

Bill, Thanks for reminding me about the epoxy. I use that stuff all the time. Dave, As for getting a real shine to the paint, there are a couple of things that people do to do this. It all depends on what paint you use. A lot of people just shoot what they call a clear coat or gloss coat over the top of their finished paint job. What most advanced modelers do to get the shine is that they rub or buff the paint out to a high shine like they do on a real car. This requires thicker coats of paint to do this. It takes a lot of time to learn how to do it properly. I'm still learning this process. There are other ways as well. To also let you know, there are three main different paint finishes. A gloss would be shiny, a semi gloss would be like shiny leather, and dull or flat. Make sure you look on the cans and on the paint to see which ones you're picking up because sometimes it's in small print. As for metallic and pearl essence paints, there are many varieties to choose from. Testors makes quite a few of their metallic paints in enamel and also in their lacquer line of spray paints. (Try to use the lacquer. It has a quicker drying time.) But some of the odder colors are done through custom mixing through airbrushing. The pearl paint is a clear coat with a metallic or a tinged translucent paint that you put over a silver or over a metallic paint or even solid color paints. There's other types as well, but those are the easiest for me to explain. The way I used to do this with spray cans is to spray the body with silver and then spray a clear red or blue or other types of color over the silver. Hopefully I explained it so it made sense to you.

David, You did a really good job for your first model. Some advice for clear plastic: Do not use the regular model glue. The stuff that most people use is Elmer's white glue or any white glue. It doesn't fog up the clear plastic and dries clear. And if you make a mistake on it, it doesn't etch the plastic either. You can always wipe the white glue off with water. Another thing is to read through the instructions very carefully since some of the instructions can be a little confusing. Ask questions if you need help. Also use the search feature on this forum since some questions you have might have already been posted. That's what great about this forum. If you have a question, just ask and you'll get some help. As for the picture posting, I ran into the same problem. I signed up with http://photobucket.com/ It's a free site. Jairus posted a good tutorial on how to use that program to show pictures. I can't find where it's posted though. Might want to send a message to him. Hope this helps.

Finished the Porsche GT3 Petit Le Mans '03 car. Had to take a break from the Cheetah. This car would have been done about 6 months ago but I didn't have the decals. The kit is a Tamiya GT3, a Renaissance full body transkit and the decals are from DMC. The paint is Tamiya TS-8 airbrushed. Some minor fit issues but everything went together fairly well. Feel free to comment. My camera is still acting up...I'm still trying to figure out how to fix the problem.

The kit that scares me is the Scale Motor Sports Porsche 956. I have started this car on 20 or more occasions. There's so much to do. It's one of those kits on which you spent the money and want to get the kit as detailed and as perfect as possible. I had two at one time and finally sold one since I felt that I was never going to build it.

My list of cars I would like to see are mainly race cars. Accura Spice, Cadillac CTS-V, Calloway Corvette C5R, Spiker GT2, Momo Nissan GTP, Toyota Eagles GTP (early and late versions), Porsche RS Spyder, Zytek, Creation CA06, Acura ARX-01.

When I talk about painting parts as needed, I start at step 1 of the instructions, paint the parts from that step. While those are drying, I go onto step 2 and paint those parts. As step 2 parts are drying, I go back to step 1 and start putting those parts together. When the glue is drying from step 1, I start painting step 3 and just repeat the procedure. This works best when using acrylic paints since they dry to the touch in under 30 minutes. I use the other methods that have been mentioned and they work just as well. It kind of depends on what type of kit you're doing and how much detail is involved. It sounds like you're new to modeling. Show your work and people will give you advice on how to improve. Have fun and experiment with stuff.

David, Sounds like you've done a great job of planning ahead. As for painting, I go along the lines of what Bill said. Stay away from enamels as much as you can. I have a tendency to use more of water based acrylics. I prefer Tamiya Acrylics. The drying time is fairly short. Also I usually use automotive lacquers and primers for the body. But you will have to use a clear coat for the automotive paints. For painting parts, it would be the same as what Bill said. Make sure you test fit parts. I paint parts as I go. Another thing that might help you is to read through your instructions to see what parts can go together, such as engine block halves and that sort of thing. A lot of times, they're all the same color. When you start doing a lot of models, you'll find what parts you can put together ahead of time and what parts you need to keep separate before you paint. I've know people who have spent over a year on one model kit. Ten hours may seem long, but that's actually pretty fast in gettng the kit painted. Let us know how it turns out. If you can, post some pictures. If you get frustrated, just walk away for a while...and then come back when you're ready. The worst thing you can do is work when frustrated. That's when mistakes occur. I have ruined more kits that way than I even want to talk about.

Much better looking than the Series 1 car. That would be interesting to see as an actual race car...have it painted as a dark metallic blue with the #15 on it. Let me know if you start producing these. I'll probably pick one up.

I think you have to be 21 to buy that kit too .

That's good to know. I didn't even think about it being hard licquor. I think it's a silly law since most of the people who buy them are adults. If you're 21, you should be able to buy what you want.

Nice build. I am also working on a Cheetah, but it's a street car. It's a kit from Historic Racing Miniatures. This is my second one. If you like the Cox kit, you would really like the HRM kit. I completely forgot that Cox made a kit. You did an excellent job on cleaning it up from what you had to start with. Also to let you know, VRM will be coming out with some Cheetah decals pretty soon. This is one of my favorite Vintage Race Cars. Just imagine if they had GM backing, this car would have been unstoppable.

As far as I know about tobacco and alcohol decals, the only law that I'm aware of is that you can not sell them to anyone under age. The reason why you don't see a whole lot in decals is that most of them are trademarked. The decal makers don't want to pay for the rights to use the trademark. (A very close friend of mine was sued for using the Bosch logo on a kit he produced.) Like I said in a previous post, Revell did release kits with alcohol decals but could not be sold to anyone under age. And for diecast companies, I've seen several with alcohol and tobacco decals on them, but the same thing applies, you have to be of age to buy them. I think it's more a matter of the market place where the majority of the companies are targeting kids but the people actually buying the product are adults. But the government sees them as being toys for kids.

Awesome build. I hope to get at least half that detail in my Scale Motor Sports 956 and that's 1/24 scale. The paint work and the decals look great. I can't believe you put all that detail in something that small. My fingers would be cramping and my eyes would be strained.

The car is a Ferrari 333SP Longtail Le Mans '98 LMP1.

A few years ago Revell released a couple of their drag cars (I believe) with alcohol decals. On the box, it said in very small print that this item could not be purchased by anyone under 21. I was working in a hobby store at the time. We thought this was absolutely hilarious. We also could not sell after market decals with alcohol or tobacco on them unless the person was of age or had their parents with them. We actually had notices sent to us by the government stating all the penalties that could happen. Everyone commented that this was a hobby store, not a liquor and tobacco store. I think some of this stuff gets a little ridiculous.

I think "Ask Greg and Jairus" should be kept in the magazine. It's a light-hearted approach to answering questions, but gives serious and useful information at the same time. Though some information is known among seasoned modelers, you have to look at it from the standpoint where these answers to questions could help new modelers. This is where the modeling/magazine industry needs to continue paying attention to newcomers to encourage them to stay with the hobby. The things I would like to see a little more attention to is modern cars and racing cars. I don't want to see what another magazine has done where they're showing cars of questionable build caliber as being a high lighted article. I would prefer to see expert builds and people who do good builds right out of the box. Details are important for some articles, but sometimes you can show that one can build a good model straight out of the kit. I think this magazine has done a pretty good job with these articles, but could show more. Just my opinion.

Hi...my name is Brendan Howden. I've been building models for over 20 years. I live in Brookings OR which is right on the coast less than 8 miles from the CA/OR state line. I used to live in Saratoga, CA which is near San Jose. Brookings is completely different from what I was used to growing up in CA. It's a small town atmosphere. One of the big differences is the weather. During the winter it rains constantly. Not uncommon to have several inches in a short time. Alse during the summer you could have one day of 100 degree weather and the very next day be in the low 60's. Makes it hard to paint sometimes. My main interests in modeling are race cars, mainly prototypes (Le Mans style) and the more modern cars usually 24th and 12th scale. I'm a pretty fast builder. I'm fairly knowledgeable about race cars. If anyone has a question, send me a message. I'm really easy going about sharing information about model building and I have no problems trying to help people out if I can. A show where you'll usually see me is at NNLWest. It's one of the few contests that I make every year. Perhaps I'll see you there.

Very nice clean build. I hope to see more posts of any of his finished work.

To fix the crack, I usually use CA glue (superglue), line up the crack so it's as smooth as possible and then put a drop of superglue in from the back side of the crack. I usually use accelerator to make it cure quickly. Light sanding and see if there's any big gaps. If there are, use a good putty. I prefer automotive putty, which seems to work better. Sand it down till it's smooth. Put a couple of coats of good automotive primer on and see if there's any other flaws. For prepping the resin, I'm not in favor of soaking it in cleaner. I've had problems occur with doing that. I use a good soap or detergent and use a toothbrush with warm (not too hot) water and just start scrubbing. Then I wash it off and then use alcohol which is at least 91% and wipe it down, but not soaking it. (I prefer denatured alcohol.) Then let it airdry. Put a good primer on and go through the steps of painting. Hope this helps.

Here is more work that I've done on the Cheetah. Here is a picture of the interior, painted and flocked. Here are pictures of the motor, painted Chevy Engine Orange and different shades of Alclad. Pictures are kind of grainy due to my camera acting up. Here are pictures of the tail lights. The car usually only had two, but the street version ran with four taillights. I filled in the two factory holes and drilled four new ones. You can see all the holes I had to fill in. The green car is the race version with the hood opened up and with the two four barreled carbs. The car I'm doing now will have a Rochester side draft FI. More updates will be coming. The kit is going together quicker than I thought.

That is just an absolutely beautiful car. The decaling is immaculate. It would be neat to see it you do the #3 car. Thank you for showing your work.

Simon, I had the same problems with the bubbles on the smaller parts, especially the gear lever. Luckily I had another gear level that looked better so I used that. Thanks for letting me know.