Joe Handley

My 2 cents on 3D parts…… If it’s a box stock build, that always seems like it’s a styrene kit only,l as I wouldn’t consider resin kits as such either. When it comes to 3D printed parts, I really don’t see those and being any different that buying or making your own photo etched, resin cast and/or machined parts for classes where multimedia parts are allowed. That to me is something where in the end, it should be quality of the build over the parts used. I also don’t feel that the lack of aftermarket/multimedia parts in a build should be a detriment to the judging of the model either.

Funny you mention this, I had a couple builds at the local IPMS show, one of which was that ‘69 Charger Convertible I built from a R2/MPC General Lee snap kit with a couple parts from the Revell ‘68 Charger kits and resin repop parts from the MPC ‘68 Cuda and Coronet R/T Convertible started in 2019 and completed in late 2023-early 2024 due to procrastination. They didn’t lock us out of the rooms right away, but some of the judges were walking around looking at the builds. Dad was wandering around listening to them and when they got to my Charger, Dad heard one say “Oh, that’s just a Charger Convertible, I see those all the time.” Then there was another build, an aircraft carrier that the guy had spent a decade building and detailing, including the aircraft on deck. Dad had been really impressed with that build and thought it was a fantastic build, but apparently these judges apparently just blew it off compared another boat build that wasn’t on par with the other one I mentioned. To be honest, I’m not sure which pissed Dad off more, the boat judgement or the guy claiming the he has seen Charger convertible builds all of the time………despite there never being a Charger convertible ever offered by pre and post bankruptcy Chrysler Corp, Daimler-Chrysler, Chrysler LLC, FCA, or Stellantis and not being a whole lot of builds/conversions in any scale that I could find online.

The ‘70 AMX kit would make sense and now that you mention it, that would be the right shape for the roofline too! If I hadn’t donated the AMX kit I had to my club’s auction, I would go and compare this to that. Luckily this on is not from that kit as never had both boxes open at the same time and I purchased this Wildcat off the shelf of the HTU I worked for at the time too!

So this is weird, I’m playing around with an old, RC2/ERTL issue of the ‘66 Buick Wildcat and planning on a custom/Lowrider build and went to try and fit the glass to the body and found it’s from something even bigger, a lot bigger! Anybody else run across this or even have a clue what this window is from? Quick edit, found the right glass in the kit too, so I don’t have to figure out where to get the correct one from! Now it looks like the bag the other window glass came in had the tail lights with it and a bubble hood scoop that kinda reminds me of the C6 ZR-1, but I’m still curious about what kit that oversized glass piece is for?!

One of my coworkers has an autistic geand daughter and her school is collecting pop tabs started by at the beginning of the school year through December, so all of us at the office have been saving them for her, especially after this coworker had a stroke shortly there after. There’s a paper Popeye’s cup that has a bunch as well as a small ziplock bag full and I was thinking that we need something better for that. Since my birthday was Tuesday, I took the first two days of the week off for a long weekend and while I was off, I picked up something Hobby Lobby calls an “Art Jar” and decided to paint it so we could put the tabs in that instead. The first jar I bought I laid out a pattern in masking take and sprayed a color shift clear from Testors on it, but dropped it Monday night while trying to clear it and got leaves in the clear and dropped an Atomic F-Bomb when that happened. So I went and bought a second and laid out a different pattern on it, including grabbing a 3.5”x36” roll of lace while there and shot it with a different Testors color shift clears this one is pink vs blue/green like the other. I was able to successfully lay the clear on the second attempt last night and it looked pretty good this morning. Going to bring it into the office tomorrow and will post up a pick once it’s unmasked. So, the first attempt seemed a bit lacking so I’m going to wet sand the clear to get rid of as much debris as possible and stripe off part of of it with Testors Diamond Dust then lay Spaz Stix Candy Purple over top of all of that before re clearing it. Figure the silver and candy will help hide what leave debris I can’t sand out of it.

Got my 200 back from the dealership this morning, had dropped it off last Wednesday night after work. Luckily I still have the MaxCare warranty so the actual repairs only cost me $100 for what was probably a few thousand in parts and labor and have them change the oil and flush and fill the coolant, since it was close to needing to be done on the oil and probably past on the coolant, plus I hate dealing with coolant, so the $200+ I spent on that was worth it to me. Total ended up being $362.10 when I picked it up and it was nice and rattle free, especially for a car that’s quickly approaching 14 years old and just crested 160k miles in Northern Illinois!

I bought the Sedan Delivery kit and have a question about this one, does it have an interior tub or side and back panels with it? I was disappointed that the delivery has less interior than the AMT Chevy/GMC G-Series van kits do, especially with a back door that opens. Engine wise, I kinda want to order the Strohmburg carbed 292 I-6 from Texas 3-D Customs for the delivery kit.

I’d rather have the EV or wait for a Hemi.

What style are you looking for? Pegasus has a variety that might look right.

A car you would have to drive from the back seat.

I’ve known Brian for a while now but from him fairly regularly, both at that shop as well as at the hobby shows in the area. I would also recommend Leisure Hours in Plainfield on Rt. 30 and Walt’s in either Plainfield or Joliet, he’s just a few miles east of Leisure Hours and also on Rt. 30. Both have a decent selection of plastic and a lot of R/C, plus Walt’s has a lot model railroad stuff too.

Got this handle through Great Planes about 20 years ago when I was still working for a HobbyTown and it was intended for tight spaces like inside the fuselage of R/C aircraft where the space is limited and the saw blades sometime in the late 90’s when I was still at Toys R Us, but at the same HTU I later went to work for. Found it worked really well went paired with the X-Acto saw blades made to fit their #1 handles when working in tight spaces as well as for using them to clean out door, trunk, and hood (where applicable) openings. Here it is with an Excel #1 handle and #11 blade on my more transportable model tool box, that also has room to transport some 1/24 and smaller “domestic” Kit boxes in it. Does anybody know if it’s still possible to buy a handle like that or will I have to buy a normal #1 handle and somehow cut it down to match that one since what is left of Great Planes no longer sells that and I can’t find a comparable product? Second, the saw blade is maybe 1.5”-2” long and made to fit right in the #1 style handles and this particular one was made by X-Acto, but can’t find anything close other than the #13 blades from Excel, which are more like 3” long.

To be honest, I think Denise Haliki May have done a lot to hurt any prospects for interest in Elenor kits outside if any dedicated fans of the movies. If there any chance she might get any licensing money from it, I won’t buy one.

Got to thinking about it this weekend and I remembered that Aoshima has sets of more vintage aftermarket wheels for older Japanese cars, including Cragar 5 spoke style and Ansen 5 Slot style wheels, with the latter being licensed from Enkei Wheels. So Dad and I took a ride out to a little hobby shop that I was pretty sure would have what I was looking for (he’s a regular bender at a lot of the local shows too and has had them at those) and sure enough he had multiple sets of both styles. Now because they’re of the Big and Little variety and they were going to go on the Corvair I recently posted, I bought 2 set of the 5 Slot Enkei’s to get the little fronts and they are the perfect size for the AMT Corvair kit! The first 2 are similar pics to what I posted last weekend, but on those wheels followed by a slightly angled profile shot. Then the final pic here is of the stock Michelins and optional Firestones in the kit plus the Aoshima Firestone tire from left to right. I really like the appearance of the Aoshima 1/24 15’s vs the kit’s 1/25 13’s, they seem to fit the body and stance far better, also give the car more of the attitude I’m going for with it.

Yup, they even have some sort of office or warehouse facility that is maybe about 10 minutes from me in the Chicago Suburbs! Did a double take when I saw the sign for the first time either last year or earlier this year.