jaymcminn

Meh, I'm bored at work and stuck in limbo between the Teams call that just ended and the goodbye party for one of the housekeepers that means cake and cafecito. I'm down for a couple of silly top-5 lists.

I'll play. 5: 1/24 Hasegawa Ferrari 250 Testa Rossa. 4: Revell Datsun 510 BRE. 3: Trumpeter 1/12 Ford GT40. 2: 1/12 Italeri Fiat "Mefistofele". 1: 1/12 Italeri Bugatti 35b.

Top 5... Top 5.... 5: Parks and Recreation. One of the all-time great ensembles. 4: Friends. It's not a rational thing, more about the time of my life when it came out. 3: Venture Bros. The best animated series ever. One of the best-written shows of all time. 2: Star Trek:Deep Space 9. I love TNG and TOS, but DS9 is peak Trek for me. Well-acted, well-written, with great characters and story arcs. 1: The Wire. It's criminal that more people haven't seen this show. The cast is phenomenal. The writing is tight and gripping, and savagely funny. Every character is So. Dang. Good. For me, it's the perfect show. Honorable mentions go to: Frasier, Game of Thrones, Justified, Deadwood, every Trek series other than Discovery, Seinfeld, The Office (US), Top Gear, Still Game, and many others that have cheered me when I'm down or entertained me when I'm bored.

If you Google Tamiya TS color charts, you'll get a chart of the full range of colors with the corresponding paint code. If you're getting them at your local hobby shop, the colors on the caps are very accurate.

Bought a new platform bed and mattress. I put the frame together (amazing how nice flat-pack furniture can be these days) and just as I finished the delivery guys from the mattress store showed up with the mattress. I made the bed, left the room for a drink, and when I came back... Yup. Didn't even get to be the first to try it out.

Absolute beauty.

Agreed. My fantastic local shop doesn't carry the LP line yet, I have to go 60 or so miles to a shop in Port Charlotte (FL) to get them. I'd love the clear gloss in a larger bottle, cut with Mr. Levelling Thinner it's amazing.

I've recently become a convert to Vallejo paints, especially the Metal Colors line. They have excellent opacity and brush beautifully for detail painting. The Metal Colors paints especially drybrush really well and have metalizer-fine pigments that are vastly superior to any other acrylic metallics I've seen. The engine bay of the 1/12 Bugatti 35B below was done entirely in Vallejo Metal Colors and washes.

TS-65 is more of an intermediate coat than a top coat. It won't dry as glossy as TS-13 and really needs a top coat to shine. Below is my Nissan Z which used a base coat of IJN Green followed by two coats of TS-65 and three top coats of TS-13 polished out.

The Miata went by many names... this kit represents a JDM Eunos Roadster. In Japan the first generation Miata wasn't even branded as a Mazda. Eunos was a sub-brand that Mazda used briefly in Japan for "specialty" cars like the Miata and the Cosmo. They were going to build a sports/luxury brand around the Eunos name, much like Toyota did with Lexus, but the bursting of the Japanese economy bubble in the early 90s put a stop to those plans. "Eunos" and "Roadster" badges are popular mods for Miata owners, especially on first-generation cars. Actually, the Miata is really only the Miata in the US. The rest of the world got the Mazda MX-5. Tamiya released this model as a US-spec Miata as well as the Eunos. The Miata kit includes a LHD dash as well as correct decals for the US cars. The Miata kit includes (I believe) a convertible up-top but no hardtop. Very clean work on this build so far, looking forward to seeing how it turns out!

Amazing. Some of the nicest weathering I've ever seen on a model car. It really looks like most of these looked by 1980 or so!

I'm a Florida boy. Snakes? No problem. Lizards? Love 'em. Gators? Awesome, as long as I'm not on the menu. But I'm not a fan of spiders. The worst ones are huntsman spiders, which can get up to 5" leg span and are not afraid of you. When one of those things gets into the house (rare, but it happens) the cat won't even mess with it!

When did you apply the base coat? Enamel can take weeks to gas out whether or not it "feels" dry and your acrylic top coat will react if it's being sprayed over "wet" enamel. Really, the best suggestion has been made several times in responses to your threads, which is to buy a pack of plastic spoons and practice until you get fairly consistent results. Learning how to airbrush is a lot less painful when you're ruining spoons instead of kits!

This keeps getting better and better. Great idea using the chrome transfers for the headrest cavallinos!

I don't know if any plastic kit manufacturers even have the Ferrari license right now. For a while I was keeping my fingers crossed that Academy would just release all the Italeri kits as generic "Italian sports cars" like they did with the California Spyder, but no dice there either. I lucked out finding this one!

Dang, I missed this. Absolutely beautiful!

Rich, I promise the next Ferrari will be red! Thanks Bruce! My usual photo setup is an inexpensive ($50-ish) setup from Amazon with two lighting stands. I'll use either white poster board or, for large scale builds, white craft paper on a roll for the backdrop. Pics were taken with my Google Pixel 6 phone. The only manipulation was cropping and adjusting the color temperature a bit cooler. Sometimes I'll get fancy and bust out the DSLR but for website pics the phone is so much easier!

Thanks everybody! Sonny, the only thing I did with the headlight covers was to foil the edge trim. I think they look worse on the sprue than when they're installed. They even fit really well. I did replace the terrible kit headlight units with some parts-box pieces with actual reflectors. The script and logo on the boot lid are self-adhesive Crazy Modeler pieces. Really beautiful but fragile. I burned through three of the scripts trying to get one to settle down without damage!

I'm guessing that the price definitely reflects the quality, given that a good pair of sprue cutters costs more than the whole kit. For something you're going to get a lot of use out of I wouldn't trust it. For beginners it's probably okay, though.

Looking forward to this. My wheel fix many years ago was the Fujimi Campagnolo wheel set (same wheels as the 330p4 kit) with the kit tires. Close, but these are better!

Several years ago, I acquired this kit at my LHS when they bought a model collection. The 275GTB was only released twice in the early 90s, once by Italeri and once by Revell. These little Italeri Ferraris are nice kits with very good detail right out of the box. A few additions can really make them pop. I replaced the mediocre kit wheels with Fujimi Borranis and Michelin XWX tires from the Ferrari Daytona kit. Bumpers were dechromed, mold lines and sink marks removed, and then airbrushed with Molotow Chrome. Body color is Tamiya Light Gunmetal under TS13 Clear and the interior is XF8 Dark Blue. Some basic wiring was added under the hood as well. This was a great "wind down" project after my 1/12 Bugatti 35b and I'm really happy about how it turned out. A couple of the pics below are with the Italeri 275 Spyder I built several years ago. Enjoy the pics!

And she's under glass... these Italeri Ferrari 275s are seriously nice little kits for their time. The Fujimi wheels needed a 2mm spacer between the brake disc and the wheel to push the wheel out a little bit. I mounted a set of Pininfarina decals from a Fujimi Daytona kit on thin aluminum to give the Pininfarina badge some dimension. The Ferrari lettering and Cavallino on the boot lid are Crazy Modeler adhesive transfers. Under Glass thread with (probably too many) pics will be up soon!

Very sharp. I like the dark green. I've got one of these in the stash with USCP resin interior panels and 15" Chromodoras that you have me itching to get started now!

Here are a few I've done...

Lots to update today. Interior is completed. Paint is Tamiya XF8 with a Semi-Gloss clear topcoat. Accents are done in TS29 Semi-Gloss Black. Chrome is Molotow Chrome. Carpet is embossing powder that was painted with XF8 after the glue dried. Next, I polished out the body with Micro-Mesh polishing cloths starting from 6000 grit, followed by Meguiars Ultimate compound and polish. The trim was foiled and some of the exterior trim chrome was installed. Finally the interior, engine and chassis were mated up waiting for the body. The wheels aren't permanently attached yet. They'll need to be epoxied in and the passenger front wheel doesn't quite touch... some adjustments are going to be in order. Next pics will probably be under glass. As usual, I'll post some finished shots here and close out the thread!