jaymcminn

Thanks Sonny, the plan is to paint the Hobby Design bits in flat black and then dust them with gunmetal and aluminum. Calipers are going to be gold.

That was the plan... I just finished a challenging build that fought me hard most of the way. Something state-of-the-art and shiny is a nice change of pace. I am adding some of the Hobby Design PE set to kick it up a notch... can't make it too easy! Interesting, I had no idea about Jay Kay's Enzo. Of course I had to look it up. It's funny because I've used the metallic black on one other car... the Tamiya Enzo!

Bought this kit new and promptly forgot about it. Pulled it out a year ago and laid down paint. At that time I decided to order detail parts and carbon fiber decals, put it back on a shelf until the parts came and promptly forgot about it again. Well, now it's time to finish it. I painted it in Tamiya Metallic Black last year and hit it with TS-13 clear before polishing it out. When I packed it up I wrapped the body in cotton flannel, which did a great job of protecting it from scratches in the box. I refreshed the body with another application of Meguiar's Ultimate Polish and applied BMF, which is where we stand right now. Gotta say, it looks pretty good... I've decided on something a bit unconventional for the interior. Instead of red or burgundy or tan I'm going with this... The color is called Wimbledon Green and it's an unusual choice to be sure. I think it'll pop like crazy against the metallic black. Stick around for more updates coming soon!

Once you get the stance right the rest is gravy. That sits perfectly!

An incredibly fine build of this old kit. Beautiful!

That Type 59 is an impossibly pretty little car.

Thanks Pierre! Coming from you that means a lot! Thanks David! I like to break out the DSLR and fancy lighting setup for the 'Under Glass" pics. These came out maybe a little dark, I should have added a bit more overhead lightng. Weathering is all about recognizing that you need to surrender yourself to the element of randomness that comes with applying imprecise techniques to what is often a very precise hobby. What the military guys do with it is amazing!

I know that Splash paints are fairly hot and will craze and lift prior coats if sprayed "wet". They also like a little more time between coats than some lacquers. I bet it was applied too heavy and too soon on the final coats and the whole mess pulled away from anything that wasn't a flat surface. The first time I used Splash there was a bit of a learning curve, but they're excellent paints once you get them mastered. They absolutely require a clear coat... I use Tamiya LP clear thinned with Mr. Leveling Thinner. Below is a Tamiya Caterham Super 7 done in their Bentley Racing Green...

Thanks Dave! My next build will definitely be shiny! Oh, I was worried about it too. I was about 50/50 on stripping and redoing the body without the salt chipping at the beginning. Once I foiled the trim I realized that the more detail went into it the more the abused paint became part of a whole and decided to stick with the original plan.

I've recently gotten interested in the idea of preserved, as opposed to restored, vintage sports and racing cars. It's a fascinating topic discussed at length in Miles Collier's book "The Archaeological Automobile" and is probably most succinctly summed up by the phrase "It's only original once". I've become more interested in modeling this aspect of the collector car hobby lately. I still enjoy building shiny things but it's fun to shake things up once in a while! This is the rare Italeri Ferrari 250GT SWB kit. It's a later development of their 250 series kits (the 250GTO and SWB California kits came first and have been rereleased several times) and is a pretty decent representation of the shape of a later SWB. There are glaring inaccuracies in other areas of the kit, though. The seats are atrocious, being incorrect in shape and detail as well as being closer to 1/32 scale in size. The engine bay is okay, but short of detail. The chassis is good and the stance out of the box is excellent, however. It's not modern Tamiya, but it's not bad at all. Certain elements will always make or break a build. The kit wire wheels are acceptable but there are better alternatives out there. PE wires are an improvement but the latest generation of 3d-printed wire wheels are a game-changer. The units here are big & little Borranis with Dunlop racing tires by Jack Modelling. They fit the kit's spindles perfectly with just some spacers needed between the brake disc and wheel back to push the wheels out a bit. The seats are Revell Shelby Cobra units modified to represent stock racing buckets with Tamiya 2-part putty and wire. I've said it before but the thing when you take a build like this on is that you can't have a weathered body and a pristine interior and chassis. When you start down that path prepare to walk it until the end. So you're not just painting every part... you're painting, then applying a wash, then dry-brushing and maybe even applying pastels to basically every single part. Lots of work, but it's a lot of fun. The weathering technique on the body work is a combination of many things. Salt weathering was used to expose the aluminum under the paint. Basically you apply your base color (Vallejo Model Air Aluminum) and then moisten the surface and sprinkle with kosher salt. Once that is dry it forms a fragile mask. Apply your top color (Tamiya Maroon) and once that's dry, brush the body to reveal the bare aluminum underneath. I then masked and painted the roundels and numbers, and scratched cracks into the white paint using a dull X-acto blade. I then applied Vallejo washes to the panel lines and to tone down some of the too-shiny exposed aluminum. The interior, unfortunately, doesn't show well in the finished pics. I used a combination of washes, pastels and scratching through to a base coat to represent worn and faded leather. THe quilted area behind the seats behind the seats is thin leather I had on hand from a previous project. The quilting was added using a pizza cutter, which was perfect for embossing the pattern into the leather. See below WIP pics... I added a fair amount of detail to the engine bay but ran out of room to add the radiator hoses Italeri forgot. THe most annoying fit issue I had was that the radiator fouled the hood hinges and needed to be moved back quite a bit, leaving no room for the radiator hose unit I was going to adapt from the Fujimi 250GTO kit. It looks pretty good though... The chassis is appropriately rough and ready as well. And some more pics... The final details: License plates are decals from Warbird from their California license plate set. I mounted them to aluminum printer's plate so I could bend up the front plate. Pastel weathering on the body is Tamiya soot and oil stain Weathering Master pastels. The exhausts are "SNAP" exhausts from the Fujimi 250GTO kit. They were a popular period aftermarket exhaust for racing Ferraris. The windshield decals are from VRM's "Number Circles and Things" sheet and tell the fictitious story of the early life of this car. It was raced in the Targa Florio in 1962, imported into the US and ran the 12 hours of Sebring in 1964 and 1965. As always, any questions or comments are welcome!

Every restoration has to start somewhere, right? I actually might hit them with another wash. They're a bit shinier in pics than in real life, though. Thanks guys, it was a fun build overall. I lurk on some primarily military forums and enjoy the techniques the military guys use. It's always interesting to pick up those techniques and apply them to the subject matter I love. I've gotten into the habit of alternating shiny and weathered builds, so the next build will definitely be something shiny!

I broke out the DSLR for "under glass" pics, here are a few to close out this build. Final notes... the exhaust tips are "SNAP" exhausts, an aftermarket/homologation exhaust that was popular on racing Ferraris. These came from the Fujimi 250GTO kit. The windshield decals came from VRM's "Number Circles and Things" and speak to quite a history for this car... it was sanctioned by the Palermo Auto Club (for the Targa Florio), the SCCA, and ran the 12 hours of Sebring in 1964 and 1965. I'm picturing a car that would have been imported in about 1963 or so and raced until the late 60's at which point it wound up under a tarp in a barn. Final weathering was done with the usual Vallejo washes and Tamiya pastels. Honestly, this kit was a bit of a pain. I was expecting an easy build... I've built the other iterations of the Italeri 250 and never had a problem, but there were some changes and challenges in this final release that made it a bit tough. Of course this was probably exacerbated by the changes I insisted on making to the interior, the new wheels, etc. Anyway, here are a few pics... more to come in the "Under Glass" thread probably tomorrow!

If you can get your hands on the new(ish) Tamiya LP clear lacquers they're even better, with more even coverage and a shorter drying time that allows for multiple coats for better depth of color.

Getting ready for some proper "under glass" pics, but I wanted to do a quick plug for Warbird Decals' California license plate decals. You get sets for 1963-2013, both front and rear plates. It's VERY fiddly getting the separate characters onto the main plate, but the result is fantastic. Here they're applied to aluminum printer's plate, for reasons which will become obvious...

Very clean build, while still keeping with the spirit of the ancient Merit kit. The magazine cover presentation is brilliant as well!

Can't stomach diet soda, my favorite substitute is "Spindrift" flavored sparkling water. It uses a small amount of fruit juice for flavoring and a hint of sweetness, which leads to a nominal amount of sugar calories per can (5-15 calories per can depending on the flavor). The blood orange tangerine and lemon lime are awesome.

Thanks all! The interior is something I'm especially happy about and the techniques I came up with here will definitely be used for future projects (looking at you, Revell 427 Cobra!). The engine bay is as done as it's going to get. I took a swing at Ferrari's trademark yellow fuel lines by wrapping thin wire around 30awg yellow wire. The kit coils were enormous and crude so I scratched new ones. The battery was a parts box addition. I cut down the kit's air box tray a bit and foiled it. The black "foam" around the edges is 1/32 Chartpak tape. The bad news is the lack of radiator hoses... Italeri doesn't provide them and I was going to swipe the part from the Fujimi 250GTO kit but I discovered in the innumerable test fittings that the radiator needed to be moved back by about 3/16 of an inch to avoid fouling the hood hinges. Ferrari 250 radiator hoses are actually an extremely complicated assembly and if I tried to adapt the Fujimi part it wouldn't have looked right. At this point I decided you have to draw the line somewhere. On to pics! You can see the shims I added to the engine compartment sides to raise the body a bit and provide a better gluing surface during final assembly. Next the body and chassis go together and final details will be added, including the lovely 3d printed Borrani wheels. More to come soon!

I believe there was a line of motorized 1/28 scale Japanese kits back then. I know Bandai did some American subjects in 1/28. I can see Airfix reboxing a 1/28 scale kit as 1/24. Look at the excellent work you did on the Airfix kit as practice?

He's either trying to tell me a ghost story or scare me into feeding him early...

It's been a while since I posted on this build. Generally when I post a lot on a WIP it's because I'm having fun with the build and I hit lots of good "stopping points". This isn't one of those builds! It's been an uphill battle the entire way. Italeri didn't do a lot of engineering to update the old GTO chassis to the SWB body, and it shows. Now that I have everything test-fitted, shimmed and triangulated to within an inch of its life I can do a photo dump and an update, so here goes... Dash foiled, painted and decaled. Gauge lenses are Bondic UV resin. Dash added to firewall/engine compartment unit. The little visible carpeting on the interior is black embossing powder. The door panels and console/rear bulkhead. The quilted part is thin bookbinder's leather with the diamond quilting done using a straightedge and pizza cutter to emboss it. As with the seats, Tamiya weathering master pastels were used to represent dust and dye loss. Finally, the completed interior with seat belts in place. Barely visible are the rubber floor mats made from Evergreen styrene. The chassis is done and sits square and the engine bay is about 3/4 there at this point. The radiator fouls the hood hinges and will be relocated a bit further back. The carb tray has been foiled but I haven't done anything yet to weather it. More pics coming soon now that I'm on the final straight!

While they're on TikTok they can find a video on how to make "toilet wine". It'll come in handy in prison.

I get off of a fairly arduous work day yesterday and am just kicking off my shoes when someone starts simultaneously ringing the doorbell and pounding on my door. I open the door and it's some genius trying to sell me... something, I never found out what because I ripped him a new one for blowing past the not one but TWO "no soliciting" signs prominently displayed in front of my house. I guess posting signs only works if the jagoff pounding on your door knows how to read?

The proportions of this build are just about perfect, but have you thought about subtly chopping the windscreen? It feels like it should be a bit lower than the leading edge of the passenger compartment. This is really coming together nicely!

Alfa Romeo Montreal. Who cares if it ever runs, just look at it! Lamborghini Espada. The Countach gets all the attention, but the Espada is every bit as dramatic to my eyes. Ferrari Dino 246GT. Actual design perfection.

Derp