jaymcminn

It's almost like a parody of mid-century furniture. The wood grain vinyl seat cushion is my favorite part!

Why not come over for their Cars and Coffee in November when they announce it?

I'm familiar with this kind of "help". Usually it only adds about half an hour to any given job!

1500 grit is fairly harsh to start with. I actually prefer not to clear coat solid Tamiya lacquers and will sand and polish the color coats. I start with 2000 grit automotive sandpaper, move to 2500 and finish with 3000 grit before moving to automotive rubbing compound and polish. I follow the traditional 3 mist coats, 3 wet coats rule and usually don't have a lot of orange peel in the finish to start. Below is my 1/12 Tamiya Porsche 934 painted in Tamiya Camel Yellow without clear coat... And my 1/12 Tamiya Fairlady 240ZG in Tamiya Racing Green.

If I'm reading correctly, you're sanding out the color coat now before applying clear? If so, you will absolutely be seeing color come off. Sanding color coats by definition means removing paint and it's perfectly normal. If you remove too much you'll start seeing the primer come through. "Too much" is largely dependent on how many coats and how thickly they were applied in the first place. Color sanding is good practice for solid colors, not so much for metallic or pearl colors. Many builders don't color sand at all, preferring to do all the sanding in the clear coat stage. If you're getting color coming off while sanding clear coats, STOP. You've burned through the clear somewhere and you're probably about to hit primer. Try to figure out where you've gone through the clear. If it's something like trim that's going to be painted or foiled anyway don't worry too much about it. If it's an edge or a shut line, you might be alright if you go easy around the area. 1:1 detailers will sometimes tape these areas off to avoid burn through.

Two pairs of pricey chinos from J.Crew. Shipped UPS with a delivery date of Friday the 9th. UPS handed off to USPS on the 8th, USPS tracking on the 9th showed "delivery attempted, pick up at annex on Saturday the 10th". Aargh. Went to the annex and they couldn't find the package, the dead-eyed automaton behind the counter said it was "probably" still on the truck and I would "probably" get it Saturday. Apparently if they're running behind they'll just key in "attempted delivery". Well, no dice. If it doesn't show up on Monday I will be contacting my credit card company.

Today just the usual Muscovy ducks (with ducklings!). I get iguanas, raccoons, possums and even river otters from time to time, however. No gators lately, but they're definitely out there!

Look at this noble creature. So intelligent, so wise. Five minutes later he ran headlong into a window trying to catch a lizard on the screen outside...

I've been massively enjoying this build from the sidelines. Question... Town cars tended not to have the rear quarter windows, largely for the privacy of their passengers. Are you keeping the rear quarter windows on yours?

Unbelievable, the finishes you achieve with a humble paintbrush. I guess talent always finds a way around adversity!

I actually rather like that idea. I'm starting to get a bit invested in this project and it probably isn't going into the case with the rest of the 1/24 stuff anyway, so it might be the basis for a pretty interesting shop diorama. In fact I have pics for the perfect shop handy... This is the restoration shop at Revs Institute here in Naples. It looks too pretty to be an actual functional shop, but they maintain, restore and conserve a large fleet of functional classic sports and racing cars in this spotless white space.

A lot of research went into the best way to represent the cracked and faded seats. Ferraris of the era used Connolly "Vaumol" leather, which was a vegetable dye painted onto the surface of the hides. As the seat wore the dye would wear down, revealing the light brown leather underneath. Cracking would show up as light brown or tan as well. First, the seats were painted in Tamiya Field Blue. I hit them with Vallejo black wash and then used a sharpened toothpick to open up the cracks in the "leather" to expose the tan underneath. I then added some brown wash to some of the cracks with a 10/0 liner brush to represent different ages of damage. Finally I used Tamiya orange rust pastels on the seat squabs and side bolsters to represent the leather wearing through the dye. I really like the finished effect. It might be a little over the top but in the interior of a closed car it will add a lot of visual interest. The center console and door cards won't receive nearly as much weathering, probably just a wash and a bit of pastel to represent dye loss, but the dash top and rear shelf might get a bit more.

Tamiya Rubber Black is excellent. I also used Tamiya "Oil Stain" weathering pastels around the treads on these.

Great work on a really challenging kit. Not many modelers can take on a 60-year-old white metal kit and have it turn out this nice!

Busy week, but I managed to get some work done. The wheels and tires are 3d printed units from Jack Modeling and they are exceptional. The wheels were painted in Vallejo Metal Color Flat Aluminum with an application of Vallejo dark grey wash. Valve stems are just 30awg wire. The tires were painted in Tamiya Rubber Black with Tamiya oil stain pastel around the treads. Correct wheels for a factory 250gt would be the smaller front wheels all around but I'm going for a bit of a "tough" look with the weathering so I decided to go with the 250GTO big/littles. Seats were tough. The kit seats, in addition to just plain being wrong, look like they're in 1/32 scale! After scouring my parts bins for something that I could modify into a close facsimile of the stock racing buckets I finally hit upon a set of Revell 427 Cobra seats. First pic shows the first seat in the process of being modified with Tamiya 2 part putty. Both seats modified, with a coat of Tamiya Sand lacquer. This won't be the interior color, it's the base coat for my attempt to replicate cracked and scuffed leather. The interior color will be a businesslike dark blue/grey. The piping is 30awg wire again. Finally a few pics of the exterior with the roundels "dirtied up" a bit with Tamiya pastels. Also visible is a 3D Ferrari badge from Hobby Design. I think I just picked up the only set of these still available in the universe. Next up will be my attempt at reproducing wear on the leather seats, as well as the rest of the interior. The challenge of building a "barn find" car is that you need to pay attention to every aspect of the build and how it all relates to the whole. It's a good challenge and a lot of fun!

I sympathize with your struggle to get clean sheets on the bed!

This is looking fantastic so far! I was really excited when I saw the parts breakdown of this kit because it pretty much guaranteed that a factory stock version would be coming.

Excellent work so far. The sum total of all the modifications you're making here will be breathtaking!

Model Roundup has great service and an excellent selection. I like Spot Model (Spain) for aftermarket stuff and HLJ as well as Plaza Japan for Japanese kits. Micro Mark is my go-to for tools.

I bought my Iwata Eclipse used on EBay for about half the price of a new one. Brush was in perfect shape and still gets a fair amount of use a decade or so later. Your mileage, of course, may vary.

Thanks Trevor, for me that's kind of the "sweet spot" as well. Thanks Matt! That's a great article, I love how they show the stabilization of the original paint finish. Referring to it as a "fine art restoration" is spot on. It's going to be cleaned-up, but not too clean. There will be some washes and pastels added in a few strategic areas... the chrome needs dulling down, for example, but I don't want to tackle that until I'm in the home stretch. I have a few days off coming up, the next steps will be priming and painting the 3d printed Borranis from Jack's Modeling and modifying a set of parts box seats into passable representations of the stock racing buckets for the interior. More to come soon!

The numbers have been painted onto the roundels by dry brushing slightly thinned black acrylic for a patchy, faded look. I then added Cavallinos to the fenders. I applied BMF to the trim as well, which I'll dull slightly with a Vallejo wash before adding the glass. I'm starting to feel a bit better about the direction this build is taking now...

This is the uber rare Italeri 250GT SWB Berlinetta. I've had this kit for ten years or so and have worked on it in fits and starts while trying to come up with a "vision" for it. Will it be a lovely Rosso Corsa concours queen? Maybe a privateer racer in USA white with blue? I've never been able to make up my mind... until now. I've been very into the concept of mechanically restored "Barn Find" sports/racing cars lately. There's a growing preservationist movement in vintage car circles to leave the age and patina in place as part of the car's history. A great example of this was the Baillon Collection Maserati A6C, which was found in a French barn several years ago. The car was restored mechanically but the patina and missing paint on the alloy body was celebrated and left alone other than cleaning and conservation. The result was fantastic. So that's the idea for the Fezza. The backstory of the car is a Florida barn find Ferrari 250. The "Competizione" cars had an alloy body, and I will be using a salt weathering technique to expose the aluminum underneath the dull and faded paint. Racing roundels and numbers will be painted on and cracked and weathered. The interior will be cracked and distressed as well. First pics show the salt weathering going on. A base coat of Vallejo flat aluminum has already been applied. Areas of the bodywork are then moistened with water and a little dish detergent and salt is sprinkled onto the lightly moistened surface. Once everything is dry you're ready to paint. Next apply your top coat, in this case Tamiya Maroon lacquer. Once the lacquer has dried you scrub the salt off the body to expose the layer underneath. After a coat of flat clear and a polish with Meguiar's Ultimate Polish to bring a low gloss back, I used my trusty Amazon circle cutter to mask the roundels. After painting the roundels with Vallejo flat white I used a scribing tool and a flat toothpick to add cracking to the paint. This is where it stands as of now, next I'm going to mask off and dry brush a nice easy number "7" in the roundels and foil the trim on the body. Once that's done it's time to crack on with the chassis and the beautiful Jack's Modeling 3D printed Borrani wheels!

The real thing lives about 5 miles away from me at the Revs Institute here in Naples. It is really imposing (but no prettier) in person!

This thing is breathtaking. Props to Audi for bringing it to life, even if it's more than 80 years later!