jaymcminn

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

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.