bobss396

A little more done, battling lower back pain ... no fun. Some of the bed is done, have line on the winch and the boom attached. Interior is complete, lights are going into the tow plate next.

Belt hardware, I have been using Scale Motorsports 1/20 stuff. The size still looks good in smaller cars and is easier to see and work with. Decent seat belt hardware is a void in the hobby at least for me.

Look at what Iceman has, I believe he has the 429 BOSS engine. I would be interested in the stock 429/460 myself. The closest thing I can find are the 390/427 ones. VCG resins makes a very nice stock 352.

I have an LED desk type lamp that is very bright. Anything I scrape the mold lines off I look at closely. Funny thing on round-ish parts like roll cages and axle tubes, from one direction it looks 110% smooth, look at it from 180 degrees and I see a ridge that will catch a fingernail.

I really do not see as well as I used to (cataracts...) and imperfections are getting past me and into the final paint. So I do the prime, check it with a bright desk light. Sometimes I have to view it from 2.. or more...different directions to find the flaws.

I work flock over a paper plate and use a small kitchen strainer to apply it. It works pretty well and I can pour the excess flock back into the container.

At the club meeting this week, someone had a Flintstone '63 Dodge pickup kit. It looked quite nice considering. The body was fairly thin and the details were crisp.

I like the nice FE 390 under the hood.

Thanks. I did some of the foil work over and it paid off. I had to touch up a little of the red where I nicked it while foiling. I'm at the point where the glass goes in next. I took pains to make chassis mounts inside the body. Otherwise the interior/chassis floats around. I also joined the interior and chassis before I did the primer. I took all the side trim off the body, a much cleaner look. I skipped a local show yesterday, I had a very bad back pain issue and the 2 cars I wanted to bring were not done. I will probably do some more today and post new pix. I have the '65 Fairlane stock car that is 99% complete, I ran into grandiose fit issues at the 11th hour. The '77 GMC wrecker had paint woes, now taken care of and ready for under-hood black paint and maybe some foil work.

Look at VCG resins, he has a nice 240 Ford 6 that is quite nice. I do not recall if he has a stock-ish one. One of the Moebius kits may have a 6 in it.

The biggest asset we have in Ron is that he actually had a racing career. Which makes his parts more realistic and accurate. Just about nobody makes a lot of wide-5 wheel and hub options. I like his T11 and T19 tires too. On my '37 modified, I made those wide-5 wheels out of aluminum rod when I did have the use of a lathe. I used parts-box resin hubs. I do have CAD drawings of all my parts I have made up. I have a drawing for what I call a very accurate steamroller slick. Plans were to make the tread portion from PVC tube and the side inserts from aluminum rod. There was a place called Galtran, they made brass stud/nuts that added a ton of realism. They are out of business.

I have used paper towels in the past, but paper holds the tape better. Maybe a paper towel under the paper next time. On this build, I ran into too many late-stage issues and did a lot of unplanned handling of a near-complete car. Something to avoid in the future.

I made up some flags of masking tape on the last of the batch. I have also taped the sharp ends to cardboard to make disposal safer.

Agreed to practice in excess materials or leftover parts trees. Something like Duplicolor or Mr. Hobby gray primers should cover it. You can go over the gray with a white primer as an option. Make up some test pieces with both primer colors.

The late Rich "Charlie" Manson showed me how to flock. I forget his preference, I liked Ken's Fuzzy Fur. My first was a '58 Chevy custom I did in purple with a Testors 123 purple as the wet base. It worked really well and I had to have things ready to go once the paint was down. His work was featured in Scale Auto. Another modeler challenged him to do a striped flock... he whipped out a PLAID flock that was quite well done. I'll have to try it again one day. I bought some Aleen's Tacky Glue, which thins well with water. That may be worth a try. I have seen embossing powders in the craft stores.

Sometimes I do the roof decals last. But I did them already on this one. The roof takes a beating during assembly. I simply tape a piece of scrap paper over it with Tamiya tape, applied lightly. The car has to be close or completely done before I remove it.

In hindsight I could have used .020" brass wire, but these look more realistic. Sewing needles are hard and sharp, plus they are dangerous to handle. So I made up a little fixture from scrap plastic and .062" and .093" aluminum tubing. This allowed me to capture the sharp end. BUT.. the eye end will shoot out once cut. I tried a folded up paper towel.. no good, right into my finger. Then I sandwiched a piece of scrap plastic between the folds. It worked and they are all the same desired lengthm

Heaven forbid if the spark plug wires don't follow the firing order...?

I just had a damaged decal over a matte clear... it does not want to come off and I don't have a setting solution. I tried scotch tape, only worked a bit. I really do not want to risk messing up the paint... what to do? Slap a larger STP decal over it...

I use them a lot. The trick is to use parts box wheel backs that fit inside the wheels. On this I used some backing plates that fit perfectly ?. On the fronts I used 1/8" aluminum tubing and stepped up 1/16" to 3/32" tubing on the axle. K&S telescoping tubing is amazing stuff.

Foiled most of it, might re do some of it. I have not foiled in a long while. Decals are a little silvered since it us a matte finish. I mixed up some white glue and water to help the adhesion and it helped. The eBay stacks are on finally. I shot the rear with TS-30 with success.

My kind of build. I started making my own leaf springs too. The kit ones are tough to work with.

I had one like that, she would block out the sunlight like that. She often slept with all 4 paws under her chin.

Duplicolor has been doing odd things to me as well lately. The primer is still working well. Anything I have top coated, 3 hours in the dehydrator and I'm ready to color sand. Like others, I suspect that there is something is funky with the clear.

He's using a wide brush too, allowing him to cover more area quickly. I have to look for the Tamiya retarder. I struggle with brush painting.