bobss396

I have one started, opened the trunk and have most parts in primer. The headers were a pain to clean up, I like how yours came out.

I have a couple of cans of Black Gold Orion Silver. I have not used them, but I bought them to use under pearls and candies. I haven't seen the paint around for a long time, they were based in Texas.

I'm using one of their blues for Ford engines. I have dried them in the dehydrator recently with success. I probably ran it for 5 or 6 hours. I always let it cool down after.

I worked with a couple of old timers (I was 26, they were around 57...) that worked at the Bulova plant on Long Island. These guys were able to make ridiculously small parts with great precision. I guess the plant folded up in the early 1970s. They did a lot of precision instruments for the military.

We had a couple of B-1B bomber electronics boxes in from the field with damaged tubing on the cooling plates. So I got a quote from a few places, supplied prints, shop sketches and a white paper. We decided on a local shop that did a lot of heat exchangers for us when we were in production. Round 1, we got the 2 items back and the 90 degree fittings were 180 degrees out. So they went back. Round 2, the fittings were in the right place, but they both were 1" too short. We had the vendor in both times for a raking over the coals. In the end they made it right after the 3rd try.

My kids built when they were younger. From age 7 to about age 14. It was lots of fun and they won junior awards at shows. But they grew out of it, I think they had no patience or I scared them, lol.

We had a couple of large fixture plates at work, certain jobs were impossible without them. We had one 100% dedicated to a Navy shipboard beam antenna array, about 20' long. The table was 24' long and about 6' wide. The job only ran a few times after the initial runs. They called the guy who assembled it out of retirement to build the last ones. BUT... they documented everything he did.

Nice work, these do come out well with a little extra effort. The kit tires are terrible and not realistic. I like the spoilers.

Getting the windshield in and looking good is the hardest part of this model. These and the early Corvettes too. I would have to compare this kit with the Monogram '56 kit, but AMT should retool the '57 sooner than later. I have a few vintage unbuilts and a couple of built up ones. The last one I did around 1995 may be able to be salvaged.

I had a great number of old kits and parts at my dad's house in the basement. The house was being sold and I said I would be back in 2 days with some boxes, to take it all to my house. I show up and everything is GONE. Down to a completely empty basement and my step mother knew nothing about it. Nobody liked her anyway...

I resurrected a '62 Ford glue bomb last year, I used Duplicolor paint, even with the lousy new formula (blushing no matter what) it came out nicely. I did get a couple of sags, those I could color-sand out. So sage and runs used to scare me and they are usually in good places to deal with, so far. They are not the end of the world. I'd rather deal with those than some orange-peely grainy mess.

I worked in that R&D shop, almost everything was manual except for a balky NC mill we used to rough out repetitive parts. All of our "shop sketches" were made on the back of old report pads that accounting saved for us. That and a calculator. A lot of "old" guys did not trust a calculator and would have columns of calculations. One great sheet metal guy didn't know trig, I offered to teach him, but he would make up sample pieces, trial and error. I used to catch flak from one foreman. I would photocopy print details and figure out all my numbers for roughing and finishing. He said it was a waste of time. At my longest night machine shop gig, I would break down complex parts into a series of sketches, it made the process a lot easier, less errors. I talked the owner into creating part files so we didn't have to figure it out again. One famous local stock car was designed on cocktail napkins at a watering hole. Then the sketches went over to the Grumman facility, the night shift cranked out the machined parts. The car was a work of art and was fast.

Super build! I have always liked the '30 to '34 coupes. I have a few in my stash I should dive into.

As a kid, my mom worked in a department store and would bring home large coat boxes with a separate lid. I had 2 of those full of model parts. When I was bored and broke, I could build something out of just the spare parts. Those went adios at some point in time. One guy I know has a fantastic inventory of parts he has collected. On excel spreadsheets and categorized bins. I believe he is a tad on the OCD side. Another guy who left the club also collected ANYTHING that people were getting rid of. He would rummage through boxes at shows, something that I cannot do. But one man's garbage is another man's gold.

That makes sense. I try to avoid over-spray on a previously painted panel, the same as I do with 1:1 cars. About a year ago, I started the first coat of paint on an upside down body. I make a loop of tape and affix the body to a suitable stage. Then I shoot the inside of the body. After that I go around the wheel openings and rocker panels, etc. I like to get as much paint on these areas as possible.

Some auto parts stores have pin strip tape. I have never looked that close at them, I imagine that 1/16" would be the smallest they would carry.

Tooling up a lathe can get out of hand. I plan on using a 4 position turret once I get one. I'll have to settle on a tool blank size and consider carbide inserts if they are available. Or you have to be able to grind tools yourself. A DRO would be nice, or you have to keep track of "how many turns" of the dial. Some bigger turret lathes I worked on had stops, not that accurate. I worked for about 5 years in a R&D shop that did a fair amount of tiny very precise work. We had a small Levin lathe, takes the same collet size as the Sherline. The smallest hole I ever drilled was .006". We had guys that drilled smaller holes in ceramics on tiny precision drill presses, all with diamond drills. Not something you'd see in an MSC catalog.

I never took a dime out of the household money to support the hobby. I sold kits at shows and on eBay, did a side business doing machined parts and worked at other machine shops. I would get called in to do certain types of work. So I tended to have a few dollars on me all the time. I was out doing a mini hobby shop crawl with my brother maybe 20 years ago. This is when we still had a good number of shops around. We were at one and my brother saw something he wanted. He picks up his phone, he wanted to call his wife to see if was okay to take $20 from an ATM. I stopped him, pulled out my cash-stash and asked him how much he needed. He says, WHERE DID YOU GET THAT? I told him I never walked around with less than $300 on me. Reality was, I had maybe $100 on me. He turned down my offer and called his wife. Then about a week later, his wife talked with mine, told her I was walking around with a big sum of cash. Of course poop rolls downhill and I got the 3rd degree. My wife for years accused me of having a hidden "slush fund". She was right, but never took into account I always had money when she needed to pay a bill. That was then. I have been dating the same lady for going on 7 years, she is very supportive towards the hobby and always likes when I show her something cool that I made. She was thrilled when I showed her MCM #220 with one of my cars in it. She goes to shows with me now and then.

I have had a full size Bridgeport mill since 1988. I still use it often. I have a large Clausing lathe too, but it needs the electrics gone over. I am probably in the market for a Sherline with a DRO. At work, I had for a long time access to a Hardinge Tool Room Lathe. I had a lot of tools in custom-made holders that went into the turret. I still have them in a cigar box. I ground round drill blanks so I could face, turn and cut off using the same tool. No big cuts, but face off a blank in the collet, hit the Z axis zero and go from there. I could repeat parts easily with the DRO. When I was at the night CNC machine shop gig, the owner was always helpful if I needed something made on a CNC lathe.

My late wife HATED the hobby with a passion. She would rather had me working on the house if I was not working my 2 or 3 jobs. I was also taking 2 courses a semester at a local college, at night. I worked myself into a nervous breakdown by age 38 and needed to do something for myself. I got down to just 2 jobs and took a few years off from my classes. Around 1994 I dusted off a few old kits and got going again. Really, some women are not that smart about what we like to do. She KNEW where I was and what I was doing. My brother's wife was of a similar mind. She held the purse strings tightly, I had more of a disposable income. Yet I was always asked, "how much did that cost?".

They are inside for the most part, but it is dirty and dangerous work. He makes a good buck for himself. If only he can hang in for his 20 years. I did heavy work years ago, but nothing like this.

Put me down for one set. These are details that a car can be built around.

I decided to clean up a chrome grill from the Mustang AWB kit. I opened it up from the back so it could be seen through. I didn't even try anything else, I went to oven cleaner, gave it a 1 day soak, took it out and brushed all of the loose plating and got some of the under-coating off. I threw it back in and just rinsed/brushed it off. No sign of anything left behind. The trick was giving it a full 2 days in the oven cleaner.

I back up to the causeway that heads to the Great South Bay. There are 2 stop signs between me and the ocean and about 8 minutes. We get everything from fox, possums, raccoons, deer, rabbits and a few turtles now and then. Lots of shore birds too. We know the weather is turning snotty when I have seagulls up by me. The fox keep the rabbits in check. Raccoons and possums I see at night. If it snows, I see tracks on my driveway and deck. I have to be careful about putting anything with food on it in the recycling can. Last summer I found a young raccoon in my big trash pail, no idea how he climbed in that high. He must have been inside in the heat all day. I tipped it over and he took off.

Nicely done. I have 2 in the queue, a '66 Impala and the '65 Faitlane. I tried to use the kit '66 chassis, but wasn't able to get the rear low enough. The bodies are great to put on old NASCAR donor chassis.