bobss396

My son works for the NYC MTA, in the Coney Island Brooklyn yard. He works on wheels and axles for passenger trains and subways, these axles are very heavy duty. They have something around a 6000-ton press they use all the time. It recently broke and his group had to be reassigned while it was under repair, waiting on parts.

On the breaking-body thing, I have started a while ago taking material off the sides of the chassis before doing too much. I remove maybe .050" to .062" per side, it makes fitting the chassis a ton easier. Any sharp corners, I radius them with a sanding stick. Not too much, any little bit helps. On regular plastic bodies, I'll also sand some off from behind the rocker panels. Most kits for some inane reason, the bodies curve in at the bottom quite a bit.

VHT has a nice bronze spray can, made for wheels. But worth a look.

I did one a year ago, a '62 Ford that was in decent shape. The chassis came off with the screws, the bumpers too. I had to cut the interior nubs off with the MCG PE saw blades. This would be not doable without these saw blades. The firewall I broke off cleanly, the glass came out using the PE saw blades. The interior and glass will not go in per the kit instructions, I had to get creative with the dash mounting too.

I forget exactly when, this was when most model production was shifted to China. Along with that was a fear that these molds could get lost in the case of some conflict and we would never see any of these models again. Some in the industry were instrumental in digging up old kits that had flaws in them, but full speed ahead. There was not much in new models on the drawing board. I think that fear fueled me and others to go into a full-hoard mode. This is why I have 2 to 6 of certain kits.

They used to sell them in the backs of car magazines when I was a kid. I later found that there was a catch.. you had to buy an entire RR car of them.

This is simply staggering to me. I'm familiar with various CAD platforms, the 3D activity I see here is well beyond my capabilities. I have been messing with Tinker cad a bit. My son's girlfriend works at a library that does a 3D printing service, she pointed me to Tinker CAD. so far I can't draw a simple cylinder to make a wide-5 stock car wheel. One guy in my club is good with Blender, he does some really intricate things including seatbelts that "click" together.

Whenever I saw the ribbed rubber tires in junk collections... it took me right back to 1962 when I built mine. I true flashback to age 7. It was a cool kit then. I should do another one. But I would have to dig up those OG tires first.

Mine are very used to seeing me outside. If I go out to shoot some primer, they stay on the deck rail and keep eating. I know where they live, nests in the trees. I see them coming in for breakfast. Then there's the bluejays. I must have at least 15 of them. They sound the dinner-bell cry when I step outside. There is a couple of real fat ones. This is the bird that was all but eradicated by pesticides. By 1970, they were simply not around. It was around 1996 when I heard a familiar racket and saw an easy dozen of them outside in a tree. Then, not a one until I noticed them in large groups around 2016. My girlfriend got me feeding them every morning.

I have one of his older '34 coupe bodies, excellent quality. I'll have to compare it to his new one.

How about toluene? That I'd prefer over MEK. I worked in a machine shop and the owner practically swam in MEK. He would leave the gallon can open in the shop and I could detect it right away.

I saw a 2018 with a 5.0 at a dealer last year. Otherwise the same car as mine. They offered me an even swap, but that car had 48k miles on it.

One of my cars, a 2020 Mustang Ecoboost with a 6 speed Manual. Bought it in 2021 with 400 miles on it. Loaded to the gills with a leather interior.

This is what I brought to sell at a recent show. I had hoped to sell more. But other shows are coming up.

A nice feature to have. Glass has to be right on the money.

Very nice, I have one that has gone back into the box a few times. I built it as a stock car version, the latest issue with it is that I probably polished it with something containing silicone... cannot get the decals to stay on....

I know of a few "modelers" whose collections are staggering, one is around 1000 kits, another is over 5000... and they don't build. One guy I know for 25 years, I never saw him build anything, yet he constantly buys. I went to a show last year as a vendor. I brought 120 kits to sell. Came home with around 80 of them. But the good deals did sell. I would have to take a count, I'll estimate that I have 250 unbuilts and 25 projects, some stalled for close to 20 years. I would like to get the herd thinned to around 100.

If you mean the ends being canted up, look at some pictures. I thought mine was whacked until I did some research. Seems off, but that is how they were made. https://www.hemmings.com/stories/1962-pontiac-catalina/

With military wiring we did at work, it is easier to lose an inch of excess wire than to gain an extra inch of wire. It was almost always easier to lose the excess in the routing/dressing process.

I worked in the defense industry for almost 40 years. We had some old-ish product that needed to be fixed, many a vendor had gone out of business over a 15 year span. It became known as "vanishing vendors". I took care of cables and connectors and had to hunt down vendors we thought were gone, only to find that some were bought up by bigger companies. The past NNL East was the only time that I actually went home with money in my pocket. I had always planned to spend every dime I brought with me.

I posted this elsewhere here. Michael's Crafts is in a decline throughout the store. The model section is sparse, lots of vacant floor space, self pay checkouts. Very few customers any time I'm there. I buy a lot of model stuff on eBay, Mega Hobby and other online sellers. I find some good recommendations here. Definitely a sign of the times. I see less vendors at even big model shows. Covid even took out some great modelers I became close to.

I should be back on it this week. I have more of the chassis completed.

The Michaels by me in NY used to be good for kits, now they are down to a very small selection. The display keeps on getting shuffled around, the entire store looks like a sparse garage sale lately. I feel that they might be on the way out. I see large gaps of nothing but floor space and very few shoppers. The kiss of death is seeing their self-checkouts. I advised one person at a manned register to start looking for a new job.

I have a large hobby shop (100% renovated in 2022) and a Hobby Lobby almost next to each other that are closest to me. The hobby shop has Tamiya paints galore, lots of glue and putty. Good array of Evergreen stock, zero model car detail parts. Hobby Lobby, great when the 40% off days are there. They have Model Master paints, a good amount of Mr. Hobby glues, some K&S stock, some Evergreen stock. Either place, I see no shortages especially of $30-40 kits. The next 2 big shops are 25 miles each way, again, zero aftermarket stuff for model cars. Just about all the smaller shops that were around 10 years ago are gone.

I had a bunch of them back in the day. IIRC they were in chrome only. This is something we need. I had always said they should make some 1/25 scale small airplanes.