Justin Porter

Happy to see more getting done on this one. For the piping, have you considered using something like Vallejo Liquid Mask or Humbol Maskol?

Latest update on my Tamiya 1/24th scale Lotus Europa. I finally have the interior all done and also it's up on its wheels. The interior is finished in a two-tone of Vallejo Model Air Sand Beige and Tamiya Deck Tan, with various other paints for small details. I couldn't help but drill out the holes in the steering wheel spokes on account of having my new pin vise to play with. The wheels are finished in Alclad Dark Aluminum.

ICM doing a 1/24th scale version of their 1/35th scale Packard like they have for their Model T's has been on my wishlist for some time. It's easy to see just how lovely of a kit it is like with the backing plate detail on the inner halves of the wheels.

Definitely a nice Z'Gok!

Stocked two on my shelves when they first came in. Sold them, restocked, sold one, still have one.

Been working on this as a commissioned project for one of the shop's customers and I am happy to finish it up. It's a box-stock build of the really impressive Meng 1/700th scale KMS Bismarck, painted with a selection of Vallejo, Tamiya, and AK paints. This is only ship model #2 for me and admittedly an attempt at rigging made me fear for the mast's life so she sits as she sits and I am looking forward to seeing her new owner's face.

Sold the last two out of my shop yesterday and now sitting and waiting for the next batch to hit distributors. This is the fastest a case of any kit has sold over my counter and I was pleasantly surprised. As expected, it was principally guys from the slot car dragstrip up the road buying them. Customers were happy with the kit. I'm happy with its effect on my till. Looking forward to being able to restock and hoping it doesn't take as long as it took to restock the Grumpy's Vegas.

Round 2 really hasn't said very much about the state of any of the Indycar tooling of any vintage but it would be great to be able to buy the Watson Roadster or the Lotus-Ford again, or the Gurney Eagle and Mclaren M16 for that matter.

The humble Scorpion sure had some monster cousins. I'm looking forward to seeing more of this.

Don't currently have a site but oddly enough Facebook has put together in the past couple of months a fairly solid online storefront which I use for a small amount of supplemental e-business. Sort of our starting point that if it grows enough we'll move to a full blown dedicated page and online storefront. We do really well with our local customers in Northeast Ohio thankfully.

Yes indeed. Can't complain about how they're moving off my shelves.

But it's not a curbside Mustang kit and we all know that's the real detail sacrilege, right?

Turned out just about perfect. The Gunze kits really are gems.

Looks fantastic and the colors pop as they ought to.

Well, nice big step forward on the Lotus. The chassis is now mated to the tub and the engine is in place with the engine bay completed. The blue is Arctic Blue from the Vallejo Model Air line which is my "close enough" stand in for Lotus Lagoon Blue. You can see the PE carb plate and turned aluminum velocity stacks that are included in this reissue of the kit.

Yes. What you built is Revell's old 1/25th scale Austin-Healey 100-6. That's a pretty good kit especially for its age. To the naked eye a 100-6 and a 3000 look pretty similar but they are entirely different cars with the 3000 being bigger in just about every dimension to make it a more comfortable tourer while still being an able and successful sports car.

With Revell plugging the modern Land Rover and E-Type kit gaps (FHC A-pillar gaffe aside) one can hope they decide that classic British cars are a good theme to keep going because we've never had an Austin-Healey 3000 kit in 1/24th scale. Still seems weird that Gunze Sangyo didn't kit one in the 80's along side their TR-3's and Lotus Elans.

That's really something that jumps off the shelf! Looks great.

When Tamiya announced this reissue, I knew it was one I was going to have to make a "one for inventory, one for me" order. Sure enough, Tamiya came through with the additions to the kit. On top of the self-adhesive metal transfers that were in the kit the first go-around, Tamiya has included a nice new photoetch fret with grilles to take the place of the old vinyl mesh, faces for the brake rotors, buckles for racing harnesses, badges and locks, plus printed belts for the harnesses and a new sprue with nicely rendered RS Watanabe style wheels and a GT style wing as seen on some of the Europas in period. Assembly so far is, well, it's Tamiya. To this point I have the engine together and the frame with suspension fully assembled. Paints are mostly a selection of Vallejo Metal Color, Model Color, and Model Air.

There are several slot car drag strips nearby my shop and those are my customers who are most hotly anticipating the Nova wagon. They're also the ones who made the Revell S-10 my highest volume selling auto kit of 2020.

The Eduard situation is definitely a nail-biter since they're one of the most routinely hot manufacturers in aircraft modeling. Thankfully in their most recent press release regarding the fire they stated they're already in talks with fellow Czech model kit manufacturer Special Hobby to subcontract to run some of their tooling to help make up the difference of the losses. Especially made me happy because Special Hobby is a personal favorite brand all on their own.

Why? Revell successfully brought the Model A roadster back to shelves despite having to do significant work to make that possible. It has been delayed. So have an infinite number of other newly tooled projects. Granted, it's not the most hotly anticipated new item that Revell has announced (that would be the all-new 1/48th scale SR-71 Blackbird they announced this year) but it's still on the docket.

Catches my eye that it appears Revell is going to have another go at an issue of the Fujimi GT40 kit in their box. Unless by some crazed miracle it's actually a new tool MkI GT40 OR by some sadistic cruelty it's a reissue of the old Aurora MkI with really inaccurate decals.

I'm definitely disappointed by the gaffe on the pillar height. It seems that they nailed so much that has long been a complaint on FHC kits but that's really strange to miss. I can only imagine that some time between Hobbico and Blitz there was a breakdown in communication that meant these things didn't get properly handled. The separate windshield frame, at least to my eye, really exacerbates the issue because of how thick it appears to be. Thinned to about 2/3 of its current thickness it would likely at least fool the eye enough into making up some of the lost windshield height. That said, no prior E Type kit has had this level or quality of engineering underhood, the interior looks lovingly rendered, and they've done a remarkably good job with the actual contour of the roofline and of the main body. I feel fairly comfortable parking it alongside the Gunze Sangyo 250GTO or Cobra Daytona in terms of "not right, but not bad" sports car bodies. As to whether or not this SHOULD have happened, clearly not. But then, as recently as this year we had a kit manufacturer (Bronco) design a P-51D Mustang kit with an inaccurate landing gear bay so this stuff does slip through despite the tools available to prevent it.

Fairly incontrovertible. I like that it appears the Revell hits most of the dimension marks but it does seem they missed on the pillar height. The thickness of their windshield frame doesn't help much in that regard either. I'm still willing to build the kit since it's obvious that they came up with a kit that's quite nice on the whole. It's a bit like how the Gunze Sangyo 250GTO has a lot of fundamental errors but because it was the best available for so long some stuff was forgiven.