CAL

I'd like one, too. I always like Sunbeam Tigers. Almost bought a real one once.

I don't think so. As there is no more store front. And there is no them anymore, AFAIK Tom is just running personal auctions now through Ebay under the spotlight guise. The former HH was said to have been sold off by a auction house under the direction of creditors and leanholders - and (what was left) it did sell a few months back. I believe Tom is just selling off personal collections and possibly collection from estates, but I am sure I will be corrected if I am wrong. I suppose you could send him an E-mail through Ebay and ask.

simply enough no. I remember a big IPMS snafu where someone picked up a base thinking the model was fixed and it rolled right off and smashed into a million bits.

I think some people are confusing Pledge with Future power for Wood Floors, which is different. Pledge with Future Shine is indeed the same old stuff.

Sounds like Porsche syndrom. Gotta love those inclosed LeMans cars. I don't care too much for the spiders and opens. And it might not be long before F1 goes diesel.

yikes! looks like a Mad Max Mobile.

Thanks for all the kind words, I agree that red is just the 427 Cobra's color. It's kind of like Yellow on a Porsche GT2 and sorry to say it but Purple on a Diablo, only a Diablo can pull off Purple IMHO. I was anti Future for a long time, but I am sold, now. I tried brushing it at first, which gave pretty good results. No brush strokes or anything like that. I just had a problem with dirts and nibs brushing it. I would say if all possible airbrush the stuff. It's pretty easy: I sprayed Future straight out of the bottle. It's plenty thin, maybe too thin, so you'll have to watch out for runs. Note small runs will self-level when it dries. It helps if you down the PSI and close the needle a bit and work from the top down. The sides are the only place I had a little trouble. However, it sands easy or strips just as easy and reshoot. A sanding and polishing note: I found no polish that didn't disturb the Future coat. Maybe I didn't let it dry enough. Zymol didn't strip it but left some streaking. I heard most other waxes and polish will take Future right off. Wet sanding will also take Future right off and had best luck with dry sanding it with Micromeshes. Cleaning I just used some ISO, I first tried acetone but that didn't touch it. And like I said before, you still need a pretty good base or color coat becaue it wont fix everything: some minor scratches and imperfections, and will give you an unbelieveable shine. I seems to stay somewhat soft though and is easy to put a nick or dent in the Future finish. So just becareful handling it. It will also show every fingerprint everytime you touch it. I might just start wearing those little cotton gloves They wipe right off, but nevertheless it's so glossy it shows everything, at least under florecent (day) light which is what I am using in my studio. True day light not so much. It looks outstanding in daylight. My next experiement is a flat base with future top coat: an Aotake Nova.

Thanks, it's my first time clearing with Future. I was pretty impressed myself. I also spent a lot of time polishing and retouching and polishing the Tamiya Italian Red before airbrushing 3 coats of Future. It's not perfect, but it's one of my best paint jobs to date. I don't know, red has been troublesome for me, whereas Boyds Orange Met. turns out perfect every time. Yellow has been 50/50 split. I will get some more pix uploaded soon. Another thing I have notices that I might be over working it. I will be downstairs with a bunch of artificial lights and see all kinds of little problems and defects in the paint. I take it upstairs in the sunlight and it looks perfect. I am pretty happy with it, I just have a little orange peel in the future on the top behind the hood. Again take it up to the sunlight and it's invisable, plus add the windshield frame and ... I am done. Needless to say, and I never thought I would say this, but I am sold on Future as a modelers best friend. And really my old Olympus D520 isn't doing it justic.

I am down for a few. I owed several 1:1 Novas and always kind of been a fan of the Nova, and it's been a missing link for some time. The AMT kit is just a disaster and I could write a book about what's wrong with it.

I agree, I have seen some kits that were just polished plastic and most would have guessed paint. PS I am not sure where you're looking but there is all kinds of emoticons.

Seperation is pretty basic. One box for Aircraft One box for Armor One box for Cars That's about the extent of that.

I use one of the riffler files from the squadron set in particular more than any other tool. It's a must have.

I guess it depends. I knew a guy that built a bunch of Tamiya kits and just polished the plastic. They all looked pretty good.

yeah, I used to live a 1/4 mile away from an ANG base with F16. In the middle of the night the whole squadron would take off in pairs or groups of 4 under full afterburnner and knock stuff off my walls and shelves. Now I live a little further from Buckely AFB with a mix of F16 from the ANG and F-15 Strike Eagles. It was pretty interesting about a month or so ago a Fighter came over the house under full afterburner to intersept a suspicous aircraft that wasn't responding. We get the occation visiting Bugs, Migs, Presidential Helis flying over, but Aluminum Overcast was much more awe-inspiring to see that fly over.

I use Testors Pro Red, which is basically auto-body glaze, for bigger jobs Milliput, white. I, too, would strongly recommend staying away from Squadron Green or White. I found it very hard to work with, also very aggressive on plastic i.e. if you use a lot it can distort and or melt plastic, hard to sand, and hard to sculp and shape. Testors Pro Red and Milliput is light years better.

I would try a Vacuum Formed RC drop tank. There are several companies that make them. I got one once for just that purpose.

I have seen them all kinds of colors White, Blue, Green, no color, Brown, Orange. Depends on dealer and length of service... I guess.

Yes that works, but when they don't exist at all and you are building them from scratch that is a whole nother story.

I seem to remember something like that, too. If you have ever seen a real 1:1 louver press there isn't much to it.

Thanks, I started with the King Cobra, but I am doing a car I worked on once upon a time - or at least that was the inspiration, however it was an oddball Cobra. It was said to be a special order 1 of 1 built (a million dollar car back then in the late 80s when I worked on it). It was a race car all it's life, but looked like a street car. It was a 427 SOHC with a Hilborn FI. I have no idea how they got it in there! Half the valve covers and heads sat under the fenders. You could just barely wiggle the valve covers off to do a valve adjustment. I figured they must have put the engine on the frame and then the body last becaue with the head studs there was no way of getting the heads off with the engine in the car and no way of getting the engine out through the hood opening. The car was just red with white stripes and no other racing identification. I will probably striaghten out the stripes though as the real car the stripes were painted on crooked... You'd think that they would get them striaght on a million dollar car. The thing was scary. Fast! but had the puniest brakes on it and didn't stop for ######. The guy vintage raced it a couple times before blowing up the motor, which was hurt when we updated the car for safety: fire system, new oil pan, $8,000 worth of new wheels and tires, rebuilt the axles and brakes, added the quick jack mounts, ... I knew it wasn't going to last long because when we put a new oil pan on it I discovered that it had blown up before and patched back together: the inside of the block rods, bottom of the pistons and crank all had the tell-tailed signs of a rod letting go. Someone had just gone in and deburred the nicks and patched it back together enough so it'd run - probably so they could sell it because the guy that we were doing the work for just bought it from somewhere out on the East coast. New York or Jersy, I don't remember any more. I am not sure what ever happened to it after it blew up the second time, but the motor was really done after that. What a pain in the arse to work on: five million miles of safety wire on everthing, which took specail tools, hardware, wire and patients to do even the simplest tasks. You couldn't even get it up on jackstands easily with all the big diameter tube frame. It had a tendancy to slide off the stands if you didn't raise all four corners at the same time. That's my Cobra experience, I don't know how we ever got talked into working on that thing. It looked good sitting in the shop and drew a lot of attention, especially on test drives, but otherwise a bigger headach than it was worth.

That might have been, but it also might have been due to the delicate parts, especially on the Mercedes kits. I cannot imagine all those thin tiny parts surviving the conventional way of throwing the spurs in a pile, bagging them and stuffing them in a box. It was a good system I have never found any loose or broken parts from a Frame-Pak kit.

I am not sure what the evolution of the kit was, but. I have one of the last retail Turbines when Seville was trying to revive Johan, in fact Seville ended up sueing Johan for selling them junk, but that's another story. The kit I have is molded in white and is clean, crisp, and not a sliver of flashing - perhaps Seville fix this mold up? The Mercedes kits that I got at the same time wasn't the same case. Those molds were really starting to show there age. I have 3 500K Special limos all molding in different colors including one that is almost a translucent purple color. Never seen anything quite like it before. All the 500K roadster I picked up were in the classic cream color plastic and in a little better shape than the Limo. From what I was told when I got these Seville just aquired Johan and these were kits in a warehouse as part of the purchase and were shot by Johan when they were still operational. I was said nobody knew of this stock pile of kits when Johan was going under, otherwise they probably would have been sold off in an attempt to generate revenue for the troubled Johan. In any event, Seville sold what was left of Johan to a guy and California and he has been trying to revive them again, but it's been five + years and by what he has said and is doing it's a lost cause and hope. Many of the old Johan kits we are just never going to see again - ever.

That was a halmark of many Johan kits Specail Stack Pack, the Mercedes were the same concept. The Quick build was junk: a revamped promo like model.