Daddy Mack

Hi Chief: If you want more clamping force you make the holddowns longer. LONG Aluminum holddowns will not survive very well. So you make the holddowns out of steel and then use little pieces of aluminum between the holddown and the workpiece.Ready-made steel holddowns are dirt cheap on eBay. If you clamping onto iron or steel, a pre 1984 copper penny is plenty soft for you needs. Brass is harder than copper. Avoid. Copper and aluminum readily deforms.That is what you want. Sandpaper in vise jaws helps traction. Don't get hurt! Shattering a hardened endmill will put your eye out.

Ummmmmmmmmm. No There was NO annual 'tool' and a different Craftsman 'tool'. I have the annuals AND the Craftsman kits. They are the same body mold. I worked in a PIM shop. The only people who call molds 'tools' are lay people.

Lulz! If it is uncatalyzed enamel it can take a few YEARS to set up! How can you tell? Fingernail test. I still say you thinned the clearcoat with something that did not want to mix with the clear. Water, WD-40, wrong thinner, whatever.

I bet you're breaking a lot of hearts with these old models and promos that nobody else can seem to find. Keep up the good work!

Sheesh! Looks like water or incompatible thinner mixed in with the clear.

Someone needs to post a pic of a real 1963 Impala SS with an engine-turned aluminum rear panel. Or just a 1963 Impala engine-turned rear panel made out of ANY material. Please! The Craftsman release has separate, clear red taillights. >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Whew. Somebody reworked the rocker panels (or more) on the AMT body. That is shocking! That mold had been polished so many times that the bottom sides had more waves than the Atlantic Ocean. The mold inserts to run the separate hood were never found after they ran the Craftsman kit. That's why the reissues have a different hood than the annuals. Am almost tempted to buy one just to see if they cut some new body sections (or more) to fix the sea storm along the rocker panels!

Clearly, there are modelers here with way more ambition that mine. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with that! Great Job!

All i did was look at the pictures. That said, Your father is/was an artiste'.

Probably the majority of modelers are perfectionists, and that is fine. But it takes some confidence to post pictures of your little mistakes. I LOVE PEARL WHITE paint jobs. Okay, you made an unforced error on the hood decals but , that is still a respectable model and no matter what your critics say, that's a real nice job.

Very Nice Work! If you're as old as me, you remember seeing these cars all the time! Now, not very much.

AH! Thank You so much! Big Tank Midyear Corvettes are badass. In the same league as L89 427s (aluminum heads), IMHO. The Big Tank, Tanker, Corvette NO3 Fuel Tank Option was available 1963-67 model years. Some ordered as race cars. Some ordered as long distance road/touring cars. TRULY a remarkable sports car. 36 gallons of High-Test leaded gasoline Less than 200 units TOTAL built in all 5 years!

I'm looking real hard and i can't see the (RPO N03) big tank cover in the interior.

The Sun EB-9A Tachometer Transmitter on the inner fender is highly interesting

Very Nice Work!

Then all i have left to say is: When the Print Properties box pops up after you click the Print Button, you click on the Properties tab and change the Color selection to Greyscale as someone else suggested. When printing B&W images, the danged printer usually makes a mess of things by attempting to blend edges with colored inks. Good Luck!

Might it work to insert it into a MS Word or LibreOffice document then click on the corner of the image box and shrink it, then print the shrunken image? I tried resampling it in Corel and that didn't work but shrinking it in Word and Libre seemed to retain the detail.

I ? Orange Corvettes!

Oops! That would be an LS5 Pontiac 265" V8 available in 1980 & 81. Low decks same as 301

Confession Time: I cannot help myself from being amused after i try something and have first-hand experience with it and then someone, who has never done it, comes along and says i cannot do what i already did. I'm working on a model car hood right now that is made of styrene plastic and i filled the hole with a piece of styrene from a model car roof that had a similar curvature. The first thing i sprayed onto it was Dupli-Color Self-Etching Primer. And i'm filling in the little pits and what-not with paint-brush dabs of the same primer. There was no reaction from the plastic by the application of wet Dupli-Color Self-Etching Primer. This is a pretty rare hood so i promise you, this is not the first time i have blown self-etching primer on bare styrene. I gave a clue in a previous reply in this thread. There is a reason why some acids are stored in glass containers and others in plastic.

Lolzzzzzzzz!

Except that 260/301 Pontiacs had lower decks to fit them into the downsized 1978 A & G body cars.

3M Super 77 Multipurpose Spray Adhesive is the bomb. It'll go on thin if you just do 1 pass. Shake it up first and invert & clear the nozzle when done. https://multimedia.3m.com/mws/media/682505O/3mtm-sprayable-adhesives.pdf

I'll put regular primer on beforehand to fill in flaws but by the time i spray self-etching there will be a lot of bare plastic showing after sanding. The self-etching primer has acid in it for etching metal but in my experience it does nothing to model car plastic. Read up on organic vs inorganic acids for explanation.

The basecoats i've been using have solvents that behave like lacquer thinner and they will attack model car plastic and certain paints. So ya, i seal. Been using Duplicolor self-etching primer and now Rustoleum makes it as well. Seems like you're supposed to wait an hour before topcoating it with basecoat and has to be done before 24 hours or else you have to sand the self-etching primer for adhesion. I have no experience with D-C Primer-Sealer.