MarkJ

Grille and bumper are not in their final locations. They wont be installed until after they are painted. They both need some more work before painting them.

Another winner from your bench. Excellent work.

Super fine build.

Beautful, as always. Super clean, Fantastic build.

Finally got the rough grille assembly finished. I now need to fine tune it with more styrene in certain places, and then some block sanding to give it a more egg crate appearance and also it needs a more pronounced pointed edge to the middle of the grille. The smallest material I had to use was .020 rod which was really too big for the grille bars, so to speak, but anything smaller would have been impossible to work with and the glue would melt it. I think i can get it presentable when finally finished. I also need to adjust the grille opening for proper fit.

Yes, photoetching would be great for so many things. I had to remove the grille work I did and start over by making the side grille slots more pronounced to fit the horizontal rods better. hopefully I will nave better results today.

I'll let the pictures speak for themselves, but I basically found a picture of a 74 camaro with the left side of the grille facing the camara directly . i turned the image into a 1/25 scale image of the grille and enhanced it by making the grille black on a white background. I then flipped that image horizontally to get the right side of the grille. This gave me patterns to put on the grille opening so i could mark where the .025 rods I used woud go. These were the smallest rods I could find, but they were really flimsy to work with as you will see on the pictures I post today. it was really hard to cut the slots on the sides of the grille for the horizontal rods. I will need to cut the back out of the grille assembly, so I can bolster the rods from the back to give them a more flat appearance.

Thanks , Patrick. But I actually put the grille together yesterday. I will try to post some pictures today

Thanks, David. The trouble is that things that look good in my head don't always translate to the real world.

David, I have come up with an idea in my mind that I think will work with both horizontal and vertical pieces, but this time they will be rods instead of strips and I'm going to cut tiny slots where the position image I have made shows me where to put them . The horizontal and vertical pieces will overlap but I think I can clean that up after I get the cross hatch pattern done. Stay tuned. And thanks for your input.

It would probably work, John. and I might have to go that route but I'm going to give it one more try. Thanks for your input.

Thanks , Patrick. I'm going to give it one more shot. I have learned some things from the first 2 failed attempts. I'm going to make a better locating image and I'm going to make the location image to where it can be removed . Also the grille will be open at the back and I will use rod material first before I go to strips. The process will also involve masking tape, so I can make a better outer boundry for the grille that will fit better in the grille opening.

Looking at the 2 they offer, one seems longer then the other. Might just be an optical illusion. Price isn't bad but i don't buy online.

I have decide to give the grille another try. Maybe 3rd time will be the charm. Knowing my luck, the resin grille will be 1/24 scale and not fit this model.

As you can see its not looking real promising. I'm going to go ahead and finish this and see what kind of fine tuning i can do. After that I might just have to rethink the whole grille process. Maybe a fine mesh grille screen which would not be correct would allow me to at least finish the build.

Thanks, John. I noticed on twitter that Clay Kemp is building a 74 Robert Gee Camaro using the resin body. The body comes with the grille opening shut and just smoothed over, so I wonder how he will address it.

Thanks, Mike. So far I have done 4 rows of horizontal fins, so I have 10 more to do . It is frustrating , painstaking work and will probably look terrible when finished. I might just cover over the grille with sheet plastic and make a decal to represent the grille. The real car had a fine mesh screen over the grille but my mesh material is so tight you can't see the fins behind it like you could on the real car.

Thanks , Rusty. I tried that but my 2 exacto saws, both cut, way too wide a kerf for the .010 inch thick plastic I'm using. Plus marking and cutting a piece of thin plastic that long accurately is way above my paygrade. But thank you for your input. it is most appreciated.

Super clean , awesome build. Never seen that scheme before. Sits just right.

Thanks, Dan. I appreciate your take on the 3d stuff, but I'm lucky to do the the computer things I have been doing. I think 3d is way over my pay grade, but would be an awesome way to go for this type of project.

Thanks Rusty and David. The only problem is, I have to make 98 little pieces of grille to do the horizontal part of it. I just needed 13 vertical fins. Needless to say this will be the last grille I make, unless its a fine mesh one that I have the material for. That would just be a one piece grille with a border around it.

I tried to salvage the grille, but it was too far gone. So i had to start over. I found a head on picture of the grille. So I made it 1/25 scale picture of it and am using it for a pattern to install the grille fins. I got all the vertical fins done, so now on to the horizontal ones. There's a whole lot more of them to do, but I think I have a good process now, to get it done. Won't be like a kit grille, but I think it will work . The real car did not have a chrome grille, so this should look better in some ways.

Thanks, David and Mike. I started on the fins, but will have to start over because my process was not making them equidistant from each other. I think I have come up with a plan that will work better, that I will try today. If you look at the last picture you will see that the fins are not evenly spaced apart and I used too many fins. Won't be the first time I have had to do a redo on this project.I know the fins are too wide, too. But I did that on purpose so I would have something to grab with the tweezers to put them in place to glue. I was going to trim them down later.

Starting on the grille. Traced the grille opening directly on the styrene sheet to be used. Will be putting a border around the base to install the grille bars to.