The Creative Explorer

if you find the '65 lincoln kit from AMT, you can find a decal sheet with a large woodgrain pattern decal. As it is for a '65 lincoln, it is long enough for every car and it is not cut to size, it is just one big square decal.

Small update, most work is quite boring, sanding, sanding and sanding. But things are progressing and I think it is fair to say I can finish up before the 4th, I would've never tought I could build a bigscale in just a few weeks time. These are all the parts that were goldplated, looks a lot better this way I laid them on my cleaned out desk and you can see there were a lot of parts plated. One last comparisation with the old and the new wheel I glued the firewall to the tub and will smoothen the seem, I also will sand off the bulge on the top part of the tub The frame will be completely boxed And I started to detail the carburetor, I think it is one of the better looking ones I've seen in 1/8 scale Working on the tub And made a mock-up, just to see the whole picture of the car, so I can let my creative part work on colors and paintjob

You have no signature line....

From what I read here, there is no place to talk about it at the Spotlight board, As soon as you say something about it against the grain, you've been kicked off, it is one way to deal with it

For a good reason explained it Harry's last post. No point of re-starting the discussion. And why not follow your own advice and leave the matter alone, instead of creating another yes/no discussion? Pleas lock this one too

Hehe thanks guys. I am not dissatisfied with the wheels, for a first time making my own wirewheels, I think I didn't do all that bad. @Harry; No, I don't think I do. There are no rules for the 24 hour build, other than we will build together for 24 hours. So what one do with the 24 hours is up to them. I choose to build a complete model within the 24 hours and I am mostlikely to be the only car-builder. And to be interesting to visitors and viewers, I want to build and detail. For viewers the most interesting parts of modelling. Sanding, sanding and sanding is just boring to watch haha. @Rodney, you're right, I remember that. Aren't you on the 4th celebrating?

also Started on the body After 3! hours of wiring and 40 spokes left, I had a new wheel And putting it in a tire, it looks like this. I don't think it looks too bad for a first attempt, but there are things that needs to be improved.

And another project On februari 4th, there is going to be a local 24hour build. I thought it would be nice for a change to do something like that and I wanted to complete a project within those 24 hours. I decided failry quick not to do a 1/24 scale model, it might be a bit too simple and I don't want to get bored. So, decided it was going to be a bigger scale, 1/16 was not that special either and I am still working on one, 1/12 is too expensive for a quickie and when I was reading through an old catalogue from Monogram, I knew it; It was going to be the Golden T. I had one laying around, it has a low parts count and it shows a lot of detail, perfect. Ofcourse you can't build a decent 1/8 model within 24 hours, so I am going to take a different approach; I am taking a head start and prepare and paint all the parts. So at the build I can focus on building and detailling. I will not build with utmost detail, stay close to boxstandard, but I will take the chance to also add a few personal touches and stretch my limits. Pictures; boxart: I didn't like the wheels, I have seen worse wirewheels, but these were not the best. So, taking a huge leap; I decided to make my own. I've never done something similar and the only knowledge I had was somebody who made his own wirewheels with fishing-wire. I was going to use metal-wire, so I just tought and started preparing, making tools. Hoping I would succeed This is going to be the new axle I will re-use the inner-hub, just needs cleaning up And looks like this: The outerside hub was useless, so I made a new one And assembled together; this is going to be the new axle Meanwhile, I dumped all the golden parts in a plastic container and let them drown in oven-cleaner.

Thanks all, I must say, the kit is quite simple, but it does build nicely. No major issues with the fit and because of the lack of parts, there are not a lot of problems with the parts either haha. @Dave & Bradley; I had tought of the decal on the door, but it didn't seem right in the middle of the door, for it to look right, it had to go on the lower halve, and because that is black, it would not be noticable. So I did cramped it on its place now, it does not look that bad in real life. If I had known that the decals were to big, I also would've scaled them down. Too late now unfortunately. So to the update; One of the lenses were missing, so I had to make a new one myself. The engine with the exhaust side of the turbo and the turbo installed And we are getting closer to a finished product. I put the body on the chassis for now, testfit and made some pictures. The engine and (now) visible turbo With the front end on Interior And backside

Hehe thanks, I did not had the intention to go modifiying the kit, but I don't like curbsides and so I had to. Fitting the turbo to the V8 was tricky, but I managed. I hope to give a new update soon. Even today, a lot of parts are interchangable and used between different brands. But to find a small-block GM V8 in a Ford is quite unlikely. But now I am a bit further on the engine, you can't see it was a GM product at all, so that is a good thing ;-)

In the eighties, it was common to shout with Decals on the car to show them what you had. And because this car now has a huge engine, I thought I would make some new decals. I used the original decals as example, loaded them into Photoshop and I put the name RS8 on it, RS for rallysport and the 8 for the v8 engine. And a comparisation with the old decals, not a big difference, but just enough

This kit was trying to catch my attention for a while, why? I don't know. But since the DS is being sanded and is boring, the Victoria is hardening, I took this one, just for fun. I was rather enthused when starting this kit, the body fits really nice. The kit was slightly started, but nothing serious. So I started, I was going to start with the engine, but I found out that the previous owner forgot to put the engine back in the box, So, Problem!. Luckily, I've got a nice partsbox with a variety of engines. I found rather quick a 4-cilinder from Ford Motorsport, but it looked a bit lost in it's engine bay. And since there were many engines on my desk, I started fitting, the 427 was not going to fit nicely, but I did found a 283 from Chevy. It fitted pretty good, the oilpan was right and it gave me some space for another idea. Ofcourse, a chevy-engine doesn't go in a Ford, so the engine will be camouflaged and you would've had no idea it was a GM engine. But because this is a Capri-turbo, I will add a turbo to the V8 engine. The approach is going to be like; What If.... So what if the Ford Motor Company would've put a turbocharged V8 in it's Mercury Capri. So, I am not going with customised paintjobs, wild interior or oversized aluminium wheels. It is hopefully going to be a mirror of what it could've looked like in the '80's The new engine in it's place I tried to get rid of most motorparts for painting A dryfit before primer With primer This is the Capri in it's 2nd gray coat, I wasn't happy with it first, so I rinsed it off. And I added a second color to the lower side of the body, pretty much like the boxart

This looks too easy, but I guess it will be real

Hey Skip, Thanks for the heads-up. I do have the intentions to build both of them, since they're laying in my stash already haha. Especially the Ferrari, I find it one of the most attractive cars in large scale, my absolute favourite is the E-type, and to make things clear; I am talking about the real cars. I knew the Ferrari had some fit-issues, but I wasn't aware of all those other problems. I did some googlesearch and it appears you have it spot on. And some of them needs to be adressed for making a nice model. As soon as I read your post, I got my Ferrari kit out and see what you mean, although I must say that my campagnolo wheels do look nice actually, seems like the wheel arch and the hood shouldn't be too difficult to fix, more difficult will be the low roofline and the front end. But even after concluding the kit is not all that good; I am still enthused in building it! haha, sorry. You know my motto; if I can finish the Heller DS, I can do any kit Makes actually a nice one-liner hehe I would be very interested in the reference material, let's discuss that on PM.

hehe, I do The thing is; even though they are not the best kits, the subject is just very nice. My guess is that they will be worth the trouble, especially the Ferrari. On the other side we have the Ferrari Testarossa, made by Revell, but low in detail and very low in partscount. I think I counted just over 100 parts. I guess there will be some fit issues with the engine-lid, but that thing doesn't seem very challenging. Basically; all the larger scale kits we have now, (exceptions like the GT40 not included) are all old toolings from the '60's and '70's, for sure they are not up to par on the modern kits. Tamiya has a lot of nice details in their 1/12 kits, but they also show their age a little bit. Although they have a lot better fit than the Revell/AMT, etc... brands. One kit I seriously want to lay my hands on is one of the Tamiya 1/12 Caterham kits, I seriously hope Tamiya will do a rerelease again, one can only hope

Depends on how deep your pockets are. If they are deep enough; eBay USA, cost between 50-75-100 for a decent kit, but at the moment, you need to double the kit for postage incl. It is getting crazy. If your pockets do have a bottom, be patientce and look for local ads, on modelshows or local eBay equivalents. I have bottompockets, but I've managed to enlarge my bigscale in the last year by quite a lot. Just being patient and looking for good deals. Not for showing off, but to give you an idea what you can find on the 1/12 market:

Hey ajulia, How are you doing? and welcome back! I was wondering the same thing, I had the privilege to meet Dave in real life in Portland and I had a good time. I didn't know he was chased away and I do remember he had words once, but never paid to much attention to it. But that is awful to be honed away. I second Ajulia, Dave, come home

It took me a little while for finding some motivation for this horrible kit to continue working on. It is quite a challenge and I am sure, that if I can succesful finish this kit, I can handle every kit out there. It is thát bad. I started with sanding the front pillars (again) and I keep my finger crossed they wont break this time. And I repainted the body black again. The black from Auto Air, is quite different to work with than their other colors; it sprays quite difficult and doesn't want to lay down evenly and was the reason that on the end of the day, I removed the black layer again. It looked so wrong. While I started a new black layer, another problem rose; my airbrush compressor stopped working in the middle of a paintjob. The pistonrod came loose from the crankshaft and after working on it for an hour, I managed to get it working again and finished the black paintjob. Not happy, but doable. The idea I had for the paintjob was a custom one; but since this is a classic car, I didn't want to give it a obvious custom paintjob; it had to be something it could be done factory-standard. So I mixed the color I wanted and deliberately painted it over the black paintjob, to give it a darker hue. And I think it came out perfect, exactly the way I wanted. And so today became clearcoat day, the last couple of months I have not been very satisfied with my clearcoating skills. Actually; I am quite dissatisfied and I could choose to do it the same way I always did or test a few variables that I think might work better for me. And since this car will not be a winner anyway, I decided to practise my skills and do it different. I raised the temperature in the paintbooth, I raised the airbrush pressure and instead of a couple of mist-coats building up, I decided to go for one mist-coat and a thicker wet-coat. I must say I am sort-of pleased, I am onto something, since the paintjob is better than my previous couple. I have to redo the hood, since it is uneven and I want to change my paintbooth, since there is a lot of dust in the paint unfortunately, but other than that, it is a nice paintjob. There is still a lot of room for improvement, but it is improving. Well, let me stop talking and give you some pictures:

My class of 2010 is quite empty, due to a couple of things, modelling wasn't always top on my priority list and sometimes due to circumstances, there was a lack of motivation. I hope for 2011 at least 1 per month to build, however, I hope to find a job soon and I get a baby in the next year, so I keep my fingers crossed. I hope you enjoy at least the 6 I build this year.

What 'you' did in 2010? The only thing you did was handing over a kit to your wife who turned it into something beautiful. So, I guess your wife needs to get the credits Congratulations!

Thank you all for the replies! @Mark; As you can see in the very first picture; I got a box with some parts and almost nothing on the tree's. I have read through the manual a couple of times and honestly, I never saw the (small) picture with the radiator top in it. So thank you for pointing it out, I didn't install the wire just yet. But I will save some time and frustration now I know ahead. Good thing you did know the kit. @Oldscool; I know, but it was actually a personal choice. I've never did a section before, so I had to stick it with the chop for now. I think when the wheels will come on, the car will be in balance and give the look I tried to get. @TXdieseldog; I like the look of your stock '56. Nice color combo and I knew the '56 had some fitment issues. I keep dryfitting through the build. It is a must, especially when one does custom work to the body or chassis. I think my chassis is now quite straight and I never really saw the point of moving wheels. Poseable wheels are a nice touch, but again; I could do without. Actually, I am working on the wheels and suspension, I want to lower it by a lot. So there will be no moving wheels anyway. @Brokentail; no. The rear-window is exactly the same as it was, just in a different angle and the windshield will be the same too, but angled and shortened. It all depends on how you chop the roof and what look are you trying to achieve. When you lower a roof, you basically always have to modify the windows, since the top of the roof is smaller than the lower body. therefore the angle between the roof and body differs from the window when chopped. With a gentle (warm!) bend, the windshield can be modified a little, usually enough. But I agree; the windows I find the trickiest when chopping.

Everybody knows these right: Well, they end up like this": And now they might going to get these: I think downsizing is a understatement

More color! Unfortunately I am far from happy with the lower halve, After I added the candy coat, the decal started with airbubbles underneath and there was nothing I could do. It sucks, sincs there is nothing I can do. I guess part of my learning curve. All the colours are on its place. I started out with a white coat and added a yellow base coat. This for the next colour. After the yellow base-coat, I added a yellow iridiscidating layer for a nice pearl effect. And to bring the oldskool style from the 50's back, I added a little bit of orange. And without the tape.