Chuck Kourouklis

Thanks a bunch, Lee!

Personally, I take advantage of the fact that perimeter glass trim is usually a strip of uniform width, and just use straight edges to cut a thin strip of foil against the backing and then apply it to the plastic. Not only does this method dispense with the possibility of gouges around the border, you can even use it to help define those rubber seals. Look close and you can see that trick 'round the windshield borders of these fiddy-seb'ns: The rubber bits might not be so easy with the Moebius method, but I still think trimming the foil to shape before application will be the way to go with 'em.

Uh, no. Wasn't your joke at all, which was actually pretty funny.

For number 3, that's certainly one perspective. I'm gonna offer another: Years ago, you'd have the occasional slam on a manufacturer, and the post would just largely speak for itself in that act. Only more recently have nitpicking and slamming manufacturers become ANYTHING LIKE the "sport" of belittling and attacking people for calling out what they see, and that latter has been going on for years. I try to stay off the ground of slamming manufacturers myself, but you go through some of the more notorious threads 'round here, it's as if various critics under constant character assault finally gave up and started serving some BS back, possibly along with some outliers who figure that if people are going to be so infantile about kit criticism, they might as well bait those True Believers with an actual excuse or two. Whichever seems to apply more I leave to those reading along to decide. We're not quite on the same page about parity between military and automotive kits, but after that, I have very little disagreement with the rest of what you had to say.

Thanks for your response, Tim. Because yours wasn't the only content I was addressing and because we don't disagree so sharply on a lot of what you said, I'm just going to trim down a bit to keep this from going on too long: Sure, and to go on to the conclusion of that point, even the Kit The Must Not Be Named has a certain seductive pull in its drag version, enough that one sorely wishes they had gotten the body right. But honestly, Moebius has the more visible track record of refinements from previews to production. Not to say that Revell doesn't - I couldn't help but notice what looked like some re-engineering of the front suspension pin bosses in the '62 Impala to help center the front wheels better - but if you see something off in Revell previews, history shows more often than not it'll be exactly that way when you buy it. And not that I personally care whether or not the firewall or blower or Deuce roof pad get refined, 'cause I see a scat-ton of other stuff I gotta have between this and the '29. Oh no, Mr B. That argument is far from settled for me. Not when I don't see the comparison discrepancies in the more accurate models that I do with the problematic ones, and not when I can reverse-engineer a conversion as accurate or more so than any of the other ones I've seen, strictly from profile photos, of that '50 Olds. Of course, I didn't work from just one photo on that. I took a mean of digital caliper measurements across a slew of 'em, and I focused on one specific relation: that between the lower borders of the front and rear side windows. Most of the shots were as perpendicular-to-profile as possible, but even in the more oblique ones, that ratio didn't vary much. I risk sounding as if I boast on this, but really, it's just a straight mathematical proportion that got such a solid result. And it was derivable from 2D photos. What has been instructive is an attempt to zero in on what's off the the '70 'Cuda wheel arches in their curvature, not just the depth of their lips. It's clear once you've been through a few shots that perspective and focal length can cause the same sweep to vary wildly from shot to shot. But these factors are perceivable without a background in design, and accounted for by many of us. And while I realize in retrospect how badly I inadvertently dismissed the very thoughtful input of a fellow poster in the exchange I was thinking of, my attempt to augment whatever knowledge I might be lacking went without a definitive answer: a car's greenhouse and its lower body have a fixed relation on largely the same vertical plane. We had a shot of a 1:1 and a shot of the model body with at best minuscule angle variations off a dead profile. Maybe the height perspective varied a bit, but that should have had little ultimate effect on the fact that the greenhouse didn't look in the same position from the model to the 1:1. If the model is correct and if photo artifacts alone can cause that apparent shift in those horizontal elements relative to one another, then somebody with the right background should be able to explain HOW. And one other possible sticking point involves the notion of 100% correct conclusions - fact is, we don't have to get anywhere near 100% correct to see where the firewall or the blower deviate from the norm.

I don't think that swipe was particularly necessary - but I also don't see why that brace can't be dispatched with four neat clips from a set of Xuron sprue nippers.

Fair enough. Here you go: Somebody says a part or a body shell looks off and explains why. Many of the responses he gets clearly indicate a level of personal offense at him bringing up that problem - from people who had nothing to do with the actual development of that model. Some go so far as to express outrage at the very idea he should have the nerve to point that problem out. Some responses devolve straight down to personal attacks. WHY? WHAT JUSTIFIES that personal offense?

Great preview as always, Tim, and thank you. Still have a reservation or two about the body shell, but I'm at the point where I want it in my hands now. The tulip panel kick-up at the C-Pillar looks incredibly better, and all credit to Art if he's the one who dialed that in for them. The engineering looks undeniably cool, no question.

Hmm. Good question. Here's a quick fix till a more skilled photo manipulator than I brings better resolution, maybe: Now it's all well and good, far as this discussion's gone afield, I suppose. But beyond all the claims of how corrupt photos of 1:1 subjects are as a comparison basis, and the byzantine logistics faced by minimal kit development staffs, and the fact that the prime movers are good guys driven by passion and doin' it for the love the very best they can, and what there's a market for, and language difficulties and licensing and time zones and culture shock and sprawling gestations and missed deadlines ad nauseam infinitumque, it STILL, after all the rationalizations, misdirections and voluminous justifications, comes down to one question: If somebody points out a part that doesn't look entirely right, just WHAT is so inherently offensive about that? What is it to any fellow modeler that he should take such personal umbrage as to resort to anything from another rotten little "rivet-counter" drive-by, to falsely attributing behavior to critics that just isn't there, to declaring who's a real modeler and who isn't? ANYTHING to have some chilling effect on a discussion that's not only topical, but should be expected when we see preview shots of a future product? Now I certainly don't know everything there is to know about comparing a 3D miniature to a 1:1 photograph. But amidst all the talk of lens distortion and focal length and perspective - as if none of us who've compared models with photos could ever have accounted for these factors on our own, by the way - what I have found is the more correct models out there seem to agree with 1:1 photos just fine, FANCY THAT. Also, that I was in fact able to come up with a pretty convincing conversion of my own by analyzing photos of a 1:1 and the mathematical proportions they express. And when I've seen a grid comparison between a side profile of a model body and a 1:1 that appeared to show discrepancies difficult to account for with camera artifacts, I've asked an honest question about it and gotten a field of crickets for a response. And having seen an actual example of how test shots can go weirdly awry of a pretty decent tooling mockup, I can only imagine my own blood boiling as the overseer of that whole process. I can just barely get my head around the exasperation of being denied manufacturer CAD data or wrangling engineers a world and a language away, and I can't help but sympathize. But in the end, a target missed is a target missed and if you want an accurate product, it doesn't much matter why. And I don't know everything there is to know about refinements from test shot to production; but what we have seen in previews has wound up on the shelves so elfin' frequently that the notion of waiting for the production kit is almost nonsensical at this point, at least from one of the domestic manufacturers. Neither the production '70 'Cuda nor the production '62 Impala proved us wrong about the fender arches in preview shots. Hell's raised months ahead about the tubular front axle in the Rat Roaster, and what winds up in the box you take home? Grille bars look funny on the '67 Camaro in previews, and what shows up on the shelves? The Kit That Must Not Be Named is clearly going way off the rails in October '12 preview shots and it arrives seven months later living down to every expectation. NOBODY'S talking about final judgments here, just the details looking off in previews that almost ALWAYS wind up that way in your hands. Discussion about this stuff is NOT going away. It has no reason to, it's TOPICAL. Just WHY anyone besides a designer or manufacturer himself should find it offensive, or necessary to temper that discussion in some way or make it conform to what HE thinks is proper, is a question I've asked countless times before. And now I pose it again. Just in case somebody has an answer this time. Or, to demonstrate the absence of any logical response once more.

They can do all-new tooling and still use old patterns, y'know. '69 Shelby/Mach 1 re-scale of Boss 429 patterns, '67 Chevelle chassis from '64 GTO patterns, and so on.

Ayuh, all I wuz sayin', 'cause I thought we were talking about tire changes too. Poly caps all around, far as I'm concerned, 'cause those one-piece wheels also relieve the rims of any tire-holding duty. Though I think the closest we'll probably ever get with the domestics were the styrene caps in the AMT Escalade.

Huh. Maybe the fault lies with the terms I used, but what I was talking about was this: How much time do you need to spend per day looking at the inside edge of your model's tires sighing with contentment over the prototypical inner tire rim/bead, to see that the rim on the left is far cleaner and less distractingly out-of-scale than the one on the right? Yeah that's what I thought...

They are funky, mostly because the rear posts run nearly parallel to the A-pillars, instead of converging more noticeably toward them as they run to the top. I promise you you'll see just exactly that when you have yours in your hands. Those people who've made you feel it necessary to qualify your statement with that classic "wait-and-see" that almost NEVER disproves an early observation? They're the ones with issues. Not you for pointing out a potential flaw. Fortunately, that one small deviation looks like a pretty easy fix. In defense of the hollow-tire-support-rib approach: as long as vinyl is the medium for the tires, one key thing we have gotten in trade for that loss of interchangeability is a much more convincing scale interface between the tire and rim. It used to be that when functional locating rims were molded to the wheel halves, the beads would stick out way too far for a scale appearance - AMT's new-tool '60 Sunliner from 2000 being a prime example.

HAH, it's funny you mention that, Bill - just remembered the very kit that got me honing the just-off-boiling-water technique was in fact Monogram's first-issue, metallic blue '59 Impala in that same big box. Body was twisted up like a braid, but I managed to flatten it out.

Exactly. Same issue here, but mild enough to fix with hot water.

Both 1/12 GTOs are so gorgeous, there was no way I could resist this. Looks like the P foregoes a die cast block with moving pistons. GOOD. Then maybe I'll finish it before I die.

Kool, and thanks. Too bad they didn't have any Sesto or Diablo prototypes yet...

Oh... OOOHH... better and BETTER and BETTER for my money! Yeah, this here's another Lay's Chip kit - just one ain't gonna do. THIS is what Revell does best.

Awesome! Thankya, Skip!

I've been trying to resolve that rear fender brow question myself since I got mine, and y'know something? It seems almost to vary from car to car... Is it a separate piece? Restoration variances? Maybe even variations along the assembly line? Whatcha say, Mr J? Turnin' out to be an interesting thing to pin down.

But is it an African or European swallow?

Oh yeah. ME TOO.

Beat me to it, James: http://www3.towerhobbies.com/cgi-bin/wti0092p?&N=N&F=RMXS1285&L=RMXS4053&C=SCBRMX&P=SM&S= Scott, you're certainly right to point out that the sins of Monogram's old Nomad are an order of magnitude worse than those in the '57 Ford. Hell, I was so giddy that Revell got the overall proportions right, it never even occurred to me to check moldings around the fenders. But now that they've been highlighted, it's plain that they're wrong. Ain't gonna have to do major surgery to fix 'em, but they're on-topic because this wagon is gonna share that tooling. And now that Revell has gone to the trouble of a new body mold, it's a natural part of the discussion to see if they've carried these problems over or resolved them. Who knows, maybe you've actually missed how contentious it gets when one faction tries to separate another out and call them nit-pickers or worse. And maybe it's not such a serious matter to you. But did you see the Chicken Little scenario that came up earlier, this whole notion that Revell/Monogram is so monumentally stupid they'll actually withdraw advertising over online postings of individuals whose opinions don't reflect that of the magazine? Years of flailing about with this notion that if modelers don't "behave" on line, the model manufacturers will just stop making kits, a scenario that started off pretty idiotic and gets more obviously so with each passing day it just doesn't happen. So now we gotta come up with some new Pyropocalypse to justify a viewpoint that in the end makes no sense. This is a forum about car model kits, and with that comes a reasonable expectation of a free discussion about those kits, including whatever problems they might have. The root of the drama around here is that certain people just lose it over that discussion for what amounts to no good reason, so they try to stifle that free exchange, and they're abusive about it. If they're not calling you a "no-lifer" for pointing out a feature that's 10% off true, they're making wild exaggerations about personal attacks on the manufacturers largely unsupported by the majority of the content they refer to. There's no reason to put up with that, and anybody who doesn't want the return static might wanna make sure he can't be confused for perpetrating that same tired, repressive BS.

I thought it was something like that, percentage-wise. Actually had to duck out of here for a while, 'cause - wait for it… and are you all sitting down? I HAD TO GET SOME WORK DONE ON A MODEL. Hope nobody has an aneurism over my apparent violation of your precious sacrosanct canon of "nit picker" behavior... Wow - You ain't kiddin', Doc... Pretty effin'-idiot-easy.

You know, I'm not gonna drop this until you guys do. Just what exactly is stupid, obnoxious and off-topic about examining problems in the kit the Del Rio is based on? 'Cause sittin' on your high horse, judging that to be "nit-picking", and deciding you're gonna mock something that's not asking for your mockery at all qualifies as all three.