LUKE'57

Only if it's in box stock, sometimes in junior and never in full detail or light commercial.

Wrote this a while back for my son's website but wanted to share it with ya'll. Be a Hero How much do you like modeling? Enough to share it with everyone you hang out with? Enough to spend most of your leisure time practicing it? Enough to spend major bucks chasin’it around the countryside? How about enough to be a hero in a kid’s eyes? Think you’ve got to be a big name builder or a contest winner? If you’re like most of the rest of us you couldn’t make that grade but you have probably already got the skills necessary for the job. What do kids really want? Acceptance and approval from the people they look up to. Hey, that kind of looks like what we all want, doesn’t it? If you'll read on then I’m gonna tell you a whole new way to enjoy modeling and be a hero as a bonus. I still have this 40plus year old graphic reminder of my first race car model and it ain't pretty. But it is the first step that could have been derailed by some well placed "expert commentary" on my neophite skills. Do you remember the first time you finished a model (or any project you were proud of) and ran in to show it off? I hope you showed it to your Mom or Dad and not one of the “all-seeing all-knowing EXPERTS that populate “Model Worldâ€. Most of them seem to have forgotten the time they put in as a glue-smearing, brush-painting beginner. If I would have had the benefit of all these modeling TITANS way back when then I probably wouldn’t have gotten past those first few model airplane kits that I have such fond memories of. The “ruined†kits that I “wasted†were the foundation for the cars I now build that have brought me so much satisfaction and some notoriety. The next time a kid admires your collection, offer to help him or her build one of their own. A snap kit is not very expensive or difficult and can be a great time for the builder and the “mentor†as well. Introduce them into the wonderful, almost forgotten world of modeling for FUN!!! You guys with the clear-coated, fully wired, machined and photo-etched detailed miniature vehicles remember ‘’fun’’ don’t you? I spent my youth happily ruining all sorts of airplane and car kits while learning that if enough glue was good then too much glue wasn’t wonderful. (It would seem that glue is not like horsepower.) All you ‘’real modelers’’ and “kit collectors†just crawl back under those flat rocks because if guys like me hadn’t built all those old kits when they were new then your un-built collection wouldn’t be worth nearly as much today. So there, you're welcome, case closed. My modeling took an extreme left turn when I discovered what was making those wonderful noises behind that big board fence with the Coca Cola signs on it. The racing bug bit hard in the early sixties and I decided that airplanes were alright but oval tracks were so much better than runways because I could see me driving a car but wasn’t sure I’d ever get the chance to fly a plane. So I jumped into this new world of wheels with a vengeance. I learned things about real cars and things about modeling that I never would have otherwise, that I needed to know if I wanted to build all those wonderful machines that I saw race on the TV and the local dirt tracks. It wasn’t like today when the kits of your favorite racecars are on the shelf of the local Wal-mart and you can just take it out of the box and build it. You had to build the small ones just like the big guys did the real ones. You take whatever car you wanted to race and threw away everything on it that didn’t look like a race car and then you started over. I took out back seats, covered over holes where radios, consoles, and other road gear used to be and covered headlight and tail light openings with sheet plastic and sometimes even paper. I would carefully trim and smooth the runners that the parts came on so I could heat and bend them into roll cages for the interiors. OK, the careful trimming and smoothing came later. The dirt cars had to have the fenders cut so I tried everything from pocketknives to coarse sandpaper until I found and got to the point I could afford Dremel Moto Tool.I learned to sand off the emblems and chrome trim that some poor guy had spent so many hours engraving into the mold because if Fireball didn’t have’em on his car, darned if I was gonna have’em on mine. I painted with brushes when I could get them and everything from twisted toilet tissue to magic markers when I couldn’t. I even tried ballpoint pens when I started trying to letter the race cars. It took me years to learn that those very expensive artist brushes everyone said to use were worthless for what I was trying to do and then another few years to perfect a scale lettering brush that would work like the big ones. But what I was doing then was laying the foundation for all the things I do today. Now, if I find out about a model of a car I have always wanted to do as someone’s race car I don’t worry if it has a race car version, all I want to know is when is it getting here. Just like my friends at the airport in Charlotte at Holman-Moody, it may roll in the back door a street car but it’s gonna roll out the front door race-ready and spittin’ fire. Now, like some of the people who grew up in the depression and felt sorry for all those poor bored kids who didn’t know how to make their own ‘’fun’’, I feel sorry for the modeler who has to have a ready-made race car kit. Or worse still, the guy that has to have a die cast factory made ‘’perfect’’ car or else he wouldn’t have it in his showcase. Maybe it doesn’t bother him to hear someone say, “ I’ve got one just like that one, too.†but it sets my teeth on edge. Fortunately, with all those ‘’high-dollar collectible kits’’ that I’ve built I don’t hear that very often. One of the biggest kicks in this “little car business’’ is having someone say,’’ Man, I’ve never seen one of those. Where did you get it?†Thanks to my parents who bought me all those kits so long ago, the gleeful destruction of the collector value of those kits, and some God-given talent, I can say to the where'd cha git it question,â€Hey, I built it myself.†I’ve been fortunate enough to say that about everything from an HO slot car that placed in the top five in an Auto World contest to the full-size ’64 Ford that I drive today. An even bigger kick is watching the faces of one of those “closet stuffersâ€, that hoard kits the way Scrooge hoarded money, when they see that I’ve not only opened that precious collector’s item, but ripped out the interior, ground off all the chrome trim and painted numbers on the doors. The look of horror that replaces the dollar signs in their eyes is priceless. All this “gluein’ and doin’ “ has been my passport to all sorts of adventures including a weekend with Bunny and Curtis Turner Jr. at the 25th anniversary of Rockingham’s first race, a party with Tom Cruise and Robert Duval that featured Johnny Cash and Waylon Jennings as the “drop-in†guest band. It’s also made it possible to meet some of those childhood heroes that we mentioned earlier like Neil Castles and his wife and son, Wanda Lund Early, Bud and Chris (husband and son), the enchanting Doris Roberts, Larry Frank and his wonderful wife, Bob Welborn, Neil Bonnett, Marvin Panch, David Pearson, Rodney Combs…………. Well, you get the idea. This isn’t “name droppingâ€, only a more graphic way to tell kids where something constructive, like modeling, can take them. It makes more of an impression than just saying you could met some cool people at cool places because of your modeling. But if the chance to meet people like that could convince a kid to stay out of trouble by building cars then call me a namedropper. Or anything else you'd like because the kids are worth it. While “rubbing elbows†with some of the rich and famous is a hoot it hasn’t been my most cherished memories of the little cars. It has been of the “little guys†I’ve met along the way who didn’t have to be famous or even well known to be very special. In fact, most of you don’t even know that you’re special. Do you, Earl, Reynolds, Ron, Alex, Shawn, Chuck, Malcolm… the list goes on.. and I didn’t even mention family yet. Go down to my brother’s shop and see dirt track cars from yesterday all the way to tomorrow. He built the masters for some of the die cast companies that changed their cars from lumps with numbers to accurate replicas. Now with latex molds and his hand built vacu-form he can make almost any race car that has run the local tracks in the last fifty years. And now my grown up son gets into the act as he brings over the Tiny Lund Torino that he is finishing up with his first hand lettering on it and the specs for some of the new web sites that he is designing for some of the dirt tracks and for racers like Tiger Tom Pistone and Chad Paxton for me to see. Seems they were both watching big brother and the old man closer than I realized at the time. Now that’s something for all you ‘’expert modelers’’ to chew on while discussing the state of the hobby up there on Mount Olympus. How many times did you have the opportunity to help and influence a kid and you blew it. I left an organization that I was one of the charter members of (which will remain nameless out of respect for Clint Curtis) mainly because they had become such slaves to accuracy that they forgot what modeling is all about. In the search for the ‘’holy grail’’ of accuracy they lost sight of the real prize. C’mon guys, this is a hobby. We’re supposed to be havin’ fun. You do remember fun don’cha? But, you say you are a mountain top guru full detail model craftsman. Fine, but next time someone of lesser talent, skill, or knowledge approaches you, throw him a rope instead of greasing the cliff. Instead of officiously pointing out the color being off two whole PMS points (he’s still using spray cans, give him a break) and it is simply not acceptable, tell him how much fun mastering one of the simpler airbrushes can be and how satisfying mixing the correct color is when you can’t get it in a spray can. The next time some kid comes up proudly to you with his latest project, complete with glue-smeared windshield, loose chrome parts and all, you can either go into your patented ‘’expert modeler’’ routine and tell him in no uncertain terms that such sloppy workmanship can not be tolerated… Or, you could try remembering when you were just a glue-smearing beginner yourself. You were proud of everything you built back then, not because it was flawless but because you built it with your own two hands. If done as a regular exercise, I'll admit, this little remembering trick won’t make you a better modeler but could make you a better person. It could also make you start saying things like, ‘’You know, when I first started building I had that problem with glue and I found this really neat trick to get around that’’ This could also make you a ‘’big deal modeler’’ in the eyes of some kid to whom your ‘’expert advise’’ would really mean something to. That’s the stuff that kids make heroes from. I don’t know about you, but if it comes down to being a hero or a jerk (even an expert one) in some kid’s eyes, I’ll take hero every time. But don’t look down on the die cast collector just because you build ‘’perfect scale models’’ of the cars that he only has ‘’reasonable facsimiles thereof. Your people skills probably could use some work even if your modeling skills don’t. I’ll leave you with this thought as I slowly and carefully climb down from my soapbox (old bones break easier and heal slower it seems)..........Winning trophies may be a good thing for the shine on your ego, but the ‘’shine’’ on a true friendship won’t tarnish like the plating on a trophy. And as an “expert†who has to do his own housework, unlike trophies, you don’t have to dust friendships and that’s a definite plus. Now get out there and build something!!!!!!!!!!!!

Playing it is an accomplishment in its own right, but now if you can sing all 154 verses of "Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald without crib notes you are my new HERO!!

All right, that's it. I'm out'a here! There is NO WAY that I want to be part of anything that I could be included in with the IN GROUP!!!!!

I played trombone for six years in the high school band and now play guitar (Flatt style rythm and Scruggs style lead) and stand up (aucustic) bass with a friend that was playing cornet in that same high school band over forty years ago.

What are you trying to strip off of them, lettering?.........white walls?..? Most of that stuff is tampo printed and paint thinner will usually take it off.

By the time that the half-chassis Ford cars were coming on-line, that statement was becoming less an observation and more of an accurtate desecription. Here's my brother's build of one of Bud Moore's first half-chassis Mercs with completely stock (by Nascar standards) bodywork and ride height. Why, you could just buff off the lettering and park it at Walmart and nobody would even notice.

After a long (tho not nearly long enough LOL) mis-spent youth hanging around just such locations I really am impressed with your work. But, as much as I'm pained to say it, a Corvette body won't rust because it is indeed fibreglas. Having said that though, and being a stanch FOMOCO advocate, everything, and I DO mean EVERYTHING, else on there WILL!! LOL Just a hint on the gravel, try sifting some HO and N gauge railroad ballast (comes is a lot of different colors) over the "ground" after removing some of the larger stones. It could make the ones you have left look like big rocks exposed by erosion and you won't have to redo the whole thing. Here's what the ballast looks like with a 1/18 Vette. Hope this helps. Looking forward to seeing more pics.

I think you are wrong there. The very FIRST thing that "Baby Brian" tossed in the dumpster was tradition!

Shaping up pretty good there. Can't wait to see what kinda car you're gonna back up there to fill up. Speaking of that sort of thing, not that I would know anything about it, look what Junior Johnson (yep, that Junior Johnson) sent me this past weekend by a mutual friend. Seems they had been sitting around bench racing and when my friend mentioned me and told Junior that I had sent him a little something. He told me that Junior remembered me although the last time we talked was several years ago when we had done some dealing on a model kit that ERTL was thinking about coming out with. They visited for a while and when he got ready to go he told my friend that he had something to send me. I was shocked when I found out that he had sent me a couple of autographed 1/2 scale car hoods and some of all three of his own personal recipe 'shine products, after all, I had only sent him a picture disc with a couple thousand pics of some of my model based projects like magazine covers and trading cards using my old stock car models (including his '63 Chevy, '65 Ford and the Monte Carlos he raced with Bobby Allison and Neil Bonnett as drivers). Them old racers and mountain people sure are hard to beat!

I'm just a little older than that. "Now let me tell the story, I can tell it all About the mountain boy who ran illegal alcohol Daddy made the whiskey, son he drove the load And when his engine roared they called the highway THUNDER ROAD." Here's a model of my first ride from back in '63 when I first got my license. Funny you should mention this as I just got a shipment from Junior Johnson (yes, that Jr. Johnson) this weekend along with a couple of the 1/2 scale hoods advertising his "Midnight Moon" brand. There's a REAL difference in the old racers and the new "pretty boys".

Thanks Ryan, I'll have to see if I can't run down some of that. Looks SOOO much better than the printed paper stuff I got.

I've got two questions. One- where can I get a couple of those sheets and Two- how long will it take you to get them painted like that and sent out to me? LOL A really great example of just how much "life" a real modeler can inject into the basic "building blocks (or bricks)" to make them come alive. That is beautiful work.

As a fan of stock car racing since the fifties, I've just got to say that this is probably the funniest thing I have read about Nascar in the last twenty years. That is classic!!

Not that I would know anything about such shenanigens but I've got some comments and questions. 1-I hope, for you customer's safety, that is NOT an old water heater that you are cooking your mash in. 2- That "worm" should be copper, not sure what kind of tubing it is here. 4-I don't know about using an old '55 gallon drum for a catch tank. See #1 above. 5-What purpose does the wood between the worm and the drum serve? And finally, there is NO WAY you should leave such a "Revenuer friendly tool" like and AX that close to a still! Make'em bring their own! LOL

I was blessed to grow up around mechanics, both Highway Patrol ones and the marvelously creative ones that built the '50's and '60's dirt track racers that mixed and matched factory pieces between manufacturers like mechanical Dr. Frankensteins to come up with cars that would stand the strain before the Howes and McLaughlins came along. And I can tell you what 10-1 compression means in today's low quality and low octane pump gas definitions. It means instant spark knock.

You may be forgiven for violating the rules, simply because there are not rules. I'm guessing that you are fairly young, although with my rapidly advancing years that is a very swiftly sliding scale these day, and have not seen all the things that were done in Hot Rodding's "Dark Ages" when it was just beginning. If you had it wouldn't have worried you so about the oil pan. In the time before all the prefabbed custom parts that are availible today the hot rodder used what ever he could find with a very large dash of imagination to bring his creation to life. I've said all that to say this- I once saw the same problem you had solved back in the day by cutting a round hole in each side of the oil pan and a piece of tubing inserted into it and welded on each side. After the engine was in place the hot rodder simply threaded the tie rod through the hole and bolted it up, Problem solved! Ford Motor Company did the same thing for the pushrods on their "Tunnel Port" engines, that's where the nave came from.

Always felt more than a little out of place over there. Posted a lot of what I considered pretty good looking model pics without much response. Unless you count the ones who jumped me and let me know in no uncertain terms that I shouldn't post pics of "real cars" in the model section of the board Didn't even get much attention with these "new issue announcements" type posting. But when I posted this period correct retro-nostalgia racing program, the powers that be hit the roof and I got kicked off the board and black listed quicker than kissing a duck. Anyway, since I landed here, I can't say I'm very sorry I was forced to find another place to share my weird talents. This is a much better run and accomodating place to hang out,

.........the more they stay the same. An old friend of mine from the dirt track days decided he really didn't like cut vinyl lettering as good as the old fashioned OneShot and quill brush style lettering so he asked me if I still did that sort of work. My son, who had helped letter a car with me for him almost thirty years before, had bought us some new lettering brushes and paint to do some cars a while back so I said yes when he asked if we could do his new ride. As luck would have it, after we finished up late Thursday night and were gonna shoot some pics on Friday, he didn't get it finished in time. my son had to help judge the car show today and I wound up going by and taking the pics before I went to the track today. My son is now the track photographer at our local track like I was thiry years ago and I'm gonna give announcing a whirl this year but, due to the circumstances, we lettered the car and I wound up shooting the pictures exactly like we had done almost thirty years ago when my son was ten or eleven for the same car owner who now builds the cars for his son. I love the way racing is a family sport now and I get the biggest kick out of seeing my grown son follow in my footsteps, red mud and all, at the races. Life is good! PS This really is a full size car. LOL

What fingerprint? That's my TRADEMARK!!

First year for the category and I win it!!!! After sneaking my way into all kinds of magazines, from Scale Auto to Circle Track, I finally get the COVER on one this time. Well, there was that Tom Cruise R/C car on the cover of Racing Collectibles Price Guide, but it was in black and white. Be sure to check out the new April issue. Hey, this "retro" craze only took twenty five years to catch up to me so I think maybe I should just ride this hoss as far as it'll run 'cause you never know when the pendulum will swing back the other way. And I'm too old and set in my ways to learn to build tuners. LOL

Looks like you're building some Fords. If you happen to run across some Calypso Coral in the late '60's early '70's Mercury colors it's the same as Poppy Red but you need to be a little more specific than just metallic blue if you're going for a certain year as Ford had a lot of different shades of that.

Don't know if you were aiming that at anyone in particlure that you thought needed it but everybody needed to hear it. The three most important words I can think of to have a full life is "Go for it". I know I'm not a good modeler, musician. phototgrapher or artist because I spent a lot of time listening to a lot of people who, even though they couldn't do any or much better themselves, made it their goal in life to point out just how substandard and even wrong my efforts were. Then I started just doing the things I liked my way and guess what? I've made a sub-career in modeling by building stuff for real racers and not the expert modelers, showing my models to real racers and fans and not model car show judges, playing my music for the people in nursing homes and at churches and picnics that seem to be deluded in thinking that I do pretty good. I made a living for a while taking pictures that were everything that some people who had taken classes in photography taught by experts had told me were all wrong but the people that paid real money for pictures of their race cars, children and weddings came back again and again to buy more. I've finally gotten to put the things in my head in print and one the internet (well, except for the voices )through the programs like PaintShop and I've gotten to be pretty well known and respected with them. I'm even going to try being the announcer at our local dirt track this season (about the only job I haven't had in racing so far) even though, while most say I'll do well, this one guy (ME) who really thinks he knows that I'll fall flat on my face doesn't think I can. What I'm trying to echo above is that them that can do and them that can't criticize. If you enjoy doing something then do the heck out of it and enjoy it. If anyone else enjoys it or is impressed by it then that's icing on the cake. An actor was once told by a talent agent that he would never go anywhere in Hollywood with his chipped tooth and his too large adam's apple so he better find another line of work. Well, it took him a lot of years to heed this guy's advice and I think we can agree that Clint Eastwood finally made a pretty good director.

Thanks guys, I've been in this business a LONG time so I guess I should have learned something, huh? LOL As for April, I'm just gettin' warmed up. This is something new I'm working on. I scanned a page from a real Lindberg catalog to give it some creditablity and changed the copy and cut out the pics. I've now got a mask that I can put new copy and pics in about a fifth of the time this one took. Got to get out some of my old ERTL, MPC, Monogram and Revell catalogs now since ya'll seem to enjoy this one. Maybe if I do enough of'em someone in the industry will notice and maybe let me get back inside again.

Breaking news from Lindberg- New Kit Announcement Hard on the heels of the announcement of the Paul Goldsmith '64 Plymouth comes news of a second release. 1964 Daytona 500 runner up Jimmy Pardue's Plymouth stock car is to be kitted for the first time. Well liked by fans and other drivers alike, "Gentle Jimmy" Pardue, with the "Car 54, where are you" license plate from the popular TV series of the same name on his race car, was poised to break out as one of the new stars in '64. His career was cut short by a crash during tire tests at Charlotte Motor Speedway only a couple of weeks before Darlington's famed Southern 500, a race that Jimmy was favored to win. This kit depicts his Daytona car in the early season white livery and includes all the markings to replicate his ride in the 500. As with the earlier Richard Petty and Paul Goldsmith Plymouth kits this one is jam packed with details and all the special Mopar racing parts to build real Hemi Hummer. Look for it wherever models are sold. Release date 4-1-09 Disclaimer- Due to the fact that this is a total fabrication, scheduling, licensing and other variables may affect the availiblity of this kit.