LUKE'57

Better living through chemistry! Woo Hoo!!! Glad you're mending well.

One of the shots I did for an on-line model cruise-in this weekend. The A-bone is a little out of character for me, part of a friend's collection I did a shoot for him with.

That's gonna be killer, Al. But after seeing the scale and the title for the build, I'll have to admit to some level of dissappointment when I opened the post and saw the subject matter.

For taking pictures the paper works great. A friend gave me a couple of orginal sheets (11X14) and a couple of copies that are a little lighter that I use when I want something different from my shop and racetracks. I mounted them on foam board and just put it in front of my shop and use the gravel yard for the base. A piece of styrofoam painted black would also work for asphalt and be easy to store (flat sheets) when you're not using it.

Thanks Don, I enjoy sharing the pics here as much as I do building the modeld and shooting the pictures.

Thanks everybody, and Mark, that means a lot to me because these guys are my heroes from my formative years on up and they are very special to me. Being able to help keep their memory alive with my models helps me feel close to them and the models have actually given me opportunities to get to meet and become friends with a lot of them over the years. They were a very special group of people that the likes of will never be seen again. They have a lot in common with the fighter pilot and test pilots types like Chuck Yeager.

Thanks, I've got a '64 set ready but didn't think anyone here was interested.

That's alright, tell ya what. Just send me that black '60 in your avatar and we'll call it even. LOL A friend of my dad's had one just like it and traded it for a really mean new '64, black with a red interior and transistorized ignition hi-po 390. Should be a law against painting a '60 Starliner any color other than black for the street. Whoops, my bad. Took a closer look and that's a '61. That black with the red interior still goes though.

I've had some people thinking about doing a real hold in your hand printed calendar with my stuff on it. So far it's just at the talking stage but there's one thing for sure that would be different from this one. It ain't gonna be free.

It's good to know that, when it comes to pictures I've still "got it". Here's one of my favorite "delivery vehicles" and a little more magic.

??? not sure what you mean. I've got a whole calendar done for this year. I'm just posting each month a few days before the month gets here. And on the "oops" side, I meant to say Joe Lee Johnson, 1960 World 600 winner. Must've had that jug of Junior's best in the 'fridge on my mind.

You might want to contact my brother, he goes by Gator on Fred's board. He's been building models for the racers around here for 40 years or so and does some really killer vacuform bodies. He does'em all, from the "factory tin" beginnings Through the plastic transition period and the wedge era all the way to the current crop of dirt late models. Here's the addy to his on-line model galleries. I think you'll enjoy wandering around them. http://public.fotki.com/gator-gallery/

How'd this thing wind up at my shop? No rollbars, no numbers or lettering, all the seats and fancy wheels to boot! A reminder to some of us old geezers and news to the "young'uns" that "Stock Car" used to at least pay lip service to the name. Even when the factorys were turning out some pretty exotic heavy metal they would have to offer at least 500 of the street version for sale to the public through their regular dealer network. I was going through some pics and ran across some images from a shoot I did with one of the high dollar diecasts and wanted to share some of them. One of the prettiest Mercurys ever built, in my humble Wood Bros biased opinion.

Here's the next batch of "Peanut Field Flyers" as we relive the days of "bear grease" and Confederate flags.

I can feel a Junior Johnson 1960 World 600 entry coming on.

Thanks so much. Looks like I need to see about what's in that '60 Chevy kit box for the next set of pages, huh?

Here's the little Fairlane that started it all. Chances are at least half of the Stock Cars you saw raced on superspeedways from '67 through the early ninties owed a debt to this little Ford. Combine the chassis building wizardry of Ralph Moody with the sheer audacity of one Mr. Curtis Morton Turner behind the wheel and you've got the recipe for One Fast Ford! As the first "half chassis" car, it was the granddaddy of what came to be known as the "Banjo Chassis" and was under countless stock cars. If fact, until Bobby Allison's Chevelle based "front steer" chassis came along, it was pretty much the standard chassis in big time stock car racing. This month features ol' Pops in a natural pose, sideways and half turned over on dirt, in Ralph's precedent setting little Ford. Hope everyone is still liking the pages but if I do one for next year, I promise to not go so heavy on the FoMoCo side. Even if they are prettier. LOL LARGE FILE FOR PRINTING http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v69/mitchum/august/AUG.jpg

Here's a few circle burners from me and my brother. Mine........................ some of my brothers............ I've think I've got a pic of a 1/16 and a 1/12 around here somewhere that were built as street cars that I'll post later if I can find'em.

If they do, I hope they do a 1/25 Cessna Bobcat and 310-b to park beside them and maybe Clipper's Ryan Navion and a Penny figure, whooppee!

Thanks guys, that means a lot to me. And Mark, from one bassman to another, a special thanks to you.

Thank you so much, Jim. Sometimes on here I get the urge to do the "tap of the microphone, "Is this thing on?" deal. I used to post my stuff on the main board so that I thought it at least got looked at, but judging from the number of hits and replies it's just as good to post it on the Nascar section, oh well. But again, thanks for the commment and here's the next installment of these "ol' redneck race cars" for you.

"Southern 500 Memories" Here's a "virtual" card set I did for the early Southern 500 races with some of my childhood (and later) heroes cars. Some are built by me and some by my brother and a couple built by friends of mine that are now in my collection. I'll be adding to the list every day or so and hope maybe someone will be inspired to build some of the "old iron" from back when a stock car racer was stock, even though it took several thousand dollars and many manhours to make it "stock". LOL

I took a long hard look at reality and made a monumental decision. Since the intitial cost of printing would be more than could probably recouped in sales and the copyright problems alone would be insurmountable I decided to cut through all the bull and just post this for free. That way I get to do it, the old drivers get the recognision and the new fans get to see some real stock cars. Feel free to save and print these and I hope there will be other years coming. Let me know how you like the format. Got it saved as a template so that all the cards will be uniform. Hope ya'll like'em.

Didn't mean to muddy up the waters. I guess what you're saying is that a "Miss America" P-51D has as much chance of winning as a Red Baron RB-51 since neither have to move, just look good? I was thinking of a showroom stock '49 Merc competing with a chopped Carson topped lead sled in the same class. Guess it doesn't matter with aircraft, huh?

One other thing, before you get too stressed about that "spinning prop" shot, that is one of the required pics, there's an awful lot of "horsepower" hidden in the PhotoShop and PaintShop programs. LOL