OldNYJim

Thank you sir! Just a little progress this week - a little assembly on the engine: Turns out, a Bicycle brand dice is the perfect size to hold those headers in place while the glue dries 🤪 And I did a little more work on the body - added some fades to the flames with a little Vallejo white: Only thing left on these pieces will be adding one more decal and then clear…because of the way these kits assemble I really want to get the body completely cleared and polished before I can do much more…next post will hopefully be shiny tinwork and then a bunch of assembly!

Those Woodlites really suit it!

Thank you!! I’m not out of the woods yet tho… Spent the week giving the decals a couple of doses of Microsol a day, and gradually working them down over the curves of the body panels…I don’t think they’re GREAT, but they’re better than they were at least… At a certain point they just stopped getting any better…but the final airbrushing step was going to be adding some little white highlights to the leading edges of some of these panels anyway, so I’m hoping I can still improve the look of them a little more. In other news, painted about every component of this thing in the last week - got a BIG stack of parts ready to be made into assemblies - I’m trying to use Vallejo paints mainly and get my technique better with those. They have a good range and I like working with acrylics - just got to master them…here’s the engine parts: I’m keeping the chrome fairly minimal on this build, but the wheels DID get stripped and cleaned up and refinished with Molotow today: And I started some very light assembly work on the frame…didn’t get far though 🤪 Excited to try and get the body wrapped up and to start getting it into clear, but I can assemble everything else whilst I’m working on that…thanks for looking - more soon, soon as I’ve done more!

You’re adding so much awesome detail to this build - really nice work

Wow…I stumped you all! Ha! I knew I’d do it someday 🤪😂

I think you’re right! I was thinking some kind of Lincoln or something maybe…but your guess seems feasible!

This’ll be good…following!

That stance is perfect!! Love it!

My knowledge of high-end 1930s cars isn’t what it should be…though stylized, is the Black Force based on something in particular?

This is a great project - there were some AWESOME concept cars back in the 90s! Excited to see more!

This is gonna be wild! Following!

One final idea I had for a potential paid-tier…some kind of Netflix-like access to online versions of the magazine, going back as far as possible. It would be awesome to be able to pay to have access to the wealth of knowledge and interesting articles that now only exists in out-of-stock back-issues and (presumably) digital master files stored by Gregg or whomever

Thanks fellas! A little more bench time today… Hit the frame (and a somewhat related side-project) with some clear: And while I had clear in the gun, I mixed in some white Pearl Ex flake and shot the upper surfaces of all the body panels to give a nice flip from gold to white when the light hits the edges: Next up, a mist of intercoat to get the body panels ready for decals. The tin-box edition of this kit comes with an awesome decal sheet, and I would NORMALLY mask and paint a flamejob but thought it would actually be fun to do it the way that I wouldn’t usually. The kit decals: And the first decal, the second it hit the water: Good thing I have multiples of this kit…try again with the decals from the latest issue…AMT was pretty optimistic with thinking their design would wrap nicely over the edges of the nose and ‘hood’, but I laid them down with PLENTY of water and a mild setting solution and we’ll see if this horribleness fixes itself overnight as they dry: The setting solution actually lifted the center of the decal on the hood piece in the middle there, but I daren’t touch it…gotta let it try and do it’s thing I guess. I have some stronger solution to try also if they don’t snuggle down, and I’m fully expecting that I’ll have to put some slices in the decals to get them to fold over and fit correctly, but we’ll see… Luckily, the graphics and numbers on the rear part of the body are all laid down on relatively flat surfaces but I gave them just a little setting solution too: In other news, made some seatbelts and added some PE buckles to the seat I’ve been working on: I kept the arrangement of the belts pretty close to how they were molded-in to the kit seat - just with more dimension. I’ll probably give the belts a little shading like I did on the seat also to get them to match, but I’m happy with the extra detail they add anyway. And that’s it for another exciting weekend at the bench - thanks for looking…more soon, soon as I’ve done more!

I did consider that - but I don’t know if I’ll actually be able to keep it simple, ha! I have two builds sitting here waiting for that group build though… @stavanzer, @TECHMAN - thank you!!! A little progress this week so far… Handling some boring-but-necessary tasks first. Cleaned up the tires, and tried a new (to me) technique of scrubbing them with a paste made of water and some Comet cleaning powder. It was actually surprisingly effective… The Comet left a little white residue, but this dollar-store goopy cleaning putty does a nice job of removing that (and dried polish from door gaps in bodies also): Painted the seat in an artist’s acrylic that matched the seat on the box art: Then added some washes and brush-painted highlights and lowlights to give it some life…I’m still REALLY green at this technique, which is something figure painters do on leather stuff a lot, but it’s more interesting than not doing it at all, at least: Painted the frame and motor - again, matched the color close as I could to the box art: And while all that was going on, I was prepping the bodywork for paint. Found a couple of colors that, again, match the illustration on the box in Createx’s range (which is good, because I love their paint): As I normally do, I’m going to massively over-complicate the process to hit the look I want…and the primer was no exception…everything shot gray besides the top surfaces which got some white to add a little extra depth: Paint process, step two is the main color: Now, I could probably just call that good and clearcoat it, but if you look back to my first post up above you’ll see the art shows a bunch of tone changes and color shifts - particularly on the lower rear portion of the body, and the lower edges. Obviously, that’s meant to just represent depth and shadow and light changes in the limitations of a 2D illustration, but those color fades are too tempting not to try and match, so next step this evening was fading on some copper tones to the undersides to try and mimic that: Shot the whole body with some intercoat at this stage and tomorrow it’ll be time to flip it over and add some extra shading to the top side also… Thanks for looking - more soon, soon as I’ve done more!

Thank you!! What did they simplify? No engine, molded in axle, that kinda stuff?