OldNYJim

Brilliant! Thank you! I’ve got a bunch of their plastic ones, but I hadn’t seen the brass ones before. Cool!

This is a great build, I’m really enjoying it! Quick question - who makes those nice model railroad bolts? I’ve been looking for some like that for a project

Awesome!!! Thank you! Can’t wait to dig into that thread! ?

That’s a great tip Tom, yes! It’s really useful to know how the real thing rusts - especially if you’re doing an extreme look with rust holes and other damage. A couple of little bits, as I’m still at the bench and replying anyway...had Walgreens print a licence plate and used a photoetch frame and some photoetch bolts to finish it off: I shot the headlamp buckets with the same Krylon chrome (which doesn’t look chrome at all, but does a decent job of brushed aluminum) as the bumpers and gave the lenses a little tint with some clear yellow. The race car-style tape crosses aren’t a thing anyone seems to be doing in 1:1 but I cut some with some more vinyl and added those for an extra little detail. This build is too much fun! More soon!

That’s a good tip! I have some of that here! Will definitely be trying that out! Meanwhile, I cut a mask (actually five, to get a good one ?) to add some lettering to the rear decklid: I tried a few different types of vinyl to get one that would work - it was tricky because of how intricate the design and regular airbrush mask was too thin to cut without tearing - got there in the end though, and shot some Createx opaque white through it and got pretty much what I was trying for anyway: I wanted to see how it looked with the bumper, so next job was to mask up the lights and shoot them. I wanted a real dark red taillight rather than the bright red that you get from Tamiya clear red so I used another Createx color for this too: Their transparent clears aren’t quite as transparent as Tamiya clears or most candies, but it got the look I was after: Whilst I had the cutter running I cut that little bumper sticker from some thin signwriter’s vinyl: I really need to start working on the chassis, but I’m having too much fun doing these details on the body ? More soon, soon as I’ve done more!

That looks GREAT! Is there a build thread for that one somewhere?

I always enjoy seeing your builds Claude, and you do very impressive work so I’m sure you’ll make good use of that technique! I’m definitely no expert at it myself; it takes me a few tries to get an acceptable result usually...but a fun trick I’ve been playing with today on some practice pieces is to use mediums other than salt for different size and shapes of rust patches. Herbs, spices, sand - all kinds of different materials could be employed to get some different results!

Is anyone else thinking “I should really get some bodies painted whilst the humidity is low?” I prepped some projects today because we’re due to have some low-moisture days in the next week and I figured I should make the most of that before the weather gets bad here on the east coast

Nice builds Snake! And I really like that poster art Tom! Brad did a great job! What car IS that top one? I’m sure I SHOULD know...Impala?

I should! It was a little too extreme so I feathered some of the rust out with the airbrush today and got it a little more realistic and less ‘spotty’. Today’s projects were to give those wheels a wash and pick out the lug nuts with a Molotow pen, and then airbrush some whitewalls onto the kit tires: I weathered the whitewalls a little - they looked too clean but I like how they look with the car now: And a shot of the slightly less rusty body: I needed to make a windshield, so I employed some CAD for that (cardboard aided design ?) I really like this Elmer’s purple glue for holding glass in - the fact that it loses it’s purple tiny when it’s dry is really useful: And a little weathering (and some light airbrushing later...): I also made a rubber gasket with some thin black wire to add a little detail, although it’s hard to see how I’ve blended I’d all in with pastels and whatnot: I’m just working on a swamp cooler to hang in that driver’s window - More soon, soon as I’ve done more!

I was looking at the themes for NNL East next year and the main theme is “Known Survivors - original old customs from our youth”. I don’t remember any customs from my youth ??. Well, maybe KITT from Knight Rider, if that even counts... I was wondering what imagery that prompt brought to anyone else’s mind...anyone building something cool for this theme for next year’s show? I’d love to build something for this, but I definitely need some help with inspiration...

Are Junkman and Regular Guy the same person?

I’ll be watching Tom! Cool looking build so far!

You’re not wrong ?. Im thinking this thing would look really cool over a set of whitewalls, something like this: I want certain elements to look nice and new and clean and well done, and some to look ratty - like someone put a sketchy body over a decent frame and added some nice touches to make something that isn’t just a straight rat rod. I’m not intending to do a bunch of detail to the frame or underside of this, but I did z the front to help drop it a scale 10 inches (!) and did some mods to the rear axle to drop that a bunch too. I’m trying to keep everything so it COULD drive and steer, even if there’s only a few inches of suspension travel at best: I imagined this thing having bright red steelies on it - all shiny and brand new looking...then my wife showed me a cool nail color that she liked so I ‘borrowed’ some of that to paint some resin wheels: Love the color! Wish there was enough in the bottle to paint a whole body, but there was enough to shoot these and the dash anyway... More soon, soon as I’ve done more!

I didn’t forget about this one...but we had a straight two weeks here of above-helpful humidity that stopped me getting the clear laid down on the repainted body. Only 45% moisture in the air today though, so I managed to shoot some enamel on this thing - let it sit a couple of hours and I’m pretty pleased with how the clear is setting up! The body is all that’s holding this one up now, so I’ll give it a few days to set up nice and hard and give it a polish and redo all that foiling that I didn’t enjoy the first time and don’t want to do again ? More soon, soon as I’ve done more!

I’ve been waiting for the humidity to drop so I can finish getting the clear on my stock 53 Studebaker project, so in the meantime I thought I’d start on the gluebombed kit that I had... The body wasn’t too bad except for snapped and missing a pillars, which I patched up but couldn’t get perfect enough to look good for a shiny stock build...but I did want to do something with the body. I had the idea of a patina’d heavily-lowered hot rod build for one of these kits, and this body seemed a decent candidate for that. First up, rust colors: I used a mix of Tamiya and craft store acrylics to get some different shades and colors of rust, then added a decent pinch of salt to season: Next up, after letting the hairspray holding the salt on dry for an hour or so, some baby blue Createx airbrush paint: After that had set up for an hour or so, I mixed some more of the same color blue with some opaque white and airbrushed the roof, trunk and hood a little to depict some sun bleaching of the paint (not that much of it will be left by the time I remove that salt) Then, the fun bit - removing the salt! Once I’d brushed that off I went through and applied a mix of pastels to add some more texture and interest to the rust and give it some streaks over the paint: I’ve got a tonne of ideas for this one, I really like doing a not-shiny build now and then for a change! More soon, soon as I’ve done more ??

Which guy?

They would at least make a floor or a hoop over the driveshaft right? ??

The lack of suspension on these old slingshots makes more sense now - I was wondering how to account for the axle moving around when the driver had his legs right over the top of it. I’d still like to get some suspension in there maybe, but it DOES bring up all these new issues that’d I’d have to figure out. Hmmmm...

That’s really useful, thank you! I spent a couple of hours looking at pics and doing some research but there’s so many variations and different eras I soon got bogged down. Thank you!

Looks great! Love the scratchbuilding work you did on that interior! Very cool!

Wow, that’s a lot of replies considering I didn’t do anything yet ?. Thanks Alan for your thoughtful ideas - I’m definitely going to use some of them on this. Sledsel - I think I’m good for now, but thank you so much! I’ll keep that in mind! And that info on SOHC engines will definitely be useful for this one too. I’ll no doubt be asking some dumb questions about those in the not too distant future... Made a little progress on the frame for this over the weekend - it was a tougher job than it needed to be because I wanted to make sure that, firstly, everything fit as nicely inside the body as I could get it to and secondly to make sure the body would actually fit around the frame nicely so I can assemble the car when it’s done and still have partially disassemble it for display with the body off. Got a lot of figuring out on how to secure it to the frame, but having a frame was the first step anyway... I did some research on mid-to-late 60s slingshot chassis to try and keep the design at least semi period correct - the location of the axle in relation to the seat is giving me some headaches because the driver would have to have his legs over the top of the axle to drive it and I’m trying to think of the nicest way to address that. That’s how it is in the kit, and I could use the kit interior piece to overcome that problem and just hide it all away but I’d like to make it so that the suspension and axle could function properly AND let the driver actually sit in the thing. More soon, soon as I’ve done more! Need to raid the parts box now and find a quick change or similar to use and start to think about what kind of rear suspension this thing should have

Oh wow! Nice paint job!!! Looks great!

I normally use regular old styrene sheet - you can't go too thick and expect the machine to cut right through but anything the thickness of, say, heavy card will work ok...and if it doesn't go all the way through it's easy enough to score with a scalpel blade or snap the pieces out. I'm just using a regular blade for the machine - my last one lasted probably a year and still cut ok, so I haven't seen the need to mess with the better ones that you can buy yet. For this one, because I was just experimenting, I used one of those dollar store 'For Sale' signs...I just pick the largest one I can get for a dollar! I didn't clean the printing off the backside very well, hence the red tinge around the edge of the letters, but rubbing alcohol does an easy job of removing that stuff when I'm making 'real' parts

The trick to get that part looking more realistic looking, now I think of it, would be to file the edges of the letters at a 45 degree (ish) angle so they’re not as sharp - but it was an interesting experiment anyway!