OldNYJim

And mine arrived today in Cornland today too - a GREAT issue. REALLY. A @tim boyd article is usually worth the price of admission for me, but that beautiful amazing Model A - AND an article by @Dennis Lacy and all kinds of hot-roddy goodness…you guys are knocking it out of the park in a way that the other mag hadn’t for YEARS. Great job!!!

Thanks buddy! I’d love to see that! I’m on a real T-bucket kick right now - so many cool ways to build one! Speaking of building one…a little more progress… Made some crossmembers - not quite done with them but good enough for mocking-up: Printed some Vette valve covers, just as another little nod to the Tweedy Pie - the script is REALLY fine on those, so I’ll need to be careful when painting them… And tonight I spent some time messing with getting the engine located. Well, there’s not too much CHOICE in how far back or forwards to locate it in a car this small, but it took some fiddling…and about a 12 scale-inch reduction in the length of the torque tube: Just roughly mocked up here with some tacky glue and some temporary mounting blocks - it actually needed to move back some more before I was done but I got it about right after a couple of tries… Incidentally, this view demonstrates something I wanted to achieve in cleaning up the view of this car from the back somewhat by hiding the spring in front of the axle rather than behind it - it’ll make more sense when I start work on some of the smaller details. And another mock-up to see how we’re looking… Trying to make sure I can have a flat firewall and but not have the front pulleys hit the radiator - luckily the grill shell is pretty deep with that extra lip on it so I should be ok… Plenty still to do - gotta figure out a way to build a windshield frame at some point - might have to break out the brass and the soldering iron Thanks for looking - more soon!

Ah yeah, that was it...I ignored the recommendations printed a little Rat Fink for my test print ?

What an ingenious way to use an X-acto - I never thought of doing that!! I love your threads Bill, I always learn SOMETHING. And yes, those wheels and tires are really cool

And he now has a Patreon page with additional videos for a few bucks a month: https://www.patreon.com/modelcarmuse I too like A4's videos, and also Donn Yost's channel is informative and educational: https://www.youtube.com/c/ScaleModelTechniques

I'd be interested in seeing that too Am I right in thinking you tried the test piece (the little boat model) and that didn't work either Les?

No ? GREAT looking build - love everything about it! Great color, sits nice, good engine choice - great work!

Also make sure the supports aren’t too skinny - if you’re using light, try medium, for example. It looked like from your previous pic that it was printing the ‘feet’ of the supports ok but not much further…that might help ??

I’ve had mine for a few weeks - I wonder if they’re going to be in short supply if places are struggling to get them? Better stock up in case they disappear like some of the other Revell hot rod kits of the past few years… Great start - always enjoy your builds!

Createx / Wicked Colors white pearl does a good job of replicating the trick shown by @bh1701 above there too

Thanks everyone! And thanks @Dennis Lacy for the tip - I’ll cut some rings to space those out a little ?? A little more progress…and I got a new phone between yesterday and today so the picture quality may improve half way though this post… Made some headlamp risers…I wanted to kinda hide them behind the grille rather than having anything too complex and visible: Headlamps themselves are from the Revell 29 - each kit comes with a couple or three sizes so I have buckets of these right now… Wanted to work on the fuel tank next, but couldn’t find one in my stash that looked right and I didn’t have any styrene tubestock that would work. I DID think of making an aluminum one on my lathe but was worried the weight would make this thing wheelie on the shelf ? Thank God for dollar store kid’s paintbrushes: And then, the next job is figuring out where the engine sits and how little space I’ll have left once it’s in the frame. I’m using the Revell Parts Pack Small Block Chevy, but backdating the trans somewhat to a Ford Toploader. Had to sand down the bellhousing into something resembling an adaptor and then mate the 3D printed trans to that: And finally for today, I’ve been messing with designs for a kinda stylized steel wheel with knock-off centers…I want them to kinda LOOK like steelies with baby moons but also not…still playing with this design but I’ll print some this week and see if I like them. I want the wheels to be little pieces of jewelry in their own right, but not detract from the rest of the car or look TOO out there - just different enough to be interesting. They look cool in chrome in my rendering program, but need to see some real ones next to the car to see how they look… And a quick end-of-day mock-up: More soon, soon as I’ve done more! Thanks for looking!

If it's north of the Bronx, it sounds like upstate to me ?

Great start!! Looks like you’re traveling that same road as I am…I ALMOST went with a Flathead with this too, but I might end up giving it some more mid-60s influences when it comes to paint and details and I figured the SBC was a better choice if I want to end up with something a little closer to the Roth-refreshed Tweedy Pie than the late-50s original. Would like to see more on that build! Dennis Lacy is doing his usual OUTSTANDING work on a T-bucket too right now:

I try and get in a couple of hours a day, minimum - and if I’m not working on a particular thing I still try and achieve SOMETHING, or practice a new skill or even just tidy a little. I challenged myself this year to hit an hour a day of PRODUCTIVE time every single day, rain or shine, and mark off on a calendar when I managed it. I’m on a 90+ day streak right now, and I find that the longer the streak the more I wanna keep working. That’s 90 hours of focused building (or at least, practicing some skill) that I might otherwise have spent on the couch or watching a show or whatever that I wouldn’t have had otherwise probably, and I’ve enjoyed it being a part of my routine But also, I keep remembering something that I saw famed lowrider builder Armando Flores say in a GREAT video - if he has 5 minutes spare to work on SOMETHING, he’ll take it (and his productivity and results speak for themselves). I’ve been conscious of taking any little bits of down-time in my day to try and think “ok, what can I do right now so I’m ready for doing something more later…” Of course, if it ever feels like a JOB I’ll take a break too - I already have a real job and I don’t need a pretend one ?

I’ve got a bunch of unfinished projects on my bench, but this one keeps gnawing away at the back of my brain so here goes… Most people here probably know Roth’s Tweedy Pie T bucket; but it wasn’t really a ROTH build. Bob Johnston built it in the 50s, originally with a Flathead and then later a Small Block Chevy, and Roth ended up buying it, making a few tweaks to fancy it up because he had promised Revell a car for that year and hadn’t built one…and just like that, 11 million replica model kits were born. I’m not building a replica of that car at ALL, but I’m definitely going to be heavily drawing my own inspiration from it. Some more info on the Tweedy Pie here: https://kustomrama.com/wiki/Tweedy_Pie There’s obviously a perfectly good kit to use to build this project - but I don’t have one, so I did some parts-box digging. So, here’s what I’ve got to start with - a Small Block Chevy, some whitewalls and reverse steel wheels that may or may not make the cut, an AMT body, and the one Revell Tweedy Pie part that I WILL use on mine (seeing as how it started this whole train of thought in the first place) - that heavily chopped 32 (34?) truck grill: I also printed a 32 front axle and a few other bits that I may or may not use… First thing I liked about the Tweedy Pie is that wider-than-normal body. That was done on the 1:1 to help it fit over 32 frame rails better, but they had to narrow those significantly anyway for it to work, so I’m doing it for aesthetic reasons only. I like that little body looking a little squarer to improve the proportions a little. Original: Slice and dice’d: I too will use a 32 frame on mine, although honestly it would be easier just to use some square bar…quick wheelbase mock-up on some Post-It’s so I could figure out where to chop, and a parts-box AMT street rod frame as my victim in the background: And much chopping, measuring and gluing later and we have this: Excuse the styrene ‘pins’ - they’re just waiting for the glue to dry to fill a bunch of holes I won’t be using… Quick mock-up with the body on: I need to be careful to leave enough room for the engine - this thing is SHORT… Next job was mounting the axles - using a suicide perch up front with the leaf spring mounting on top of it to drop the nose a little: And the rear mount is a little over-engineered-looking right now but it’ll all be hidden when the body and seat are in place…I can see this little thing being fragile so I’m taking the chance to build in some big beefy mounting points where I can to toughen it up - I learned this year that it sucks when a contest judge picks up your build wrong and breaks it… The banjo rear end is a parts box piece, and the spring is one of the spares from the Atlantis Mooneyes dragster. And that’s about where I got it so far…it’s a cute little frame tho! I’ve left some ‘adjustability’ in the rear end so I can tweak it up and down, but it’ll definitely have some rake either way…next jobs will be some more ‘roughing-in’ of parts to get the look in my head - probably the headlamps and gas tank. Thanks for looking - more soon, soon as I’ve done more!

That seems to be the case here too - the Walmart is 5 mins drive from both a HL AND a Michael’s and had one of these kit displays last Christmas

Need to turn the welder down, is all ? Some amazing beautiful work here - thank you to everyone who posted so far! Feeling suitably inspired to make something of my own this weekend!

Oh nice!! I didn’t know they were getting that one, but I’ve been wanting one of those!

I’m trying to get better at hinging doors - I’ve never been good at hinging ANYTHING, so I watched the F1 race coverage today and did some scribing, hinge bending and careful gluing. Used some micro-magnets to hold them closed, although it’ll need a couple more to get them to align perfectly how I’d like repeatably and consistently

Both spotted in the grocery store’s parking lot this morning - one of those little Slingshot three wheelers, and a cool old 90s Saab. Apparently those Saabs are pretty quick, and take to tuning well!

I’ve tried Elmer’s (the various varieties) Aleene’s Tacky Glue and Modge Podge. Of those, I like the Aleene’s best, personally - the extra stickiness it has compared to the others just means it works better for me. The purple Elmer’s works pretty well too especially where you want a less visible glue joint - with the added bonus that it’s purple when it’s wet and clear when it dries. What I’ve been doing lately though, is using double sided tape designed for scrapbooking. There’s a bunch of different widths available and you can get it in either a masking-tape-like thickness, or something much thicker that helps if you have poor fitting one-piece ‘tub’ shaped one-piece like a lot of the older kits have. It seems to work well, so far - super quick and easy to do, no mess, and stronger than water based glue. Obviously, this trick wouldn’t work on something like a Revell 29 Roadster where there’s nowhere to hide the tape, but it works good for what it works good for! I’ve heard of people using non-fogging superglue (designed for foam) successfully too, and Donn Yost has a video on his YouTube channel where he demonstrates a trick for using regular styrene cement with good results

I did an experiment this year and last year to see what would work best for me, as a builder, to get the most done. Last year, I had a list of everything I wanted to build - about 1 kit per month for twelve months. Some were simpler, some more complex, but I went in with a plan and finished them all. Actually, all twelve and an extra one. This year, I decided to kinda roll with it and see what happens - I wouldn’t put any pressure on myself to build anything in particular, to see if that freedom worked better for ME to get more done. Because, honestly, 12 builds in a year was kinda tiring, and sometimes I had to force myself to work on something even if I didn’t totally feel like it…. This year so far, I think I finished 4 builds, with maybe a couple more to come. The main thing I’ve noticed in this experiment is that there’s a lot of wondering WHAT to work on next, out of the 50+ projects in my head - that lack of a bigger plan for the year has NOT worked for me. I was kind of working on the theory that working on whatever thing I felt like at the time would lead to more enjoyment, and getting more done…but nope…just a bunch of half done things. I kind of suspected that would be the case, but I wanted to take a year to experiment and see what came out of it. Something I did pick up, from a podcast for artists that my wife (a semi-pro artist) was listening to, was that this lack of direction (despite many options) is common amongst ‘creatives’. The show she was listening to recommended lists of ‘someday’ projects, however big or small - ideally with a mix of larger and smaller projects that you’d like to do SOMEDAY but haven’t done yet. Then, when you’re figuring out exactly what to build, you’ve got twenty or thirty (or a hundred) options right there waiting for you, that you’ve probably been working on in your head already. Next year, I’m going back to having a list ?

For that price for a decal sheet, I'd buy the whole kit for $18 at Hobby Lobby instead. Of course, that only works if you're close to a Hobby Lobby...

That's a beautiful build! I love the grenade on the suicide shifter!

Thank you all for the AMAZING show - and thanks to the sponsors for the great raffle, winner's prizes and trophies. I had a BLAST! I'd love to make a meeting some time (hopefully in a couple of months when work slows down some...). Thanks to all of the club too - appreciate the effort you all went to!