The Modeling Hermit

What's weird is that when I brought the site up just now, I'm back to who I'm supposed to be. I don't understand it, but at least I don't have hours of work ahead of me to figure it out.

My children have already been deciding who gets what. It's a little unnerving, and I've told them to please have a little patience.

There are some parts that I can remember, mostly from owning multiple kits of a model, but I've got thousands of parts that I just place in parts bins. I mark a drawer for a certain item, but I never pay much attention to what the item came from. Generally when I'm looking at the builds here, I'm in so much awe craftsmanship, that I hardly even pay much attention to what the builder says went into it. I guess that I would call that jaw drop syndrome.

Thanks for the replies everybody. That was some great information. I had a friend in the Army that had a 74 Olds 98 built as a convertible, but it was shipped to his home, and I never got to see it. I hope somebody compiles a book on "converted" convertibles some time.

The others have said it better than I could, and I agree with them. Keep up the excellent work.

That is a great build.

The "last" American convertibles came off the assembly lines in 1976, but there were still companies that took cars from the factories and built them as convertibles, and the cars were delivered as "new" cars. I had a friend that had a 76 Cordoba convertible back in the early 80s, and we got to talking about the collector's market for such cars in the future. The future for them is here. How have they held up? Are they accepted as "new" car convertibles, or are they just considered as chop jobs? Are they considered as "rare"? Once again I'm only talking about those that went directly from the factory assembly line to the conversion company. If you have any pictures, please share them.

The White Freightliner and moving van trailer are now complete. I finally got a printer set up for decals. The company name is a little humor, courtesy of my wife. I've still got a little learning curve work to do as to color matching. What looked perfect on the computer was and on the decal sheet, turned much lighter after it was applied and dried.

I used to drive a bazaar race car...well actually I drove a race car bazaarly.

I've been setting it to record too. I'm not sure what is with the selection of hosts for these shows. There was a show about trains recently that had an obnoxious host, and I got to the point that I stopped watching it. I'm sure the networks thing that it spices up the show, but like as has been already mentioned, it only serves to make us "truck lovers" look stupid. This show has so much potential; I just hope the host's actions don't kill it. I've been running the episodes and photographing the detail shots with a rather high degree of success.

This is me standing by the docks.

This is based off of the Lindberg Dodge where I scratchbuilt the wrecker section, but it was pretty straightforward. This mid 50s Chevy makes an excellent junkyard wrecker, again with a simple scratchbuilt wrecker body. The boom is from the 34 Ford kit. Good luck.

Tim. Someday you might get the hang of this modeling thing. Seriously, your work is world class, and I appreciate your willingness to not only share it with us, but to teach us how to do this ourselves.

Thanks everybody. You really came through for me.

I just got this email from Round2. It should help clarify things. Douglas, The rumor about future kits being cancelled is simply not true. Nothing has been cancelled. We love the truck kits and they've been great selling items thanks to the dedicated truck modelers like yourself out there. We believe the Road Boss wheel problem can be rectified and will not jeopardize other kit releases that use the same wheels. That said, we currently have no plans for an Autocar release; the Diamond Reo and Fruehauf Exterior Post Van are planned for this year. Regards, John Greczula AMT / MPC / Polar Lights / Auto World It looks like they love us as much as we love them. I will still use this as a warning to myself to be very careful about criticism of kits. One never knows what the fallout may be. This time it was false, but next time... More than that I'll use it as a reminder to wait for source information before expressing concerns.

Thanks Kostas I'd never actually ever heard of the 353 before, and after doing my searches, I was beginning to have more questions related to it. You just answered them. I'm going to do some more research as I do want to build it with the construction fenders, but it sounds like some scratchbuilding may be needed.

My son bought me a model of a Pete 353 today. This is one that I'm not familiar with, and there's very little on the web that covers this model. I would like to tone it down to a serious construction tractor to haul the center drop dump trailer that I'm working on. Does anybody have an good pictures of this in coveralls (work dress)?

I was on another forum, and saw where the complaining about some issues with the spider wheels on the White Road Boss, may lead to AMT round2 to not release the Autocar A64 and the Diamond REO later this year. If that happens we can also kiss off any chances of ever seeing the White Western Star being rereleased. I have not seen any complaining on this forum, but this is a good warning to all of us to be careful what we say about model kits. We as truck modelers, are in an especially bad place, because we have such limited items available to us, and this shows the impact that can be felt from upsetting the companies. I'm hoping they will reconsider their decision. I encourage everybody to contact them and ask them to proceed with the reissues.

It figures that I'd discover these great tips after I've already built mine. Thanks. I'll use them on future builds.

That is looking cool.

That car brings back great memories. I had one back in the mid seventies that was the same exact body style, but was Persian Sand (pink) in color. Thanks for sharing that, and good luck with the build.

It's looking good so far. Thanks for showing all the great detail shots.

I've got to break down and build one of these some time. I've got all the material to do it, but I just keep coming up with other projects. This is a great build, and quite inspirational.

Welcome, and that is an excellent build.

Sometimes one runs across pictures of a truck model that has that "just right" look to it. This is one of those models.