Bernard Kron

Thank you everybody! I'm stoked that you all dig it. These cars have bags of character and the fun in doing them is capturing their style. When it's a subject you're not that familiar with then there's the pleasure (for me, anyway) of doing the research, as well. So I really enjoyed doing this project. It's my second circle track build and they've both been very satisfying, if a little bit daunting because it's a less familiar world for me. After this one I'm even more sure there'll be more in the future. Thanks again for all the nice comments, B.

Thanks to you all for the exceedingly generous comments. Looking back again now as I write this I'm remembering some of the trials and tribulations, mostly because I was trying so many new techniques and subjects. As I've come to expect, somehow the ones I thought would be the most straightforward turned out to be the most difficult, and vice versa. The rat rod, for example, which I thought for sure, as a result of the weathering work and the fact that I have virtually never built anything in this area, actually seemed to build itself. Not only did I enjoy the weathering tremendously, but I seem to have a knack for it. Who knew? On the other hand the funny car, the Pontiac mild kustom, and the '40's Deuce (I have built literally a nearly a couple of dozen of these Revell Deuces over the years), all promised to be as close to kit builds as I ever get. All three, it turned out, had major fit and finish issues and fought me all the way. So it just shows to go 'ya - you never know... Thanks again for your kind words and I hope we all have a happy and rewarding New Year, B.

’32 Ford Fordor Jalopy Racer – Larned, KS. 1958 Several years ago a fine modeler named Dave Zinn gave me a Hendrix resin ’32 Ford Fordor body as a bonus gift during a parts exchange. I always intended to do a jalopy build with it and now I’ve finally gotten around to it. The project was inspired by this terrific web site chronicling the JayCee Speedway in Larned, Kansas, a 1/4 mile track that was active in the 1950's: winfield.50megs.com/tripod/Larned/Larned_Speedway.htm . The body is designed to fit the AMT Deuces so I used an AMT ’32 Ford Phaeton kit as the basis. The hood, chassis and drivetrain are all from that kit with only minor modifications. The frame rails were painted Testors Acryl Gloss Green. The front and rear crash bars were fabricated from styrene rod and sheet, as was the interior roll cage. The interior body structure was also fabricated from styrene strip and sheet. The front wheels and tires are from an AMT ’40 Ford Tudor kit, and the rear tires and wheels are from a Revell ’40 Ford Standard kit with the whitewalls blacked out. The Revell ’40 Ford also provided the radiator. The paint is Duplicolor Wimbledon White on the upper half, the interior and the crash bars and wheels. The lower half of the body is Testors Daytona Yellow lacquer. The numbers and the green molding stripe are decals colored to match the frame rails. The sponsor names are also home-made decals and are fictitious businesses based on the region around Larned. This was great fun to do. I especially enjoyed the research involved and working in a subject that is relatively new to me. Thanx for lookin’, B.

They don't get done better than these. Bravo! Hope to see more in 2017!

Perhaps only one, but as nice a Revell '29 Ford roadster as was shown this past year. Hope to see more of your style in 2017!

Hiya Curt! I went through all 3 albums and I gotta say, another solid year off your bench. The '64 Car Model mag recreation was especially cool, but you are truly the master of post-war racing cars. I suspect that commission work drives some of the output in this style but they all capture the era so well! I hope to see many of these at the NNL West on the 28th. Until then (as you would say), C'Ya, B.

Exquisite every one. You certainly know how to get the most out of a kit! Looking forward to more in 2017.

The year of the Hot Rod for you! Sorry I missed Deuce Dys. I was looking forward to seeing your fine work up close and personal/ Will 2017 be the Year of The Sports Car from you? All the best, B.

Diversity can be a good thing, especially when executed at such a consistently high level. I hope you treat us to more broad samplings from your bench in 2017!

I always look forward to your classic renditions of classic racing cars. Fine kits very well done. I hope to see lots more in 2017!

Your crisp rendition shows this classic kit to advantage! Your fine model room should yield many more.

I always admire fine examples of the factory stock style, and these are them! LOL I especially like the two convertibles. Gorgeous!

What better way to show us all how it's done than these iconic examples of "early iron"? They dp indeed "set the standard". From exquisite detail, color and texture to immaculate photography your work is always a delight to behold. The 806 in particular is perhaps the most beautiful car of the 1500cc voiturette GP era. Incredibly low and sleek, it would the basis for comparison for racing car beauty for decades to come. You captured it so well! We are so glad to see you post up your jewels from 2016 and we all hope for your successful recovery in 2017.

2016 was kind of an experimental year for me, trying new subjects like bobber pickups, funny cars, 60’s mild customs and rat rods, and new techniques like high-bolster upholstery, weathering, bare metal finishes and elaborate candy apple panel paint jobs using home-made decals. As a result things would sometimes go wrong and a few projects got left undone, but I managed to finish a half-dozen with 2 more almost done but due for completion this month in time for NNL West on the 28th. Here they are, my 6 completions for 2016. Thanx for lookin’, and all best wishes for a happy and fulfilling 2017, B. ’41 Plymouth Barn-Find Gasser ’29 Ford A-Bucket Rat Rod 2016 NNL West Theme Build Mustang Funny Car ’62 Pontiac Catalina Mild Custom ‘40s Style High-Bolstered Deuce Dry-Lakes Roadster ’34 Ford Bare-Metal Bobber

Ron, you've mastered this style as few have ever done. You always nail both the detail and the "flavor" of the Box Art. The immaculate execution adds focus and clarity to the final product.

I’m on the home stretch now. The suspension, just the stock setup from the AMT kit, wheels and tires are painted and glued in place. The suspension is finished out in gloss and matte black and dark shades of Testors Metalizer paints. The front wheels are AMT ’40 Ford front steelies and the rears Revell ’40 Ford rears. The front tires are standard AMT Firestones and the rears are Revell ’40 Ford units with the whitewalls painted matte black. One detail you’ll notice is that I built a rear bumper after all. I had commented that Larned cars didn’t seem to run them, which struck me as odd given how heavily built up the front bars and roll cages were. Well, more careful examination of the old pictures show that the cars all did have bumpers, it’s just that they aren’t the massive structures you see at the front. So I fabricated a prototypical setup from styrene rod and strip and installed at the back of the chassis. The bodywork is painted now. The upper half is Duplicolor Wimbledon white, as are the interior and the nerf bars. The frame is painted a medium dark green, a Testors Acryl color. I’ve begun the graphics. The companies are fictional businesses from the area around the Larned track. Great Bend, Kansas is the major town in the area, about 23 miles from Larned. The graphics fonts and layout are based on photos of Larned cars. All the cars wore a number on each side and one on the rear. The layout photo below is a Photoshop mockup and final colors and fonts will be determined when I actually print the decals. Probably tomorrow. Not shown is the motor which is about done and ready for installation. It’s the Ford Flathead block from the kit with AMT ’40 Ford stock heads and intake, finished in the traditional Ford zinc chromate green. Still shooting for a 2016 completion! Thanx for lookin’, B.

Thanks everyone! I'm really diggin' that you all are diggin' it... Here's a quick update. I had a paint failure when trying to apply the stripes using paint and masking. This damp, cold winter weather always makes painting a trial. I landed up having to repaint the hood. I decided to ,do all the second color areas (stripes, headrest panel) using. decals. I completed the decal artwork and began decal applications today. Still hoping to get this done in 2016 but it may not make it... Thanx for lookin', B.

Santa put this under the tree: Rodder's Journal bound Collector's Edition Volume II: Issues 5-8. I started buying it on newsstands around Issue 9 so this probably puts me close to a full set since Santa already got me Volume I of the bound collector's editions several years ago. I guess I'll have to go back and check what might be missing. I finally stopped buying it on the newsstands around 15 years ago and subscribed. Some years Santa get's me a renewal.... This year was an even bigger treat! Ton's of cool stuff including things like the discovery (issue 5) and eventual restoration (issue 8) of the original Hirohota Merc, the introduction of the Brookeville Deuce Roadster (issue 8) (in bare metal, natch), the Albertson Olds digger, Stones, Woods & Cook Swindler A restored, etc., etc. etc. The graphics have changed a lot over the years. Lots of bright colors, wild typesetting and page layout hijinks, Photoshop trick effects, special paper inserts and a gatefold in every issue. The mag is far more conservative today. The cars, too, look different with more of a post-billet late 90's vibe than the purist retro approach they have today.

Thanx everyone. I'm glad you are all diggin' it. It's Big Fun for me. I really am enjoying all the research and fabrication. One of the members on the TRaK board, Stu Neil, questioned if using the AMT Phaeton interior bucket was such a good idea given the massive roof opening and the door cutout. He thought it might make the bodywork look too thick. I had to agree and I decided to completely re-do my approach to the interior. I started by cutting out the sides of the interior buck, leaving only the firewall and cowl panels. After gluing this vestigial piece to the floor board I fabricated two curved extension pieces to fill the gap between the floorboard and the body sides. Next I made a couple of interior side panels. I researched ’32 Ford interior body structures on the web and was only able to find detailed pictures of a Phaeton shell, although I think the basic approach must be similar to the Fordor. Combining that with the structures of earlier Tudors and Fordors I came up with what should pass for some interior detail. After fabricating the side panels I epoxied them in place and then added additional strips of styrene epoxied directly to the body shell to simulate the rest of the structure. Here’s a summary of that work: I was also able to complete the front nerf bar setup. Common practice on the Larned cars was to use later series, and larger, radiators. In this case I used an AMT ’40 Ford piece and fabricated the “bully bars” from .100 styrene rod. While not quite as elaborate (and agricultural!) as some jalopies sported, this design was fairly prototypical of these cars. I also include some wire mesh between the radiator and the bars. Interestingly, the Larned cars almost never had rear nerf bars or side bars even though they had massive roll cages and front protection. Here’s some a summary of this part of the project: Now on to the suspension and motor. Then final bodywork, paint and decals. Still shooting for December ‘31st to get ‘er done… Thanx for lookin’, B.

Looks very tight and put together, all of one piece, rather than the usual stretched out r**-**d stance. And yet its plenty low and dramatic, perhaps especially so because the look is so well integrated. The '29 cowl marries surprisingly well with the Deuce. You may have hit upon a winning combination here! I like the careful use of metallic shades, especially on the upper part of the motor and on the roll-cage. Very convincing. I used those AMT '34 Ford wheels and tires on my r**-**d build earlier this year. They really are the hot ticket for this type of car. Congrats on another fine model!

The circle track oriented Scale Racecar Lobby board has a whole section devoted to The Early Years featuring a lot of Jalopy style stock-based dirt track cars. While perusing its many fine models I got to thinking about doing a 50’s era middle-America stock car jalopy. . I love the research part, particularly when it involves a subject like this one where I have much to learn. Thus began my obligatory web-cruise which culminated in finding this terrific web site chronicling the JayCee Speedway in Larned, Kansas, a 1/4 mile track that was active in the 1950's: http://winfield.50megs.com/tripod/Larned/Larned_Speedway.htm I was particularly inspired by this picture: That is one sanitary jalopy. Beautifully constructed and ready on race day morning, Sunday, April 27th, 1958. Pictured are the driver, Gene Coffman, and the car's owner and sponsor, Mrs. Clarice Palmer. One thing that has impressed me is the very high level of construction quality on many of these cars. You only appreciate it if they were fortunate enough to be photographed before being raced. Afterwards their condition tended to disguise the fact! The rules at Larned appear to restrict motors and suspension to stock or mild hop ups as far as I can tell. It reminded me that many moons ago Dave Zinn included a resin Hendrix '32 Ford Fordor based on the AMT Deuces as a bonus gift in a parts swap I did with him. The perfect base for my first Jalopy build. The mechanicals will come from the AMT '32 Ford Phaeton kit. I'm guessing the wheels and the upper part of the body were white, the beltline some dark color and the lower body a light color, but not white. Probably yellow. I'm planning on doing my car with a white upper, green beltline and yellow lower. I’ll do homemade decals with sponsor names and numbers. It won’t be a strict replica but the inspiration will be clear. First off, probably very much like was done at the time, I cut open the roof and cut up the AMT ’32 Ford Phaeton interior bucket to get my bearing on space and dimension issues. The interior will get some panel detail at a later stage. Then I roughed in the roll cage to the basic AMT Deuce chassis. It’s .010 styrene rod. It's clear these cars were built for some very rough driving. Besides open roofs, most of the Larned cars had cutaway passenger side doors for easy exit in the inevitable crash. For the same reason I noticed there's generally no diagonal bracing across the top of the roll cage, most likely to allow the driver to readily crawl out if the car got dumped on its side. But most cars did have side bracing tubes in the middle of the doors. The roll cage was completed accordingly. I decided to cut up the passenger side of the body and the interior bucket. The hard part was making sure the body cutout, the interior bucket cutaway, and the side brace bars all lined up. I think I pulled it off. I'm wrestling with the front nerf bars (bully bars?) right now. That and the bracing for the ’40 Ford radiator and hood panel will be the next major challenge. After that building the motor and setting up the chassis should be pretty straight forward. Once everything is trial fit and ship-shape it’ll be time for paint and graphics. Things are moving fairly quickly but I don’t know if this will be done in time to be my final 2016 build. Thanx for lookin’, B.

Interesting. Obvious really, if you think about it. I think more than anything Massa retired because there were no competitive drives available in F1 pre-Rosberg so he's ready. Ironically this would be Massa's second reprive from retirement, as there were strong rumours of his retirement when he left Ferrari until Williams realized they could use his considerable talent and experience as part of their re-build efforts. But you have to assume that the Bottas deal is really on the front burner now, which it should be because Mercedes has always needed a top, top driver as Rosberg's replacement given the ultra-short notice. Anything less, and Wehrlein would be less, and their Championship effort would take a serious setback. At Williams £8.4 million would go a long way. They would probably get to keep a fair amount of it relative to what they would save not paying Bottas vs. enticing Massa. Massa himself is still, on his day, at least as fast as Bottas and, of course, completely familar with everything at Williams including the 2017 car. Besides, as one of the bona fide Nice Guys on Planet F1, he could be a great mentor to young (18 year old) Lance Stroll. Bottas himself is a cool customer and would readily stand up to Hamiltons mind games, no problem, IMHO. Of course, as I mentioned earlier, the ultimate Comeback would be for Rosberg to un-retire himself... Meanwhile Mercedes is under pressure from another side as Mercedes design chief Paddy Lowe may be set to move to Williams. It seems Toto Wolff kept putting off renewing Lowe's contract, and now, with just days to go to the end of the year, Lowe finds himself in the unque position of being within the 6-month window that would allow him to switch teams without the usual 6-month "Garden Leave" where staff is paid to not work by their old teram to prevent data transfer to the new team. This makes Lowe extremely valuable and the rumour is that Lance Stroll's family money has much to do with Williams offer which seems to have been prompted by feelings Lowe has that Mercedes was perhaps taking him a bit for granted... It makes one wonder what it is about Mercedes' team culture that has prompted Rosberg to retire and Lowe to look elsewhere. Tough times for Mssrs. Wolff and Lauda, no doubt. And Lewis Hamilton, too... AND NOW, THIS JUST IN... (courtesy of Motorsports.com - emphasis added)

Thanks Mark! The roll hoop is inside the headrest, as it was in '57's Corvette SS. Hiya Curt. It's not exactly full detail so I'd better! Our friend Raul just bought a house this weekend so I'm not sure where I'll stay if they're moving by then. I'm blushing, Bill. Glad you dig it. I'm a little tense about putting the multi-piece body together come assembly time. I keep reminding myself that this is a curbside and there are a lot of things that would be routine on a full detail build that are M.I.A. on this one. That said, it only means you have to stay focused on what’s left and get it right, ‘cause that’s all you’ve got to work with. So, I’ve been working on the interior areas such as they are. The driver’s compartment will be a stripped down version of the kit interior. The set-back of the driver’s bucket seat required cutting a relief hole in the rear panel of the interior. I also fabricated a blanking panel behind the grill opening because it’s all too easy to see the tires and interior surfaces otherwise. I’ve gotten the bodywork completed. I added panels to the side of the headrest to widen it slightly and create a curved style element to highlight the fin. I also removed material from the bottom of the headrest so it conformed more precisely to the rear deck. The result is that it now sits about even with the top of the bubble windshield. Sanding and filling is complete and the primer and base color (Duplicolor Wimbledon White) are down. The car will get blue racing stripes applied where the chrome stripes would have been. I plan to do the stripes and decals for the front panel first and use that to determine the graphics content and layout for the rear deck area. The fin will probably be highlighted in blue with the curved panels on the headrest in white. The graphics will include the Pontiac name in a simple bold black font echoing that used in 1956 in Pontiac promotional material. There’ll be tire, fuel trade decals and some sort of legend referring to the suitably hopped up “Strato-Streak” V8. Below are some rough and ready bench-top pics of where I am at this point. Thanx for lookin’, B.

Mooneyes Mania!!! Very nice stuff. Could you tell us more about them? Some of them, like the kart streamliner and the street pickup, I can figure out. But some of the others, especially the narrow streamliner with the wheel pants on all 4 corners, really require a proper description! Inquiring minds want to know...

Tim Boutte's elegantly simple approach I linked above (to repeat: http://www.customcarchronicle.com/forums/topic/1949-mercury-in-scale/ ) leaves the roof intact and relies virtually exclusively on surprisingly small amounts of additional styrene strip for detail filling. Plus it looks great!