Bernard Kron

Thanx again guys. Glad I can provide some inspiration. Modelbldr Tom, that's nice work on your '49 grill. It's slimmer and lighter looking than the modified '51 grill I used. I also think that resin tends to add thickness to most pieces, something I had to compensate for when I used my Modelhaus grill. I trimmed the bumper splashpan like you did. Anyhow, once you're done... - Allcad or replate? Also, those tunneled headlights are really fine. Are you using aluminum tubing for the buckets? I started a couple of projects a few years back where I also modified some '49 grills. On this one I lowered and simplified the stock grill to fit in the AMT custom grill surround. I landed up thinning the rolled pan a bit to go with the lighter look. I landed up pinching the chassis for a '50 convertible mild custom so it's still sitting in the box... This second one was modified to incorporate rod lamps in the corners. The car was intended to be a road racer with a Weber carbed Ford small block under the hood. Again, sitting in its box contributing parts to other builds and waiting for my return... Someday...

Now that's what I'm talkin' about, Brad. Especially the '53 Ford Pickup and the full-custom '50 Ford. Nice stuff!

Thanks Cliff.

Personally I've always struggled with this style. I've never felt I was "loose" enough to really get it right. Also, it's far more techically demanding that many imagine it is... Here are a few of my modest attempts:

The term as much as anything refers to an international conception of USA rock 'n' roll and rod 'n' custom culture - sort of the rats 'n' tats thing.. If you do an image search for "Kustom Kulture" here's what you'll find at the top of the first page (remember that Google image searches are actually text based so these are the most relevant images associated with the text string, not the images themselves). From New Zealand - "Small Online Buisness based in NZ, We have been running from home, online specialising in Rockabilly, 50's/60's Punk Rock Clothing & Accessories. Myself & Partner decided to start up this business here in NZ as it is a hard type of style to source (from experience) so we decided to find wholesalers & bring in clothing ourselves." From Germany: USA (SoCal): Japan: The movement had its inception in the late 80's and early 90's when the works of Ed Roth and Kenny Howard (Von Dutch) caught the fancy of the art gallery crowd in Southern California...

Thanks everyone! I was inspired by reading the description of the grill on the Modelhaus site (no pictures, of course...) and when I received the piece it was pretty much as I hade hoped. The visor was a detail I added to go with the primer and add a touch of funk since the grill looked so slick. I'm glad you all like the result.

Thanx! All done now. The finished build is Under Glass here: http://www.modelcarsmag.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=101710&hl= Hope you dig it.

Slammed Customized '49 Ford Coupe in Gray Primer I started this project intending it for the primer CBP on the TRaK board but kept thinking I might go for a glossy paint job. In the end it told me to stay in primer, so here it is. AMT '49 Coupe slammed 7+ scale inches all around, mainly kit parts except for the following changes: Chassis: lowered 7.5 scale inches front and rear using offset spindles at the front and lowering blocks at the rear. Bodywork: Modelhaus resin '51 Ford customized grill with single plain bar (bullets removed) and smoothed bumpers. Frenched headlights. Hood, deck and doors shaved. Scratch built visor from styrene strip and rod. AMT Kit custom rear rolled pan, license plate molding,bumpers and taillights. Scratch built exhaust tips from flattened and shaped aluminum tubing. Kit supplied spotlights. Wheels and Tires: Parts box sourced front white walls, Revell '53 Cadillac bullet sombrero hubcaps, AMT kit rear tires with hand painted whitewalls. The wheels are from my parts box, the worst I could find since they'll never be seen... Interior: Modified from AMT kit with scratch built bolsters and homemade decals for leopard skin patterned portions. Paint: Duplicolor Gray Primer Sealer. Interior finished in in Duplicolor Yellow and Tamiya Semi Gloss black. Interior upholstered surfaces cleared with testors Dullcote. Thanx for lookin', B.

A Klassy Kontemporary street rod! This came out very nicely indeed. Even the modern oversized wheels and low-profile tires make sense in the context of the color choice and stance. So few of these types of cars "add up" and too often have odd and conflicting design elements. But this one come together very well and looks pleasing to the eye. Bravo!

Thanx guys! I'm solidly in the throes of final assembly, now, so here are some final detail pics as I start to button things up. The hood took quite a bit of fettling with the curvature of the grill requiring some detail sanding of the underside of the molding at the front of the hood. The custom bumper setup from the AMT kit is now installed. It should look pretty good once the license plate is installed and the exhaust tip positioned. And an overhead shot showing the leopard skin package tray peaking through the rear window. I hope to have this done by the weekend. Thanx for lookin', B.

I wasn't sure how the interior would go over but most responses have been positive. A friend of mine says it screams "Peg Bundy"! I think I'm on the home stretch, after some more fabrication and a long period of foiling, including the visor. I made some exhaust tips by flattening and filing some aluminum tubing. The chassis and motor are completed, the grill and skirts are glued into place and I began work on the hood. Shouldn't be too long now... Thanx for lookin', B.

When I was a little boy we had a Renault Dauphine and it came with a crank hole and a crank in the tool kit.

Thanks everyone! This is turning into a somewhat “experimental” project even though the basic build is pretty straightforward with a minimum of bodywork and paint issues. I guess the simplicity of the whole thing has tempted me into trying out a few ideas I had on the back burner. On the simple and basic side of things the chassis is painted out and ready for the suspension and exhaust systems. The undercarriage and floorpan are painted in Testors Metalizer Gunmetal with black frame rails and suspension. The engine has been built and detailed. Nothing special to report here, just the kit Cadillac motor with tri-power and a scratch built coil. One thing I was concerned about was mounting the Modelhaus customized ’51 Ford grill. During the mockup phase I used a water-soluble temporary adhesive to glue it directly to the bodywork. I had shaved the grill pan to get a nice snug fit but I was concerned about gluing the grill to the paintwork when it came to final assembly. The paint will be matte gray primer and any glue residue would permanently mark the paint. So I came up with a pair of mounting tabs that positively locate the grill shell. I’m hoping I can mount the grill with only glue applied to the tabs and still get a an accurate alignment. I took another swing at the visor. I epoxied a piece of flower wire to the underside. This is a flexible wire used in flower displays that provides rigidity but is easily formed, which allowed me to shape the visor into a curve to match the roof contour. Since the picture below was taken I has a swing at foiling it but the BMF I had was starting to crinkle on me and I didn’t like the result. So I’ve stripped it and will take another crack at it using a fresh sheet. Perhaps the most “experimental” thing about this build is turning out to be the interior. I had originally intended to buy some Scale Motorpsorts upholstery decals. Then I began thinking about it and realized I could make my own and gain more control over the scale and pattern of it. I use Photoshop a lot and it has a feature where you can fill an area with a repeating pattern (called, oddly enough, Pattern Overlay…). There are literally thousands of patterns available as freeware on the internet so I downloaded a set of animal furs and skins, everything from bears and mouse fur to tigers, snakes and lizards. I thought a nice garish leopard skin pattern would go nicely on my primered, slammed, skirted and visored Shoebox. The first step was to create a basic pattern and scale it to the size of the interior. Then I cut patterns for the areas I would “upholster” and scanned them into my computer as transparent Photoshop layers which I gave white outlines. These I laid over my pattern. The result was a graphic that I would print over white decal paper. Then I cut and shaped some styrene strips to form bolsters for the seats. Here is a photo of the basic yellow interior with the leopard skin decals applied before I glued the black styrene strip bolster shapes into place. One thing that shows all too clearly is the harsh, hard look of the glossy decal stock. And finally the completed interior. Besides the strong black accents of the bolsters, a coating of Testors Dullcote really tied together the surfaces and made the whole thing look far more natural. Not shown here was a test install in the light grey primered body. The yellow and black against the primer looks pretty sharp. I’m excited to see what the final effect, with chrome trim and glass, will be. So that’s it so far. Next up is completing the chassis and then the BMF. At which poin I can get to the relatively simple task of final assembly. It’ll be a relief to get past all these subassemblies and see this funky Shoebox up on its wheels and down in the weeds where it belongs! Thanx for lookin’, B.

Super nice work. I did one of these Revell 3-windows last fall and they are definitely the odd man out with respect to the rest of series. I had to constantly adjust for their incompatibility with the other Revell 1/25th Deuces when kitbashing.

That's actually ideal, IMHO. The Halibrand Quick Change would represent one extreme, a kind of of retro-bling element, while the Dana is another, a sort of oddly bland contemporary detail. The Ford 9" kind of splits the difference with a hot rodding evergreen that has been with us for many,decades. A balanced solution to the mini-storm raised by the Dana and the final touch of what will be, no-doubt, a classic and successful offering. Despite all the AMT '29 roadster kits I've horded, I can't wait... Also, if I'm not mistaken, the diff cover is on the chrome tree. Nice touch!

Thanks so much, Jim. I really like the fineness of detail and the multiple build options. It reminds me of the recent Slingster offering. It makes me all the more frustrated that they didn't include an Old School rear suspension option. But I'm just being greedy. This looks to be a marvelous kit.

If afraid I was guilty of ignoring the OP. I reacted to the ensuing discussion rather than the video. The conversation with Musk is very interesting in that it embodies a kind of asocial smugness, as if we would all be better off if we were coddled by technology. So when they have the little banter at the end about "I just hope there's something left for us humans to do" and the fact that they would both rather drive their own personal Teslas in "insane mode", it's really rather elitist of them since they would reserve that kind of unregulated self-control for themselves. Appliances for the masses, sports cars for you and me... except that Musk held that perhaps non-autonomous cars would eventually be banned. But the things I listed earlier still hold. The world they envision in their discussion is expensive, complex and concentrates control of the technologies into relatively few hands. Perhaps they sense how untenable that may prove to be and that in turn would explain why Musk was so anxious to emphasize how quickly they can bring this vision to market. For example he represented that there would be a delay before autonomous cars would be allowed to be unleashed by regulators - a whole 3 years of delay, as if that were a long time!

Some brief observations: 1) Technology has been plateauing for some time now with marginal productivity gains becoming increasingly small. So, even though Moore's law (that the number of transistors in a dense integrated circuit has doubled approximately every two years) still seems to hold, it's impact on the real world appears to be diminishing. This is equally true in other areas such as biotechnology. "Technology" as the word is used today is often trivial and marginal in its social impact (i.e. Apple Watch and self-driving cars). But it was only very recently that this same "technology" was enormous in its impact - for example the Internet as we know and use it today was barely extant 20 years ago. So the roll-off in impact has been surprisingly steep. 2) "Technology" has become quite expensive and complex to operate and maintain, and is often surprisingly crude and unsophisticated. We seem to have entered a kind of steam age. Even the simplest App seems to require relatively large teams of coders and programmers to keep it going. Where is the elegance and simplicity? 3) Much of modern technology is at risk of being unaffordable (i.e. high-speed internet, wireless voice/data and cable TV, etc.) and recent users are increasingly exiting the market by either cancelling services or simply stealing them. I think there is a cynical over-reliance on the eventual benefits of the network effect to justify what are nothing more than rent-seeking monopolies full of wasteful excess (i.e. iTunes, app stores and cloud-based software). There is also a well-established pattern of depending on economic subsidies to rush "not ready for prime time" business models to market in the hope of capturing "first to market" advantages. 4) Elon Musk is either incredibly foolish or incredibly courageous in his post-Paypal business endeavors. He's really "rolling the dice": Tesla, for example, is based not only on manufacturing attractive and well marketed electric automobiles, but on the implementation of a vast infrastructure of fast-charge facilities and rapidly evolving battery technologies, all of which he seems to be willing to take on within his own company, relying in the near-term on green energy subsidies to get him to critical mass. His space transport business, SpaceX, is based on a similar structure where he is dependent on government support in the near term while investing heavily in what he hopes will be breakthrough technologies. So, while the current Tesla models are largely for the well-off and self-indulgent with an environmentalist bent he is explicit in reaching far beyond this. Whether it's Tesla or SpaceX, he's hangin' it out there. But the observations I've made about recent trends in technology, if they're true, are certainly not helping him.

Thanks for all the responses. So overall BMF does age and the deterioration manifests itself in both adhesion problems and orange peel. Orange peel is the problem that has suddenly appeared in my batch. It's visible on the foil itself (though fairly faintly), even before I apply it. It wasn't there for my last project. Based on the comments above I suspect it's too old. As Steve says "...as long as it hasn't been laying around for 2 years, it never fails to work great for me". I'm afraid that the effect of using BMF is too important to ignore it outright out of frustration. But making sure it's relatively fresh and well cared for, I suspect, goes a long way to getting good results.

A few years back I purchased what turned out to be a bad sheet of BMF Chrome. It had a wrinkled surface and didn't lay down smooth when I applied it. It turned out this was a common problem at the time and the manufacturer eventually got their act together and came out with a fresh run which they marked "New Improved", although in fact they had simply returned the product to it's prior level of quality. I bought a sheet of the "New Improved" stuff which I have been using ever since - probably about 3 to 4 years I reckon. The other day I was applying some and I noticed I could no longer expect a smooth surface. It was starting to look slightly "crinkled", no matter how much I burnished it, similar to the bad sheet I had bought. Until recently this sheet had given me satisfactory results. Does BMF go bad over time? I have done nothing special in terms of storage, simply leaving it in the original envelope it comes in and storing it vertically so that it isn't subjected to pressure from other things on top of it. It's not very expensive and I get a long term of use out of it so I'll buy a fresh sheet, but I was wondering if any of you would have information about this. Thanx, B.

I mainly use Tamiya X-31 Titan Gold. It has just enough yellow-gold in it to be easily picked out in scale without looking like gold-colored bling. If I want a more subdued look I will use either Testors Acryl Jet Exhaust which has a darker, more brownish tone when applied to a small part like a carb. When applied to larger parts like wheels it looks more like the old Dow anti-oxidant poating applied to Halibrand magnesium wheels. For an even darker color, but with nice bronze metallic highlights I recommend Testors Metalizer Burnt Metal applied with a brush from the small jars and, after letting it dry overnight to cure, buffing it with a soft cloth. Tamiya Titan Gold: Testors Acryl Jet exhaust: Testors Metalizer Burnt Metal On the Blower end plates (the carbs are Tamiya Titan Gold and the blower case is Metalizer Magnesium)

Classic! The Revell Deuces always benefit from a little more rake at the front end. That's the key to this Pinkee-built 3-window, especially evident in the rear 3/4 view And frankly, that's all it needs. The rest is simple and pure and comes across wonderfully. Likewise on your build as well. Looking forward to seeing this progress.

Parts Pack madness viewed through an Instamatic. Revell chromed dragster chassis with the body painted black directly onto the chrome... All the paint on these models was hand brushed enamel. I had just discovered the wonders of rubbing compound and Simoniz. Glory be! They can be dated from whenever these models and parts packs were first available. The transporter thingy was made from card stock and sprue and the motorcycle barely visible is a Revell (?) Parts Pack Triumph (?) with the road racing body shell. I have earlier pictures of an Aurora (?) Cunningham and Ferrari but they're far too small and blurry to reproduce here.

Nice work! The front 3/4 view shows a very promising stance. I keep meaning to do the tubular "k-member" adaptation from the Phantom Phaeton to the Revell chassis. It's never done but seems so obvious to get a truly contemporary rod chassis. What are the issues you encountered. I also have noticed on several of your Deuces that you've narrowed the front tires and/or wheels in some manner. What is it you actually do? The result is invisible and it addresses a cmomon flaw in so many contemporary rod models I have seen. Looking forward to more, more, more...

Thanx Richard. Regarding color, I'm debating between going with a light grey primer which was my original inetion, a suede tinted primer look, perhaps in a pale green, or a full blown candy paint job, in which case I'm thinking Candy Red with a Gold roof. Oddly, some decision about the interior will probably determine my choice on the exterior. Regardless of the color choice, including the grey primer, all the trim will be properly foiled. Meanwhile, I'm having serious computer issues between the MCM forums board and my IP Address. I'm having to resort to connecting through alternate IP Addresses (I'm on a VPN as I attempt to post this), so I don't know when I'll be able to update this next. Hopefully we can get this resolved soon..