Bainford

I agree with the others; It certainly looks great in photos. Nice work. I'm looking forward to starting mine.

Chad's typical eye for style.

Got to love small-bore screamers.

Welcome to the forum, David. Lots of great people here willing to assist with advice. Cheers.

SAE issue 12, March/April 1981.

That's how I ended up with three Revell Jag XKE kits (when I only wanted one).

How long was the tape in place? I think the blue would have been sufficiently cured for what you were doing. I have had a similar experience twice, once on Tamiya lacquer and once on Color Match lacquer, both times with Tamiya tape. It leaves an alligator skin texture in the paint. Perhaps it has a similar effect on their acrylic, too. Tamiya tape is great stuff, I use it a lot, but I've learned to not keep it on more than a day or so (actually I limit an application to two hours if I can). A real pain for some jobs. For straight two-tones and stripes, etc, it is good to remove any masking tape anyway, as soon as possible after the paint sets up, which for airbrushed lacquers is only a few minutes. And never put it a body in the dehydrator with tape on it. To address the damage, I had decent luck with polishing out the texture with micromesh pads and Tamiya polish (if there is sufficient paint thickness left), but under very close inspection some evidence still remains.

Very cool T-Bolt. These look all-business with steelies. You nailed the proper vibe. Nice work.

Good looking Mustang. Nice paint work.

I'm with you, brother. I don't have any tips that would cure that particularly nasty example, but I feel your pain. The material most flexible tires are made of does not trim well. Even a fresh xacto blade only does a mediocre job on most tires. I have found that some materials trim cleanly with a new razor blade where an xacto blade fails. That doesn't help with the space between the treads, though. Another idea, and probably your best bet, is to sand or file a flat spot across the offending area, removing the tread, and place that part of the tire down when displayed. I do this on all my builds, and it really improves the appearance of the finished build on the shelf. It gives the appearance of the tire bearing weight, and gives the model a 'solid' feel. Be sure to keep the flat spot flat and square.

Strip it down to bare plastic and then have a look at it. Tips on paint stripping here;

Lots of good advice here. Another helpful tool can be made from a small curved knife blade, bent and trimmed as shown below. I took an Excell rounded blade and clamped the pointed end in a vice, heated it with a pen torch, and bent the blade at an angle. Then I ground away the cutting edge to make the blade less bulky and provide clearance, leaving just about 3/32" of cutting edge at the tip. This allows me to get the blade down in between body features, or into low spots of the body contours while keeping the cutting edge level with the surface being trimmed. Be sure to clamp the cutting end of the blade in the vice when heating so the jaws can sink the heat and prevent the blade from losing its temper ( no one wants a blade with a bad temper 😁). This modified blade has been extremely handy around the bench, perfect for many hard to access trimming and scraping jobs, trimming features on the floor of interior tubs, etc.

Great conversion. It's not every day you see a Cosworth Vega, and such a good looking one at that. Love the little twin-cam. Very nice work.

Nice looking Dart.

Welcome to the forum, Daniel. That is one mighty impressive build. Cheers.

Welcome to the forum, Daniel. Mighty impressive builds. Cheers.

Welcome back to the hobby, Bob. IMC kits were not readily available in my area when growing up, but I loved the 60s Revell kits and their 70s dragsters and funny cars over AMT and MPC for the same reasons. I think new members have to make 25 posts before they are no longer reviewed. Start visiting various parts of the forum and making comments, and you will cover 25 posts pretty quickly. Cheers.

Colour me skeptical. I envision Days Of Blunder for the open wheel crowd. The story line is uninspired drivel; Young driver shows huge promise, accident takes him out, spends career wading in the quagmire of second and third tier racing, finds new meaning late in life as a mentor for a new driving prodigy. Yawn. Combine that with the usual perceived need to create contrived, dramatic action scenes. By all appearances, typical Hollywood wind-up. The reason Rush, as a story, was so good is because is a real story. One of the countless real stories in motorsport history that are incredibly interesting and compelling. As for a Hollywood crafted yarn, I'll wait for it to show up on Late Night Movies in a couple years.

A couple years ago I parted out one of those Monogram E-Types and retained the body shell for just that purpose, and just recently compared it to the Revell body. The Monogram (Aurora) roof may not be perfect, but much closer to correct than the Revell body. It certainly seems to have a much more proper shape. But I had forgot one crucial thing, the Monogram kit is 1/25 scale while the Revell kit is 1/24. And indeed, the Monogram body is significantly narrower than the Revell body. This would be a tough roof swap at the best of times, but being too narrow will probably take it out of contention. Mind, I have not ruled it out completely, widening the Monogram roof, but I'm sure it will be more work than it's worth, with a relatively good chance the swap won't be successful, anyway. YMMV.

Tamiya Fine polishing compound applied with a cotton swab would clean most of that up. But as Les says, much of it looks like chrome foil will cover it.

Welcome back, George.

An interesting little read, Alan. Thanks for posting. I dig this quote from the kit instructions; “A builder of a Monogram kit strives to be a GOOD builder. Each model is far better than his previous one because he has more patience and spends a few extra moments on each detail. Everybody admires his work and respects his ability. Do a good job and you will be proud of your ships.”

That's cool! Nailed the Cuba vibe.

This is shaping up to be one cool looking Mustang.

For over a year now, I can't seem to resize photos when posting them. I can resize them when drafting the post, and the photos do reduce, but when I submit the post, the photos return to their original size. This is true of photos I have taken myself, and photos copied from the internet. Does anyone else have this problem? Any suggestions on how to correct this?