LOBBS

That pewter color makes that 'Bird sinister.

Lookin good, I like the blue on tan interior and how you tied the black inserts in the interior with the wheels.

Love the idea of flat black on black. I've got a pro-touring '69 Camaro in the works that I was planning on using that scheme with.

Man, you are just nailing this. I loved the illustration and you're definitely on target with the body mods, stance, wheels, everything.

Unbelievable scratch building you got going on here. Love the orange and maroon paint scheme.

I'm really digging the silver and black treatment with just enough chrome to pull it all together. Great eye as always Marc.

I have to admit in the past I was guilty of pretty much everything Mark's posted here. Recently though through life changes, a move to a new place, soul searching, you name it I've actually gone the opposite direction and done a massive purge of the majority of my collection. I've narrowed down my current to-do list to about 6-12 projects and the accompanying wares from my kitbashing stash to complete those. I've never had a stash numbering in the hundreds like some here but I've had enough to make my wife uncomfortable. Most of the kits that I've sold recently have been to guys from work and/or their kids in an effort to get them interested in the hobby. This weekend a couple of them that I convinced to go to the Heartland Nats are coming over to dig through the 30-40 kits worth of parts that I've got in totes. If I can catch them while they're amped up from the show and introduce them to the joys of kitbashing I think I'll get them hooked. I've also got a few kits set back for my oldest boys to get their feet wet with now that they're coming of age and interested. As far as future acquistions go, at some point I came to the realization that time was a more valuable commodity than money. I'm at a place where I can, within reason, invest the financial means necessary into a project. However, I've really got to love the subject to be willing to part with the time that it would incur to bring that project to frutition. That being said, if Revell would finally get around to tooling up a new '67 Camaro or '67-72 Chevy pickup I'd be beating down the doors to the nearest hobby shop.

I step away from the hobby periodically when work and family need more of my attention. With four kids and a stay at home wife, I've been working 50-70 hours a week for the majority of my adult life. When we moved earlier this year, to stay within budget and get the bedrooms that we needed, we had to give up quite a bit in the way of "play" space for Sarah and I's hobbies. Facing the prospect of not having a consistent work space and a serious lack of time to build I did contemplate walking away. In the end, however, we found a solution that worked. I did go to Heartland and met up with a couple of guys from work that I've been trying to get to take an interest in modeling.

I picked up some stuff called interfacing by Pellon while I was in Hobby Lobby with the wife the other day. I got an 1/8th of a yard of the thinnest non-fusible fabric for $0.25 and it should be enough material to do dozens of cars.

Just to prove I still build sometimes, I've made some progress on the Nova. I blacked out the grille and the rubber between the taillights. I also blacked out the B-pillar so that at a glance it has more of a coupe look. I was really pushing to get this one done take down to the Heartland Nats this weekend. Some last minute fit problems with the exhaust put the kibosh on that idea. I'm going to have to fab up some headers instead of using the exhaust manifolds from the Revell '99 Silverado and the pipes from the Nova kit. A younger version of myself probably would have tried to slam something together to make the show (and more than likely screwed something up in the process). Other than that, all the subassemblies are ready so I just have to polish out the body, foil the headlight and taillight buckets and slap it all together. Wow, I just noticed looking at the pic that the headlight bucket didn't get good coverage. It's not at all noticeable to the naked eye but the camera sure picked it up.

Gorgeous work as always, Lyle. That black looks a mile deep.

Been waiting on the ZR1 a long time, hopefully they'll stick to the August date.

Both the Tamiya and Testors lacquers aren't very "hot" chemically. They were developed specifically for the hobby market and can be sprayed directly over bare styrene. Duplicolor paints by contrast were formulated for the automotive market and are much "hotter" chemically. If you got the Duplicolor on with no problems, spraying the Testors stuff won't present any problems as long as the Duplicolor has had a chance to properly gas out. You can always spray a "cooler" paint over a "warmer" paint as long as that condition is met. For future reference, from hottest to coolest: Automotive paints (Duplicolor) Hobby lacquers (Testors One Coat/Automotive and Tamiya sprays) Hobby enamels (Testors bottles) Hobby acrylics (Testors Acryl/Tamiya jars)

This is Tamiya Clear Orange lacquer over Model Masters Dark Bronze lacquer. It's pretty close to Sunburst Orange.

It's worth checking the paint racks too. I was just in today and they had all the bottled Model Master lacquers on clearance.

Revell has both the '67 Chevelle and the '66 El Camino. When the Revell '66 Chevelle wagon was the hottest deal around there were several modelers who did this conversion. The '66 Chevelle wagon and El Camino share the majority of their tooling. The taillights from the '67 Chevelle were used to complete the conversion.

Any word on the wider Aoshima tire that Marc Nellis sent you for use with their BBS LM wheels they put out last fall?

Thank you for the encouragement Klaus. It means a great deal, especially coming from you. Kyle "LOBBS" Laubscher

I'm using Dayton 273 CFM @ 0.0 SP blowers (1TDR3). With a 16" x 25" stage it'll give me 100 FPM. I only need 50 FPM for a downdraft booth but the carbon filters I'll be using are a bit more restrictive than standard filters so I wanted to have plenty of pull.

You can order carbon filters online. There are several places that offer a pleated furnace type filter with an applied carbon coating. You need to piggyback them with a standard furnace filter. The standard furnace filter catches the bulk of the overspray, the carbon filter is behind that to soak up the fumes.

I work for an aerospace supplier. We're mostly a CNC shop now but our roots go back to a tool and die/fab shop back in the 60s. We've got no shortage of Bridgeports, shears, brakes and such from those days. Management doesn't mind guys using them for personal projects as long as you don't tear something up or let it interfere with your job. It's a nice perk to have. We've got an awesome metal supply shop here in town that prices sheetmetal by the square inch and most other metals by the foot. I've talked with them a couple of times and they're willing to handle the bulk of my shearing work. I'll still have to nip the corners and fold flanges at work though. I decided to go with 24 gauge sheetmetal for the bulk of my booth with the exception of the fan mounting plate which will be 14 gauge to avoid sagging due to the weight of the motor.

I will be using Dayton blowers and the booths will have a standard 4" exhaust hookup installed if you choose to ventilate externally. I have considered offering just plain pleated air filters as a lower priced option to the carbon filters as my booth can except either. For instance, a carbon filtered booth includes one standard pleated filter as a prefilter stacked on top of the carbon filters. A booth with standard filtration only would have a second pleated filter in place of the carbon in the airflow. You would be able to replace the standard pleated filters with any 16" x 25" furnace filter available just about anywhere. As far as competing directly with Pace with another cross-draft/updraft design I'm not interested. Down-draft booths are inherently more effecient in a number of ways and are a bit more complicated and therefore more expensive to construct. It all has to do with how they draw in and handle "dirty" air. A cross draft booth draws the incoming air directly across your work subject increasing the chance of dust contaminating your fresh paint job. An updraft is even worse as it can actually suspend a great deal of dust in the air that will later settle when the fan is turned off. Down draft booths are gravity assisted therefore you can run a smaller fan which is less expensive to operate, less incoming dirty air is drawn across your project and the overspray is pulled down and away from your piece reducing the chance of contamination later. These are the reasons that most modern paint booths, both the high end hobby booths and 1:1 paint booths are down-draft in design. Carbon filtration is another technology that has gained traction in booth design and is an option on several commercially available booths. The activated charcoal aborbs odors and the harmful VOCs produced when using solvent based paints. There are several styles of carbon filters from the simple pads, to pleated furnace filters with charcoal dust bonded to their surface to granulated carbon in a honeycomb filter. The pads and pleated filters provide some odor absorption but the granulated carbon filters reduce fumes to a level that can reduce or eliminate the need for outside ventilation. The $950 Artograph booth is the only one on the market that I've found that combines a downdraft design and sufficient carbon filtration to eliminate the need for outside ventilation. This booth is where I have set my bulls-eye and my goal is to construct a booth with the features of a 1:1 paint shop at a price that is within reach for the hobbyist.

I'd already begun ordering supplies for my own booth when this idea hit me. Paints booths seem to be a fairly regular topic of conversation around here and other forums. Everything from the best commercially available to getting pointed in the right direction for a homemade one. I've decided to build the booth I've always wanted. It's a 25" W x 25" H x 16" D downdraft booth from 24-gauge sheetmetal with multi-stage carbon filteration for odor/fume removal. I've got my fan in from Grainger and I hope to get to the metal supply house within the week to pick up my stock. I've got access to and permission to use our sheetmetal equipment and Bridgeports at work. If anybody is interested, I'd be willing to knock out a few copies. I'm not looking to set up a factory but wouldn't mind a second stream of income. The only downdrafts on the market with carbon filtration that I can find are the Artographs starting at $570 and working up to almost $900 but I'm working to see if I can get them done around the price of a good cross-draft/updraft Pace booth. Downdraft booths are the standard in the 1:1 community and carbon filtration reduces the need for external ventilation. I'm planning on getting a website up, my personal/demo booth done and final pricing by the Heartland Nats in June.

What are you considering a good price? Most of the cost of building your own booth is going to be getting a good, safe fan. If you want to save some money there you can go with a down-draft booth which by design requires a much smaller squirrel cage. I just ordered one from Grainger last week for about $100 for a 273 CFM model (1TDR3) which is plenty for the down-draft booth I'm building. Considering you'll have to drop anywhere from just under $200 to up to a $1000 dollars for a high end one for any paint booth from a company it's a relative bargain.

Dayton squirrel cage blower also known as a shaded-pole or PSC blower. I've ordered a couple through Grainger now, one for the old booth that I'm now selling and a bigger one last week for my new booth. I've got some information with the specs for figuring out which blower is right that was put together by Klaus Raddatz. Klaus is a guru when it comes to homemade booths just shoot me a line and I'll get it to you.