Art Anderson

Their video tells it all, and it's hilarious! Art

If you are looking to replicate the wood used in a frame building (plates, studs, joists, rafters), I'd suggest checking out basswood, which is harder, and much more close grained than balsa. Look into model railroad "lumber", as if you check for O scale lumber sizes, they can be used for our scale, as O scale is 1/48 scale, where we work in either 1/24 or 1/25 scales for the most part. To figure the sizes, take the O-scale size, and simply double that, as a 1/24 scale model would be twice the size of the same subject done in 1/48 scale. Art

As I noted just above, this is where toothpicks come into play! You can use a toothpick to "chase" those nasty little air bubbles away from the surface of your mold. However, you do have to do it fairly quickly, as most polyurethane resins have a pot, or working life of perhaps 90-seconds. Art

If you are casting just the wheel rims (either steelies or mags) and if they are wheel halves, you can cast them flat. To make such a mold, first I'd make sure that the back side of the wheel half is flat, so that it can be mounted on a flat surface, such as a piece of sheet styrene (at least .040" thick so that it stays flat) with a drop of CA glue (you can pop the original loose after casting up whatever wheels you need afterward, lightly sand off the remaining CA and then use the original wheel on a model if you so desire). Next, I'd box in that wheel with some .250" strip styrene, say, .040" X .250" (that's a quarter inch wide) with the strips glued on by their edges, to make a 1/4" deep mold box). Then, make a second mold box, the same size as the one with the wheel in it, but with nothing in it (this will be used to mold up a flat, smooth, 1/4" thick block of molding rubber). Pour the rubber into the mold, using toothpicks to make sure that the rubber flows in, around, and over all the surfaces of your wheel so that there are no airbubbles next to the wheel used as the "master". This is important, as any air bubbles next to the master wheel will result in your getting resin "balls" or "goobers" attached to the castings which even if you can remove them, will mar the surfaces of the wheel castings. Pour rubber into the plain mold box, and of course, let the rubber cure completely. Now, when you remove those blocks of rubber, you will have a cavity mold for the wheel half, and a smooth block of rubber which will be used as a cover for the cavity--once you fill your wheel mold with resin and have "chased" away any air bubbles from the details in the mold, simply lay the plain rubber block, smooth side down, on top of the cavity mold, and press firmly around the edges, to squeeze out the excess resin (be sure to press it down around the edges, NOT in the middle of the cover block, otherwise you can push the cover block even slightly down into the cavity, and when it springs back it will suck air into the mold, making a bubble or "void" in the back side of your wheel castings). But, doing this extra step, with a bit of practice, should give you wheel halves that will look just like the original, but with very minimal "flash" around the edges of the rear (inner side of the wheel half) to remove--in addition to the wheel half castings being flat and true on their back, or inner side. (I cast tens of thousands of wheel halves, including wheel covers and dog dish hubcaps in this manner during my time in professional resin-casting of model car parts and transkits--so I know it works, and it is simple to do.) This method works with the more modern model car kit wheel halves, but if you are working with wheels or outer wheel halves from older kits with wire axles, then you will need to make a full two-part mold--which I can describe to you here if you need me to. Art

I second this! It's an old trick some of us older modelers used back decades ago before Testors and Pactra brought out flat black paint--good old baby powder (which Mom still had a can of in the bathroom from years before when she used it on me. It only takes a small amount of talcum powder to flatten enamel paint colors, and yes, particularly if airbrushing it, you will need to use a tad more thinner--but it does work (even smells nice too! ) Art

AMT Corporation offered "stick-on" narrow whitewalls back in the 60's for a couple of years--they were sort of "iffy", given that if you put them on, then had to "stretch" the tires even slightly to get them on the rim (which IIRC was the case with a few AMT kits back then), the whitewall stickers would wrinkle.

And, why did they forget the relish? Art

Agreed! While certainly the Aztec struck me as the one vehicle that could have looked better had it been offered in Afrika Korps Gelb with the black palm tree/swastika insignia of the German Army's Afrika Korps (and I'm being nice in saying that --yeah, in my eyes, the Aztec IS that ugly!), and the Toyota Prius is at best odd looking, I see most of the cars on this list as being the product of the writer's own opinion, and of course, in that we all have (along with a certain bodily orifice) one of those (opinions) as well. Oh well! Art

Hmmm. Considering that on a real 1940 Ford all 4 fenders are separate from the body shell, I'm not entirely sure why the parts layout of the Revell kit would be somehow "wonky". Of course, the front fenders, given their relatively short area of attachment to the body shell itself (on the real car, the front fenders are primarily bolted to the top of the frame rails by way of the inner fender splash aprons, and only the trailing edge is secured to the body shell itself) which would make assembling them to the model rather problematic. After all, one only needs to experience building the 1959-introduced (yeah, it's been THAT long ago) AMT 1940 Ford coupe to see the problems not only with front fender alignment, not to mention the poor fit of the hood on the AMT kit (up front, all those parts do relate directly to each other, certainly in fitting properly, on the real '40 Ford as well as any model kit of one). On many model car kit body shells, the styling of the actual car can cause real engineering headaches when it comes to creating model kit tooling, if the people developing the model kit are going to achieve the correct shapes and contours while making the kit assemble in at least some semblance of a logical manner. Perhaps nowhere is this more a problem than when designing a model kit of the so-called "fat fendered" cars of the era 1935-48, given their overall shapes and combinations of shapes. Where does the designer go, when faced with either making the body shell, including fenders and exposed running boards as a one-piece unit which likely would mean altering body and fender shapes to make the one-piece unit come out of the steel molds, or making the body shell with those added sheet metal parts separate from each other, just as the automaker did? When one really thinks about this--aren't we expecting model companies to take a body shell, which in real life in the case of the '40 Ford coupe, was built from at least 17 sheet metal panels (all painted body color BTW), and reduce those to just one molded part? What about the somewhat slightly inward-curving sides of the body shell which are a key part of the styling of that car? (On the '40 Ford, the bodies are several inches wider at the belt line than they are at the bottom (rocker panel area), which would make the tooling AND the engineering of plastic flow in the tooling even more complicated than it is as the body stands as produced in the kit. Doing a body shell like this completely in one piece including all 4 fenders and the running boards could well mean more separate mold cores (which of course would mean more mold parting lines to clean up!) and add significantly to the cost of the tooling--not to mention the painting and polishing problems that would be the end result. With the complete restyling of Ford cars that happened for model year 1941, and carried over through the 1948 model year, most of that goes away, given that for '41, while Fords (as with most all other new cars) still had running boards, they were hidden inside the bottom of the doors, becoming little more than a narrow step-plate rather than a wide, traditional platform on which driver and passengers planted their feet firmly in order to climb up and into the car body). Another problem that would have arisen had Revell engineered this kit with the rear fenders molded as a part of the body shell would have been the very tight and deep area at the lower leading edge of the rear fenders! I can't imagine trying to polish out paint in that area at all!. All in all, while I see some minor inaccuracies in Revell's rendition; the overly heavy drain moldings along the edges of the roof, and the rather heavy, rounded chrome spears down the body and hood sides (on the real car, those spears are flat in cross section, not rounded as on the Revell kit, with a finely ribbed, not smooth, facing to them--AMT did get that right on their kit). And, I'll put up with assembling the rear fenders and running boards to the body as separate parts, rather than having to live with the ill-fitting fenders/running board unit of the now 54-year old AMT tooling. Art

Greg, I'm not sure just what you mean by "It had some goofy fender treatment also"? Unless I'm missing something, I don't really see anything odd about the body shell or the fenders, or the way the rear fenders mount--unless you are questioning the raised "molding" around the circumference of the rear fender opening on the body shell? If so, while that molding is a bit heavy-handed, there should be one there, as well as between the front quarter panel of the body, and the rearmost portion of the front fenders: On the real '40 Ford (as produced, and as should be on any model of virtually every "fat fendered" car) the manufacturer used a "welting" between fender and body for two purposes: One was to seal the joint between fender and body shell against dust and in wet weather, serving to keep water out of the joint as well. That welting had a rounded "bead" along the edge showing at the surface of the body/fender joint. Revell executed it for the rear fenders, but forgot to tool in the one on the front fender trailing edge. Does this answer your question? Art

Tom has it quite correct IMO. If anyone were to stop and think for a moment--the basic idea was a good one, but with the somewhat "primitive-by-21st-Century-standards" technology of 1969 (when this kit was concieved and worked up) the execution leaves a good bit to be desired by today's model car builders. It's the very same reason that AMT laid out their 1965 Pontiac GTO as they did--give the model builder the option of building either a hardtop or a convertible in the same kit (let's not forget that Monogram did very much the same thing with their mid-1960's release of their now-legendary 1955 Chevrolet Bel Air hardop/convertible kit, their 1930 Model A Ford coupe/cabriolet, 1934 Ford coupe/cabriolet, and their 1936 Ford coupe/roadster--AS DID AMT with the '36 Ford coupe/roadster. Monogram carried the idea even further with a 1/48 scale Lockheed P-38 Lightning (a kit that still surfaces periodically in their lineup in single version only) which originally had 6 different variations possible all in one model kit (P-38J fighter, P-38L bomber pathfinder, P-38 night fighter, plus all the possible armament variations they could pack into a box and sell for $2!). In short, the 1960's was the era when model kits of many subjects were being introduced with multiple variations, not necessarily limited to the common AMT-inspired "stock, custom and racing" 3in1 type kits. From a cost standpoint, the '70 Nova/Ventura kit made a lot of sense: It was less expensive to create and tool a body shell sans front fenders, which could then be tooled separately in order to produce two different variations of the same car without having to mock up and tool the entire body shell (body shells are arguably the most expensive and difficult part of any model car kit to tool up). Couple those optional (at the production stage) front fenders with being able to change out the essential chrome trim items such as grilles, taillight bezels and hubcaps or wheel covers, and the relatively simple interior parts) and the concept became a very practical one. Only one problem though: IIRC, those front fenders didn't mate up to the body shell very well without a good bit of fiddling and finessing--but that was an issue of the available technology of the day, and quite likely cost concerns--plus considering that model car kits were considered by an entire hobby industry from top-to-bottom, side-to-side, and front-to-back to be a kid thing (face it, back 40-plus years ago, not many adults were building model cars--mostly kids). In the bottom line, doesn't it make a bit of sense for us grownups to realize that, particularly when one encounters wire axles being used in a model kit, that the kit in question didn't originate last week--but is molded from tooling cut decades ago? Art

As pointed out, the front fenders were done as separate parts in order for a Ventura to be produced at minimal tooling cost, It was a novel way ot attacking that concept, even if it didn't work out to 21st Century standards. Art

Actually, I believe the concept began with ship-building, probably sometime in the 1700's, when sailing ships began to be designed with building multiple ships from the same design. Certainly, ships today are designed in that fashion--if one looks at any of the more technical histories of say, WW-II US Navy ships, generally books on a particular ship will show those station drawing cross-sections. Given the sheer size of any sea-going vessel, to have tried working with full size drawings of the actual ship would have been so cumbersome as to have been very impractical. Also, by the advent of steel ships, hull design became very important, so scale model shapes were tested in water filled basins, with the model hull being drawn across the water surface--the purpose being to create stable, fast and yet maneuverable shapes. Art

Here's the reason not many full drawings exist of a fully completed automobile that show all the intricacies of the body shapes! This is a recreation of the original styling bridge that was invented by Gordon Buehrig, when he was styling what became the 1936-37 Cord 810/812. If you look closely, you can see how dowels, graduated in fractions of an inch, could be inserted into holes in the wooden frame, and pushed in to just touching the surface of the model--from which the distance of each point on the Cord body could be noted, along with its position measured from front or rear, in order to give the information to the pattern-makers responsible for sculpting the stamping dies for producing the body panels. In short, the information was far more numerical, and a lot more useful, than any blueprint or drawing could have shown. This technology served the auto industry all the way out to the inception of computerized technology--a laser scanner does pretty much exactly the very same thing, much faster, and hopefully, much more accurately: Art

Jeff, Original factory blueprints have rather limited use in working up a model, if for no other reason than their sheer size, and that most are of mechanical or structural components--such drawings as would have depicted how say, a body panel was to be shaped, probably dealt far more with the stamping dies of which there can be many--some body panels back in the 50's and 60's required at least a couple of dozen stamping dies just to press out a quarter panel. From perhaps the late 1920's until well into the early 1990's, car bodies were styled first by artist's renderings done on paper by stylists, then actually sculped in a type of modeling clay in actual size (the late Gordon Buehrig, who styled numerous bodies for the legendary Duesenberg Model J, and later the futuristic (for 1935) Cord 810, actually worked in 1/4 scale clay models, but full size clays quickly became the norm. Buehrig also is credited with inventing what was called the "styling bridge", a wooden frame that actually spanned the clay model, with holes drilled in it fairly close together through which round dowels (probably metal) could be inserted to contact the clay surfaces, with the distances between the styling bridge uprights and cross beam that spanned the top of the clay body could be noted in order to translate that shape into information that could be then translated to creating stamping dies. That's pretty much the same principle in which a modern laser scanner works, the laser beam being measured to get the same information. So, there really weren't "blueprints" that could give a model kit developer much in the way of really workable data. In the days before laser-derived information and CAD/CAM, doing model kit parts in the tooling mockup stage for a model kit simply required the services of highly skilled artisans--sculptors in every sense of the word--no less artists than a Michaelangelo (who created some of the most realistic sculptures of the human form in history. In short, the ability to translate what the eye could see, to carved 3-dimensional shapes was vitally important. Of course, there were full size plan form drawings created by automobile stylists and their draftsmen, but those served to 1) show the lines of the car in side, front, rear, and top views, and to provide documentation for patent applications and copyrighting. As for working with the actual manufacturers for detailed information--absolutely, whenever possible that is done. But that is dependent on a couple of things--is there any original factory information still available, or is the company who made the actual car even still in business. Complicating this (and the Moebius Hudsons come to mind here) is the fact that many smaller, independent carmakers never had their own body manufacturing operations, particularly as automobiles and their bodies became more complex with the advent of all-steel construction and streamlined, fully enveloping body styles. In the 1930's, there were two very large body companies operating within the auto industry, Murray, and Briggs, both of whom supplied not only smaller companies such as Nash, Hudson, Packard (who was never a huge producer of cars BTW), and so on. Most independent makers may have had a stylist or two on staff, but once a style was approved, the real work was farmed out to them. In addition, even Chrysler Corporation didn't have their own body manufacturing division until the corporation bought out Briggs Body Company in 1954. Couple that with all the changes and shuffles within the auto industry over the past more than a century, with companies being formed, closed down, merged into other companies or simply bought out, AND the necessary concentration on not just what they were doing on any particular day and year, but also what they were going to do in the future, not much emphasis was placed on saving history, at least not to the extent of saving every scrap of drawings. As for working from sets of old blueprints--most of those would be cumbersome as all get out, to put it mildly--given their sheer size (I saw Lesney AMT designers working on the the '67 Camaro that they released in 1980 as an all new tool--and they had a 1/4 scale side view "loft drawing" tacked up on a very large easel, that was clearly a GM Design drawing--but the rest of the work appeared to be in progress working from extensive photographs. Of course, with CAD, and laser scans of the actual car, this process becomes a lot easier--but so much depends on not only the person at the computer, but also the software and the quality of the scans. Even with that, anomalies do come in--the finished tooling mockups simply have to be studied, and more often than not, corrections get noted manually, and they have to be made, by whatever processes or technologies that get the job done. Huge calipers???? Seriously, I cannot imagine anyone lending their collector car to be measured and documented for scale modeling allowing anyone to put such tools on their pride and joy--can you? (Frankly, when I was creating my own masters for resin casting--I'd jump at the chance to measure and photograph a rusty old junker--simply because I could do the work without fear of scratching the thing--and worn paint, rusty surfaces show the shapes and contours far better than a 100-point shiny restoration!) Actually, if the actual basic dimensions of the real car are known, it's not always necessary to get every single dimension exactly perfectly--in 1/25 scale, for example, a quarter inch is a mere ten-thousandth, or about the thickness of a cheap business card or the Ace of Diamonds in a deck of cards. But, I have stretched a measuring tape through the interior of a 2dr or 4dr sedan a time or two, from the surface of one side of the body to the other (with a helper, of course!) to determine the widest point of the body--works quite well when the sides of say, a 60's car are virtually straight and parallel. And of course, dozens of photographs taken from all manner of angles, concentrating in this or that shape, this or that portion of a body--just about every bit of photographic information you can imagine there, are extremely valuable to the person creating the actual model kit body in mockup form. Be the work done the old fashioned way, or by modern technology, all of that can be vital. Also, if one is doing a model of almost any American car from the 50's through the beginning of modern "jelly bean" styling, simply knowing how the actual car was built, what body panels were common across a line of cars (for example, '59 Chevies all used the same front clip, variations of the same rear quarter panels, a couple of different trunk lids, and of course, different roof lines, but the same basic door skins were used on all 2dr bodies from Chevrolet that yea4, be they 2dr sedans, 2dr station wagons, convertibles, hardtops etc.--and two different windshields (framing and glass) (2 and 4dr hardtops used a lower, more sharply raked windshield than say, a sedan, station wagon or El Camino, due to the lower roofline of the sportier body styles)--all this knowledge has great value. But, the bottom line is: if one is to do a scale model of a car--almost always much of the work is done from actual examples whenever possible--that's still the gold standard, the best way to go about it. For that reason, it seems that in this country at least--model car kit development gets done by people living in fairly large urban areas, and certainly where museums and collector cars are readily available. It's much, much easier to find examples of the real thing existing within a couple hour's drive, if you live in the Great Lakes states, the Northeast, or say, in the Los Angeles megalopolis than to try doing it while living in East Undershirt or West Overshoe miles from nowhere. Art

Truthfully, while the assembly of a WW-II naval aircraft kit having movable folding wings is rather complex, the tooling for it really isn't. Parts such as those are molded in fairly simple molds--a right side and a left side. On the other hand, a one-piece model car body requires rather complex tooling--as almost always, 6 separate dies have to come together precisely to mold one. These tool sections are all individually movable--the mold sections which create the exterior of each side, each end of the body shell must move in and out with each cycle of the tooling, along with the mold having to close and open with each molding cycle. Just imagine not only choreographing that "dance" while at the same time achieving the precise mating of all the mold sections (called slides, or sometimes, sliding cores) each and every time. Art

One could almost write a book, in multiple volumes about how a model car kit gets created, but I'll try to be as brief as possible. The process starts (once the "Go" decision has been made for a particular subject. Now, here's where the first crunch can come! As late as the 1980's, automakers were still using what are called "loft drawings", a type of drawing pioneered in ship building at least 250 years ago. This type of drawing is of course, on flat paper, whether it's created by CAD, or by human hands at a drawing board, using drafting techniques which show the curvature and depth of the various 3-D surfaces of say, the body shell. So, back "in the day", model company pattern makers had to know how to read those drawings, combining that with whatever photographs could be gotten or taken of the actual subject. In the heyday of promotional model cars (where our hobby and it's industry really took off!), that information came from the various automotive styling departments, well in advance of the introduction of the new car at dealerships. But, many of the cars we really groove to are old enough (and in a lot of cases, the companies that made them are either no longer around, or if they are, archived drawings and such can be very incomplete, even non-existent--or at least their existence can be unknown to anyone even within the particular automaker). So, this is where the research really begins. It involves finding such images of the actual car as may have been published (established model companies are known to have considerable libraries of car magazines, books (from the technical to the "coffee table" kind), simply on the strength that someday, their product development people may well need them. Next, whenever possible, an example or examples of the real car must be found, that can be photographed. Now, the pictures taken for scale model development are not limited to the kind of beauty shots prized for publications, but rather, are taken to show as much as possible the actual car from every conceivable angle, even concentrating on details. In addition to high quality camera's, the tools of this process include such mundane items as tape measures (both steel tape and soft PVC coated cloth tape (like any seamstress would use in measuring fabric) where a measurement has to be taken up against a nice paint job. A general tradition here is to take a permanent marker, and black out every other inch, so that once the pic is taken, measurements can be read easily (remember, in 1/25 scale, one inch equals .040", or very slightly less than 1mm). The photography process will include shots straight from each side, one from the front, one from the rear, and a series of 3/4 shots all around the car. Whenever possible, development people like to have a tall stepladder, or other means of getting well above the subject, to capture views from above, which while not often seen of the real car, tell the designers and pattern makers what the car looks like from a modeler's eye. Add to this, perhaps several hundred detail shots, showing shapes and dimensions of such things as windows, vent wings, shapes of taillights and headlight bezels, cross section related shapes (when I was developing Johnny Lightning diecasts, a standard part of the photoshoot included opening the doors, and capturing the shape of the door from the rear edge, as that showed the mockup makers the contour of the body sides, in the same manner that "station section" cross section drawings) would show. Every detail shot generally will have one of those various measuring sticks or tapes laid on, or held next to, the actual body surface. This also helps in getting the correct location (vertical and horizontally) of things like chrome trim, door handles, badges and scripts. In addition, a lot of shots get taken at severely oblique angles to the subject, as that can show further the body contours, and even the contours and depth thereof of things like wheel rims, hubcaps and wheel covers. Lastly, whenever possible, they like to be able to get the actual car up on a lift, to get the underside--this can take a lot of frames, in order to get the whole picture!). Along the way here, lots of notes get written down, hopefully to not miss anything that might prove very important later on in the process. It's the same with the interior, particularly if it's a long, out of production make, model or body style. Pics get taken through the doors, the dash from as many angles as possible, even from over the back of the front seat while sitting in the rear. Pics of engine bays get taken, to show as much of things like inner fender wells, firewalls, radiators and their core supports, all of that. This information, when combined with service manual pictures and drawings can go a very long way in getting the model right. Engines and transmissions of course can be worked up from service manuals, even junkyard or swap meet pictures. From all this information, the pattern or mockup making can begin. Prior to the advent of CAD/CAM, every part of a model kit had to be mocked up, generally in a soft, smooth-grained wood such as basswood or clear white pine. This process alone required sculpting skills rivaling any artistic sculptor of statues and the like--because in order for the model to look right, the patterns or mockups have to be right from the get-go. Time was, when tooling mockups, thus created by hand, from wood, were made to a much larger scale than the production model kit: Generally speaking, companies doing 1:25 scale kits started with patterns done to 1:10 scale, while 1:24 scale kits were mocked up in 1:12 scale, both scales being readily reduced by simple math. These mockups, once approved, were then cast in resin, from which resin female castings were made, to be inserted in large scale wooden patterns from which the dies were cut. The dies used to be cut using rotary mills, set up with 3-axis pantographs that could move the cutters front to back, left to right, and up & down. They were manipulated by hand, the toolmaker moving a stylus over the large scale pattern of the tooling. That was a laborious task, took several hundred man-hours to finish. Once the steel dies were ready, they were placed in a mold machine, and plastic shot into them, for the first test shots. From those test shots, things such as material thickness (I've seen early test shots that had thin spots to the point of their being actual holes in the body shell!), mold alignment and such. Once all that was checked out, corrected wherever needed, then the fine surface details were cut into the steel--things like scripts, badges, door handles and the like generally requiring a manufacturing jeweler's touch. Once that all was checked out, test shot, if the dies were ready, they were given a final polish to a mirror finish so that the finished plastic parts could come out as we modelers like to see them. Of course, CAD/CAM, and laser technology have replaced most all of the labor-intensive manual operations in the process--nowadays, many model kit tooling mockups are made with computer aided technology, and the rotary milling cutter has been replaced by electro-discharge machining or EDM) which uses precise electric arcs to do the cutting and shaping of the tooling. And, of course, laser scanning and CAD have replaced the old timer's drawing boards, with their accompanying T-square, triangles, dividers, compasses and drafting pencils and pens. But still, GIGO (Garbage In, Garbage Out--which probably every student whose ever taken a programming course has heard sometime) means that just because the computer says, it may not be actually correct. This is as true of CAD files as it is of laser scans--I've seen both that were way, way off, particularly given that the people overseas who do this work simply do not have very much (if any at all!) personal experience with the cars they are expected to create model kits of. BTW, rapid prototyping, as in 3D printing seems not to be much used in the making of modern tooling mockups, but rather CAD is used, starting with solid blocks of material (at least, the tooling mockups I have seen show no evidence of any of the layering that can be seen to at least some degree in 3D printed objects). But, for sure, it is quite possible for tooling mockups that are made from computer aided machining to be incorrect at least in some areas--that is one of the reasons one sees anomalies in the tooling mockups Dave Metzner so graciously has put up on this forum. Those things take time to get corrected, to get them right. Of course, language and cultural barriers can play a pretty big part in all of this process as well. What almost nobody outside of the process knows is, that when Dave got what were essentially correct body test shots of the '55 Chrysler, there was still an incorrect contour on each side of the roof between the B-pillar and the back window. It was a simple job for me to take one of those test shots, build up the offending area with catalyzed putty, and with file and sandpaper, get the contours corrected (did that in about 3 hours!). And, I think the finished model kit looks pretty right in those two areas. But, the bottom line is: It's never been a "snap your fingers" simple sort of thing to create a model car kit--whether it gets done the old fashioned way I've described, or by modern 21st Century technology, it is still a very complicated and complex process, which can take the occasional twist, turn, and perhaps the wrong "fork in the road". In short, it takes not only a lot of high skills, but also dedication and a passion for seeing the project come to fruition in (hopefully!) a timely fashion, and within budget. When all that comes together, the resulting kit generally winds up being a winner, pleasing the vast majority of builders. Sorry for the very long post, but I feel that this is a story that needed to be told. Art

Harry, Don't forget: Back in the days when Detroit styling departments were creating 1:1 scale mockups of proposed new bodies, they WERE termed "Clay Models". Methinks that about the only difference between a scaled down model car (quite often termed "replica's--as in "replica stock") and a life sized "model" (of course done for evaluation of a particular styling) isn't all that different: It's simply a matter of scale, IMO. Art

Testors bottled "gloss coat" isn't lacquer, but the clear carrier used to make enamel, and as such, it's a light amber color, always was. Testor's Modelmaster spray clear lacquer is as close to water clear as water clear gets, and unlike enamel clear coatings, it doesn't yellow with time, at least not in my experience. Art

There's a company called "Rockler" that sells all kinds of wood veneers for the cabinet-maker industry. They are online. Art

Back 20 years ago or so, I was in the basement of a modeler friend's home in St. Charles Illinois--he nearly had a corner on old, but still at that time, not at all popular. Swap meet dealers were still leaving their stash's of Pinto's, Vega's, AMC Gremlins and Pacers at home, rather than take them to shows only to bring them back home once more. I wonder what my late friend would have thought had he lived to see the day when such kits became really collectible? Art

For me, it's the subject matter, rather than sticking with just new kits, or vice-versa. It may seem odd to some, but I like being able to get those kits done from old tooling from way back when--that's very much a matter of the subject being something that strikes my fancy. For example, back when AMT first issued the '49 Mercury Club Coupe--I hated bathtub Mercs with a passion! In fact, I would not have turned my head for most cars of the very late 40's through about 1952 or thereabouts--they all looked like old peoples' cars to me (guess what? I say that knowing that now, I am an "old folk" myself!). But, back to the '49 Merc: Finally, about 1980 or so, I bought one of the AMT reissues, built it completely stock--then gave the model away to a family friend who had one. Just yesterday, I was at Hobby Lobby, and what jumped into my hands? The newly reissued '49 Merc, which like the last one, will be built factory stock. Maybe one of these days, I'll try my hand at some of the 21st Century cars I have in kit form--who knows> Art

Solvaset is a Walthers brand, and was probably the first decal setting solution ever sold--it dates back to at least the late 1950's, when Walthers was just about the very first company to make decals for model railroading use. Given the fairly thick, letter-press decals (and later, early silk-screen printed decals) that Walthers offered, Solvaset could be fairly strong. But what was/is Solvaset anyway? Back 30-50 years ago, it was isopropyl alcohol, although I don't know how concentrated (% of alcohol) it has ever been. Believe it or not, I've applied hundreds of decals on models since the early 1960's, and found early on that good old rubbing alcohol (or even aftershave lotion in a pinch!) did a great job of softening decals to get them to "settle down" over compound curves and fine raised details. Common rubbing alcohol is 70% isopropyl and 30% distilled water. I've traditionally used Kleenex or other facial tissues moistened with water to press and work decals into place after applying just a bit of rubbing alcohol to them. Note however, that some aftermarket brands of decals, such as Microscale or Cartograf are printed on a very thin clear film background, so greater care is necessary (and often, those two brands of decals, along with my experience with Tamiya, Hasegawa and Fujimi kit decals have not required much if any setting solution to get laid down cleanly) due to their rather delicate nature. Virtually every modeler has, or will acquire, his/her own preferred method and material--this system and technique has worked perfectly for me for a lot of years though. Art

Rather than rush out to buy each and every tool that exists for model building all at once, I'd do that on an "as needed" basis. That way, you will avoid the real possibility of becoming simply overwhelmed with tools, many of which you may or may not use at the outset. In addition, most of us do our model work on a budget that does have some limitations, so this approach does spread the cost out a good bit. This approach also allows you to scope out all the various sources for model building tools (even tools from other venues which just might spark an idea in your mind as to their usefulness for your purposes), and not at all unimportantly, finding good prices on stuff you will find useful. A good source for small tools can be flea market or automobile swap meet dealers when and if you find them--I've bought needle files for as little as 25-cents apiece, and I can't tell any difference between those and ones costing several times as much in retail stores. In addition, I've found rotary cutters that are virtually identical to those sold by Dremel, again at a fraction of their normal cost. In addition to tools marketed as modeler's tools, there are some rather unlikely items that I find have real use: The lowly toothpick is one of the most universal tools at my bench--I use them for applying tiny bits of glue on occasion (plastic cement, epoxy, even CA glue), they can be used to hold or support small subassemblies for painting (I have the Hemi engine for my '56 Chrysler 300B project "impaled" on one right now, with the free end poked into a square patch of corrugated cardboard, ready to be airbrushed, and then put in my food dehydrator to completely dry and cure the Testors #1146 silver paint, prior to final assembly. I use an artist's pallette knife for spreading putty: It's the smallest size available, so it gets into some really tight places. On your next appointment at the dentist, ask him or her if they have any old dental picks around that can't be autoclaved (sterilized) properly anymore. I've found that every dentist I've ever had has had at least some interest in modeling (after all, dentists have to restore the shapes and contours of teeth pretty regularly). This list could go on, and on, and on--the point being that you can find useful little stuff that works for building models in all manner of unusual places. Art