Art Anderson

It may not be as much a matter of the kit manufacturer wanting a particular small part to be plated, as it can be a matter of "just where on the parts trees can we put this part in"--that's often a consideration. Also, the kit in question isn't a model of a stock production car, and as has already been shown above, some rodders have been known to have parts such as that center section chromed (that happened frequently back 50-60 yrs ago with hot rods and custom cars). So, why not plate the part? It's not rocket science to strip the plating off and paint it, if that is what is desired. Art

A couple of interesting things I noticed: First of all, the grade separation of early superhighways, with cloverleaf interchanges, and wonder of wonders! The "roundabout" intersection--something that only now is gaining acceptance (here locally, roundabouts are being built at the rate of 4 or 5 a year now. Art

There are motion-detecting light switches out there. Try a home improvement store.

Other than the Henry Ford figure, which is quite accurately done, the other two figures are pretty generic--although the man in the wool coat and bowler hat does resemble Horace Dodge, who was one of the original investors in Ford Motor Company.

I got this one! http://images55.fotki.com/v648/fileyYGK/efc4c/3/43743/9297485/Moebius61Ventura11.jpg Art

I've been building model cars in apartments for almost 25 years, and have painted, both brush and by airbrush indoors all along. Secret? None really--I've used spray booths all along, started with that small and somewhat crude Badger unit, upgraded in 2010 to a PACE Peacekeeper, both of which use squirrel cage blowers and a length of dryer hose to exhaust out a window. To keep hot air out in the summer and (more importantly) cold air out in the winter, I simply made a plywood panel to fit in a sash window, with a 4" dryer vent in it--NEVER a hint of either paint fumes nor any overspray dust anywhere. True, these types of spray booths are an investment, but the finest and most-used model building investment I have ever made. Art

Yes, for starters, the body of AMT's 1940 Sedan Delivery is way too narrow out back, by a good 6-7 scale inches. That body shell should taper ot wider from A-Post to B-Post, then be somewhat rounded all the way to the back end. The Sedan Delivery used the same rear fenders as Ford's 1940 Station Wagon, which while having the same shape when viewed from the side, are mounted to the body along the very crown of the fender, not inboard of that as on a coupe or sedan. Art

I've always questioned the description of that body shell as being the Craftsman Series shell though, given that it does have an opening hood, which part and the area underneath are exactly the same as the original '63 Convertible 3 in 1 build I restored simultaneously with the Prestige Hardtop I was building, given that the Craftsman kit was little more than the unassembled promo--although there could well have been some tooling slides that were interchangeable. IIRC from building it up, the '64 Firewall part was virtually identical to the one in my '63 Convertible kit that I disassembled and restored. Art

#2 looks suspiciously like wheel covers from the AMT '64 Corvette kit to me. Art

And, IIRC, it was missing the firewall in the Prestige Series kit (I robbed a firewall out of a '64 for my build, done back in 1987). Art

Just as with any discussion of early AMT Trophy Series V8 Ford kits, it's wise to remember that the first five of those kits ('32 Ford roadster and coupe, '40 Ford coupe and sedan, and the '36 Ford coupe/roadster) were all designed and tooled in the era late 1958-60/61. and as such were fairly crude by today's standards. After all, the age group they were aimed at were then 10 or 11 too perhaps 15 or 16, and none of us kids back then had anything like the skills and knowledge we've gained in the intervening 55+ years. What we saw back then as cool, fantastic model kits really don't stand much close scrutiny today. Also, it's fair to remember that the kit designers and pattern makers at companies such as AMT were also in the midst of a learning curve as well, still developing the skills of referencing real cars along with developing their industrial pattern-making techiques into the realm of creating really good scale models. With all of this in mind, when critiquing kits of that now long-ago era, it's only fair to keep this in mind, when viewing them from the point of view of living in this digital age. Art

To carry this a bit further, into the realm of trivia: Ford wanted the '53 Pace Car to be unique, as it was part of the 50th Anniversary Celebration of Ford Motor Company. They approached Kelsey Hayes (who by the way produced all of Ford's "wire wheels" from 1926-35, they being not "wire" but forged steel spokes, resistance welded to the rims and hubs for a very strong yet light wheel for the era), who were making wire wheels for the then-new Buick Skylarks. K-H responded by creating center hubs to match Ford's lug bolt pattern, but with the same rims and spoke pattern as the wheels being done for the Skylarks. Just one set of 4 was made (the "spare" wheel attachment for the trunk lid used a faux wire wheel trim piece). The late Bill Harrison from Monta Vista CA (name should be familiar to older modelers in the San Francisco Bay Area) told me of going to a parts swap meet in the Bay Area back in the 1990's with a friend, who just happened to have bought that Pace Car, and was in the process of restoring it, BUT the car was missing one of those 4 very exclusive wire wheels. They were scoping out a display of parts and wheels in a swap space, and Bill happened to spot a worn K-H wire wheel. Bill's story to me was that upon questioning the dealer, they were told that it was an odd wheel, looked like a Skylark wheel, but it wouldn't bolt up to a Buick brake drum--and THAT was the missing wheel from the Pace Car.

Nope, 2-seater Thunderbird "wire wheels" were simply the wheelcovers described by Scott. The first post-1935 Ford to be built with true wire wheels was the 1953 Ford Crestline Convertible that was used as the Pace Car for the 1953 Indianapolis 500 Mile Race. That car was given to winner Bill Vukovich Sr. as part of his winnings, and wound up, of course, in California. Kelsey-Hayes wire wheels were of course, an option on the 1962-63 Thunderbirds though. Art

Yes, #1 is the set of Rudge knockoff wheels from the AMT Mercedes-Benz 300SL Gullwing.

Nope, 2wd

One-part body putties tend to be nothing more than very thick lacquer primer, hence "paint". Anything that will soften or dissolve a paint job will do the same to such putties as we like to use. Art

Long bed, V8.

Reminds me of the JETEX powered model car kits, both the balsa wood kits, and the Monogram "Salt Flats" car from about 1961 or so--you used a JETEX 50 rocket engine, which worked sometimes, less often than ideal--but they did scoot when everything was hooked up! Art

Tim! It sure did come back to me in pristine condition (you got enough toilet paper left at home after packing it? ) My sincere thanks for returning it, proof positive that we model car builders truly are a FRATERNITY! Thanks again! Art Anderson

Dave had a builtup 1st test shot of the '65 Comet Cyclone at the Detroit NNL yesterday.

But which Model A? The MPC '29 Station wagon/roadster pickup has been done to death--hope they mis-ID'd the long wanted '28 Model A Ford Tudor!

Life-Like was, and I believe still is, making styrofoam coolers.

Actually, the staple of Pyro was their line of pyrometers (heat detectors) which are used all over the place--perhaps the most visible in restaurants for calibrating the temperature of griddles for grilling burgers, etc. (Learned that in a conversation with the owner of Pyro at an HIAA hobby trade show, in the early 1970's) Art

Not cut down at all! Every Model T Ford roadster ever produced (from 1908 through 1927) had a trunk (so-called "turtle deck") that was simply bolted in place, was never an integral part of the "T-bucket" body.

My first exposure to Renwal products was the collection of 1/24 scale dollhouse furniture that my two sisters accumulated over several years back in the early-mid 1950's. Those pieces were very well done, quite realistic-even though I would never have played with them as a kid(!)--they would make excellent diorama pieces today though. Their line of "Authenti-Kits" of armor and US Army field vehicles were neat though--built several of those when in Jr High, and a couple of their US Navy Ships when in high school. While it never grabbed my attention, Renwal's "Visible V8" was a perennial seller each year, leading up to Christmas, at Weber's Hobby Shop when I worked my way through college there back in the 1960's, while the Visible Chassis kit simply gathered dust--I suspect for two reasons: Price (it was frightfully expensive even back then--over $20, which seemed a fortune at the time for a plastic model kit) and huge (at 1/4 scale, even foreshortened, it was a lot of model to find a place to display in an 1,100 square foot 3-bedroom tract house which was quite common here). We sold perhaps only one or two a year, taking several years to get rid of the initial stock. Their visible biological kits, on the other hand, sold like snow-cones on the 4th of July, at Christmas, and then in February-March, as middle school kids picked them out for school science projects. Art