Brett Barrow

Different animals, if you ask me. Tamiya's nice and thin, works great for preserving sharp detail on box-stock builds. It's made for models. Duplicolor & Plastikote are high-build filler/primers made for real cars and work great if you do lots of bodywork like on a custom and have a lot of putty and sanding scratches and blemishes to fill in. Both have their place. I agree with Impalow, don't bother decanting Tamiya primer, the difference (if there even is one) isn't worth the hassle.

Decent set of Buick wire wheels in there IIRC.

1/25 was far more common than 1/24 in the early days of car models, especially with promos. I think just Monogram and Hubley used 24th. The real question is why 1/25th and this explanation makes a lot of sense.

Looks like the "Yenko" Corvette is based on this car: https://www.mecum.com/lots/FL0116-229815/1969-chevrolet-corvette-coupe/ (Same car in the article linked on the first page, my bad for skimming over the thread!) Heck, they're paying for the Yenko license they might as well use it whenever they can. The low hood, IIRC, was only in the very first issue. Reissues have all either had the L-88/ZL-1 or Baldwin-Motion hoods. And another IIRC is only the first issue had the smooth rockers and tailpipes, reissues have all had the sidepipes. So looks like a restoration of the original issue with a new luggage rack. i have several 68 & 69 Vettes but none of mine have the low hood, and I need a luggage rack for a B-M replica I have planned so I'm kinda stoked for this. But I'm sure to most folks it's "just another Vette".

I've used one of these for years. Mine has a pencil eraser for the "extension" and I use a standard paper hole punch to punch out the sandpaper and mounting tape. I use it all the time.

You might have to register to read it, but a great tutorial on the Trak board - http://trakinscale.proboards.com/thread/15426/scratch-building-headers-evergreen-rod

Slapped this together over the weekend as a slumpbuster. Been a lllooonnnggg time since I finished a car model (to be fair it has been a long time since I worked on any car models!). Factory Garnet Red paint job was really well done, except for cleaning up the mold lines it's about as good as I could have hoped to do myself. I polished it out with Tamiya's 3-step polishing system and re-did the trim with flat paint (the factory used gloss). I added a satin coat over the interior parts to tone down the plasticy shine and it made a huge difference. You can't see in the pics but it has really well-done red panels in the seats and door panels as well as a lot of silver touches in the interior. I'll try to add a better pic of the interior, it's really nice. Added a wash in the door lines with Tamiya's panel line wash. Kit went together really well, it's almost a snap-fit in a lot of places. I did need to ream out a few holes that had gotten clogged with flash or paint. It has full engine detail but I'm not a big fan of modern engines so I left most out and tacked the hood shut. Really fun kit, AMT did a great job on it. Now that I know how it goes together I really want the 50th Anniversary kit!

Nice! You use your new trigger airbrush on it?

The perfect tire would be in the Slingster, the problem is it's for a 16" wheel.

I don't think we're dealing with the sharpest knife in the drawer here. He'll Dunning-Kruger himself into a corner he can't get out of soon enough.

1/24 is an architectural scale (1/2" = 1 foot). 1/25 is an engineering scale. 1/24 gives you a lot of repeating decimals, so 1/25 works better when working in decimal. 1/24 gives you better fractions. I think the why is nothing more than one company preferred working with fractions and others with decimals. I have no idea why 1/24 caught on outside the US where they use metric, 1/25 would have made more sense there.

Looks like the .3 doesn't have the fan spray option.

As someone who bounces around to different modeling genres I will say that weathered vs shiny takes two different sets of skills and to do either well takes a lot of those skills. That said, I believe that a realistic weathered finish takes more time and more labor than a realistic shiny paint job. I used to have a lot more trouble laying down a smooth flat paint job without it going gritty than when laying down a smooth glossy paint. A booger in a weathered paint job still sticks out especially when you start adding washes (the wash collects around the booger and makes it really pop).

I have a Mr Hobby 0.5mm Trigger (basically an Iwata HP-TH without a MAC valve for half the price). It's the perfect size for 1/25th bodies (although I haven't used it on any cars yet ) Can do a fan spray or round. It's still an airbrush so it's not really HVLP. Awesome brush, I love it. If I were starting over from scratch as just a 1/25th car modeler this would be the one airbrush I'd keep.

They use the hollow tire/lugs on wheels system so they'd probably need to be modified. Hmmm, I didn't know that either. The kit has a manual.

We've changed our site platform a couple times so I can't really compare total sales overall, but I know the best selling muscle car since it was reissued is the '67 Impala (most likely due to the Supernatural TV show) Sell tons of those. For drag the Tyrone Malone Super Boss truck (& hauler) is doing very well right now. It's not a car, though . The Prudhomme & McEwen rails are doing alright if you want actual "cars". Since Round 2 took over it's probably the 67 GTO. I know it's a crappy kit but it's cheap, it still sells well and has been in their lineup since the beginning. If you count it as a drag car the 66 Nova pro street would be the top drag car for the same reason as the GTO. For actual drag racer replicas it's hard to say since I can't see old sales but it might actually be the Super Boss truck or maybe the Ohio George Willys.

I don't show it disco'd (yet) from Round 2 but I doubt they make any more. It's been out nearly 2 years and has not sold well.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure they are.

These are hitting shelves this week! Here are some pics of the Cragars, decals, and instruction sheet that show the changes to this kit. The only new* parts are the Cragars and tires. You actually get 6 of them, 4 "fronts" and 2 slightly deeper and wider rears along with 4 front tires and 2 slicks so you could run the street tires all the way around if you want. The slicks are definitely too big as has been mentioned in the thread. I'm not going to fault them for not tooling up new tires just for this one kit. It would probably look just fine with the fronts all the way around as you can see from the pic of the real car. The stock Hudson wheels and open steel wheels from the Nascar versions are on the chrome tree as well, but the tires included are not the same as the tires in other Hudsons, I believe they are the tires from the 60's cars. *new for the line of Hudson kits You also get a neat "Matty's Speed Shop" sticker:

Now 1/25th is the bastard scale for Indy/Formula 1 and 1/20 is the established scale. Was this the first 1/20th open wheeler?

It does. I tried it with a bunch of different paints. It goes on thin which makes it difficult to remove if you put a heavy coat over it (it's made to be used with ink markers) but having it in the pen makes it pretty convenient.

We're going to be carrying their liquid masking fluid pen, too. Pretty neat, I've been playing around with one for a couple days. http://www.molotow.com/products/marker-ink/grafx/grafx-art-masking-liquid-pump-softliner/

Something must have changed re: VA beer advertising laws because I remember having all the Bill Elliot Coors and Bobby Allison Miller High Life kits as a kid growing up in Martinsville. I was born in '77 so I would have been 1 when that truck came out. Cigarette ads were everywhere, though. It was VA after all. VA has nothing on NJ/PA (where I live now) beer/liquor laws, though. You can buy beer in a grocery store or convenience store in VA, have to go to a liquor store in NJ and in PA it's even worse, have to go to a dedicated beer/wine distributor. Pretty much every other town is dry here in South Jersey then the next town will have a bar on every corner.

I was a bit snarky in my reply, but from where I'm sitting it's true. Train shows might be doing great but it's not translating into sales which is what matters for everybody except the folks that run the train shows. We dropped Lionel this past year and still had the best Christmas season in our site's history. What difference would 20k at a show make if they don't then go out and buy kits? All that matters is sales and they know what sells and what doesn't and what gives them the best return. They know new tools sell well. They also know they need the profits from repops to fund that new tooling. The point I was trying to make wasn't which is bigger, model railroading or model cars, it was which one I see potential and see a future in on the retail side of things.

What's weird with the whole "Train Show vs Model Show" thing is, as a retailer, trains are dead. Steadily falling for years. If 50k people go to a train show, I'd be willing to bet 40k are Boy Scout troops just there to see the trains go round and get some sort of merit badge. The little moochers probably got in for free, too. Models have rebounded quite nicely since the recession, but trains haven't (at least not from where I'm sitting). But that's the rub, the general population will go to a train show just to see the layouts and watch the trains go around, but won't go to a model show and look at painted models sitting still on a table. Social media has killed the need for a trade show in the US, so there's not really one anymore. iHobby tried to transition to a public show after a couple year break, but I don't think it went too well (and it was run by the same folks who run The Great American Train Shows). Modeling is doing fine, don't worry about it. Maybe car modeling isn't doing that great, but I think that's just because younger folks aren't as into cars. They're sticking bits of plastic together and painting them they're just stuff like Gundam robots and tabletop gaming miniatures. There are tabletop gaming tournaments in the US that pull tens of thousands of attendees.