Dave Ambrose

Very cool. I'll take two, but don't tell my wife. :-) BTW, thank you for posting pictures of the mold. I find that kind of stuff very interesting.

I like the look. One observation -- You'll have a hard time opening the doors unless you lower the rear radius rod mounting points.

I like my airbrush. It lays down paint more smoothly than most spray cans. Spray cans are very convenient, but don't do nearly as good on laying down ultra smooth paint. That said, Tamiya paints are very good and I do a most of my priming with Tamiya cans now. My primary airbrush is a Paasche VL double action. If you look at online vendors like Dixie Art, you can find airbrushes at a significant discount. The VL comes in a kit with three needles, a color cup, and bottles. That's the kit to get. Iwatas are excellent too. I have an Eclipse BC and it's unrivaled for fine detail work. But not so good when you need to paint a body. That job goes to the VL and a No. 5 needle. I would avoid the usual airbrush compressors, they pulse when you try to lay down a lot of paint. Better to get a small oilless compressor with a tank from Home Depot and fit a filter/regulator and pressure gauge. You can also use a CO2 tank if you need absolute quiet.

I have two daughters and a son. Liz, my oldest, used to help me with detail painting. She never really got interested. Rachael, my middle child, likes to build Gundams and dioramas. My son, the youngest, is an excellent builder who likes aircraft and Gundams, but doesn't build much now.

I had no idea that M.C. Escher designed cars too.

I don't think I've ever spent more than $40 for a kit. But that will probably change some day. I have in my bucket list, a Lunar Models version of the Nautilus from the Disney movie. That's likely to run three figures. Then there will be the expense of installing a fire place because something like that totally deserves a mantle.

I seem to be afflicted with terminal paint and bodywork drama. I just keep the fill/sand/prime cycle going until it looks good.

I don't know what happened, but I think I fixed it. Either that, or I broke something else. Such is the life of a sys admin.

Geeze, I ought to stop by more often, but my new year's resolution was to spend more time building models than reading this forum. Happy birthday, Gregg.

There are some cold-cathode fluorescent lights used to light model railroad passenger cars that might meet your needs. They should be listed in the Walther's catalog or web site.

I just discovered a corrupted database. Be sure your browser's cache is cleared, and try again. I use Firefox with no troubles.

I hope everyone has a wonderful holiday season.

Very cool. I too, watched Fireball XL5 and Supercar. I think Netflix has them on DVD if you ever want to watch them again.

It looks like the Full version button doesn't work Tom, your skin is set to the standard skin. Tim, I reset your theme to the standard one. If it isn't displaying properly, refresh your page, and maybe clear your browser cache. You can also go into your profile and set it to something more palatable. Let me know if anything else is awry.

Congratulations! The car looks great. I really like the way the red pinstripe sets off the yellow.

Sweet. Nice to see that someone else remembers Ernie too.

I finally got my library out of storage and have gone seriously geeky. I tend to read several books in parallel. I'm almost finished with Magister Ludi by Herman Hesse for the 3rd time. I'm also reading Lovingkindness: The Revolutionary Art of Happiness by Sharon Saltzberg and Information Architecture for the World Wide Web.

I think it's cool. The layout is intended to give 50/50 weight distribution, and a low polar moment (of inertia). The low polar moment would make it turn quickly and easily -- important for a track like Le Mans. The reduced frontal area makes for low drag. Yeah, this totally makes sense to me. to the original question, I think design is very important. I've seen way too many well executed builds fall short for lack of good design.

That just looks super. Please, build some more.

I keep a 50-50 mix of Windex and denatured alcohol. It dissolves acrylic paint, even after it's dried. It's also great for cleaning optics like my glasses.

Thank you Doctor Cranky! This is really interesting stuff. Their price is very reasonable compared to model paints. I see that Blick carries it. There will be a trip to downtown in my future.

I used to spend a lot of time away from home, so I put together a small kit of tools that would fit in my suitcase. A cigar box would be perfect. You can probably find something similar in the fishing tackle. Just a small plastic box to hold your basic set of tools. You might also find something suitable in the art or sewing department as many of these things are pencil-sized. My kit contained: #1 exacto knife assorted blades, and the small saw blade. Needle files small paint brushes glue sanding sticks small pieces of assorted sandpaper a rubber eraser for a sanding block tweezers needle nose pliers a few bottles of acrylic paint, double bagged. I usually put the kit in my carry-on. But, the tools have to travel as checked baggage. I could build just about anything. But, spray painting in any kind of hotel environment just doesn't work, so I'd usually bring the model back home to do the major painting. Otherwise, I would stash it at the customer's site. Anything else, I could usually find somewhere in the client's city.

Nope. Search engines spidering our forums.

Around here, Aztec means red and black. I'd go with a slightly darker red that would never be confused with primer, and either black fenders, or black below the belt-line. Lay down a gold pinstripe to separate the two. That's my dos centavos.

There's never a good time to lose your dad. It's especially hard in such senseless circumstances. After my dad passed away, I discovered that I didn't lose all of him. We're probably more alike than either of us would be comfortable admitting. He was always my best sounding board for big decisions. I also discovered that I knew most of his questions before he asked them. So, as cheesy as it sounds, it's true. They live on inside us, and we'll pass the best parts to our children. And that, my friends, is a very subtle miracle.