Chuck Most

Bought and sold through that site, and it's a pretty trouble-free routine either way.

Love this! One of the few Voyager episodes I distinctly recall. Centuries of floating around in the vacuum of space must slow rust down pretty well.

Not always. Some brands of window screen are woven, and they aren't simply flat pieces of mesh. I know that Self Serve Lumber locations sell woven metal window screen, but a lot of the bigger retailers carry only the flat metal or nylon style.

Same way in many parts of Michigan's UP- no cell service, and not many people in those areas own one.

Whenever someone posts ROTFL, I think of Scooby Doo saying 'Waffle'.

Thought I'd dredge this one up... this one's back on the road! Here's the skinny- its a Hiawatha, manufactured sometime between 1957 and 1960, it's been in the family since new. Hiawatha was kind of a store brand and was sold by Gamble's Hardware- the name was also used on snowblowers and outboard motors I've seen- think of it as Gamble's equivalent to Sears' Craftsman brand. This had not been ridden since 1995 or 96, when the original rear tire and tube blew out. I disassembled it in 2002 with the intent to restore it, and bought new inner tubes and whitewall tires at that time. Well, flash forward a decade, and it's back together, with its brand-new, ten year old tires and tubes, and not restored one bit! And... if you look at it very closely, you can faintly make out a few barely-visible old waterslide decals from early '60's AMT kits stuck to it in random spots.

One of the reasons I don't enter my models in contests, and refuse to be a judge in contests when I've been asked. I've seen exactly that kind of thing happen at the little hole-in-the-wall shows I like to attend.

Oh- there is one other piece of advice I feel like giving. Don't resist snapping a pic or two, even if it's just a run-down looking building that's still in use! Sometimes, the building itself may not get torn down. Years ago there was a delapadated (but still active) horse farm about 30 miles southeast of me. The buildings were still solid but had a kind of 'patched together' look, the area outside the stables was overgrown, and there was a row of old farm equipment lined up out front- I mean everything from steel-wheel tractors to horse-drawn hay rakes! The building is still there, but sometime in the last ten years, the property has been cleaned up- the building has new siding, the overgrown lot is now nicely manicured, and all the farm equipment is gone, except for one horse-drawn hay rake being used as a yard ornament. Don't get me wrong, it is a very attractive piece of property, but it just doesn't have the same 'grab' it did for me when it was shabbier looking.

For many years, there was an abandoned farm homestead a few miles from my house. The house itself, a barn, a couple of small out buildings, and at one point there was even an early '40's GMC dump truck on the property (though that disappeared some time in the late '80's). The whole property was overgrown, and I always wanted to snap a few pics of it for use as diorama reference. I did get a couple of images of the house approaching from the East... I never really got any shots of the building from the West, or the front, and never contacted the owner to ask permission if I could get some more close-up pictures of the buildings and other debris scattered around the homestead. I figured, "Hey, I can do that later." Well, I headed out to the location yesterday to do exactly that, and here's what greeted me. Did finally get a shot of the property approching from the West, though. That big bare spot is where the house stood. My point? If you see an interesting piece of property, it is best to stop and snap a few photos RIGHT THEN, and don't put it off! If you can, track down the owner and see if it is okay to go onto the property and capture a few detail shots. This house had stood abandoned for as long as I could remember, and the homestead had been there for over a century, I just kind of assumed it would be there 'forever'. Wrong! Get your reference pics today, because you never know- the subject that inspired you might not be there tomorrow.

'Bout time, Art! Lovely little Hornet.

Good gawd.... Can't blame Autocorrect for THAT one...

You forgot 'styled to resemble a Dust Buster hand held vac' and 'blind spot city'.

That they did! But the bad part is the kit is just as ill-fitting as it ever was. Then again, this basic tool was pretty much in production continuously from 1975 (when the original 1966 alumium molds were replaced) to 1996, so I guess I shouldn't expect a state of the art, 'shake and bake' type of kit anyway.

AND no underhood battery. Kinda wish they'd tossed one in with the Fairlane 'Street Machine' reissue, but oh, well.

I'm blaming Autocorrect.

I don't think they were required by law until about 1966 or so in North America, so technically any older vehicle than that could have one or none and still be 'correct'. A '67 should at least have a passenger's side mirror. Then again, Chip Foose never bothers with them, so I suppose you could always Overhaul it...

I bought a reissue of this kit a few years back and had the same problem.It looks like at some point Ertl had trashcanned the original chassis and replaced it with the '66 Coupe kit chassis, or something similar. I ended up robbing a few choice pieces from it and giving away the rest to another local modeler. Shortening the chassis wouldn't be a huge ordeal if you wanted to build the kit. It actually has better body proportions (especially the grille area) than the Monogram kits, but pity its underscale!

I decided to let the fine folks at Telecheck wrestle with that issue.

My pet peeves... a few are builder-based, and many more are kit-based. 1. No blackwash done to the grille. Yes, some grilles have very shallow engraving, but at least give it a try! Paint the openings with a fine brush if you have to. Unless you're going for a dealer promo look, an all-chrome grille just looks terrible. Same goes for engraved trim pieces lacking paint in the 'valleys' when applicable. 2. Blank tire sidewalls, but I'm slowly coming to terms with that as it appears that will be the norm from here on out as far as kit-based tires go. 3. Cylinder heads molded with the intake manifold. I don't know why this bothers me, as once the engine is assembled it's usually hard to tell, but for some reason I just don't like it. 4. Exploded-View Assembly Schematics. RC2 was really in love with these for some reason. When the assembly diagrams are exploded views it is sometimes difficult to tell what goes where, and what the actual sequence of assembly should be- what part goes in first, what part won't fit if another is installed before it, and so on. Exploded views are okay for parts manuals for your lawn mower, but they aren't ideal for guidance in assembly much of the time. 5. Parts designed incorrectly/incorrectly placed. Who's idea was it to make the exhaust manifolds in the AMT '05 Chrysler 300C attach to the block and not the heads? Yeah, I know it isn't obvious once the engine is in place in the car, but still! I'm also not fond of when a kit manufacturer just seems to guess how a part looks or fits (quite a few Trumpeter car kits come to mind here) instead of just poking around a 1:1 and at least making some attempt at making the parts look right. 6. Window trim left in body color. Very rarely do you see this on 1:1. Again, only really works if you are going for a 'dealer promo' look in most cases. And finally... 7. Inconsistent kid design. One example would be the Revell '64 T-Bolt/Farilane. Nice body, nice engine, nice chassis... and then you get to the interior, which is an old-school style tub with really lackadaisical side panel detail. It's almost like they ran out of money or patience after they designed the rest of the kit, and just said "Meh... we'll do a 1964-vintage looking interior to offset the razor-sharp processing on the rest of the kit". There. I'm done.

Art- the paying by check/driver's licence thing reminds me of a story from my retail days. No real reason, just a funny story. At my last employer, it was required to have the person's driver's licence number on the check- the check could not be entered into the system and verified without a valid driver's licence number. Some people have the licence number on the check, some do not, and in that case, it was the cashier's job to ask the customer to see their driver's licence, then write it down on the check. When I got a check and did not see the licence number printed on it, I got into the habit of asking "May I see your driver's licence, please?" One day I was working at the register, and another employee asked if I could ring up the purchase of the customer he had been waiting on. Two men approached, I noticed the man carrying the merchandise, but not his companion. I rang up the order and gave him his total. The man pulled out his checkbook, filled out the check and handed it to me. Now, right about this time it sank in... the man who'd been holding the merchandise had on a white shirt, black pants and suspenders, and a 'chin strap' beard. His companion, who I hadn't really noticed until he'd come closer to the counter, had the same type of beard AND the same clothes, plus a wide-brimmed hat. And before I really took note of this, I asked "May I see your driver...aaaaaaaaaaaaah... never mind". I rang up the sale as cash and thanked the duo for their purchase. Across the top of the check, instead of the customer's driver's licence number, I simply wrote "Amish".

No. Frigging. WAY! Wow- that is amazing. My only gripe with such an animal would be my hands aren't steady enough to pick out details with paint, when the piece is that small and everything is molded to it. Be that as it may, that's an amazing casting.

What's the difference? (And I don't mean that in a sarcastic way... I really want to know! ) Reason I I.D.'d the resin truck as a Brigadier was because a neighbor of mine had a '78 that looked just like it, and it was a Brigadier. It was a '9500', but it did have Brigadier nameplates on the hood sides. Were the MH 9500 and Brigadier 9500 all that different?

That it does. The 18" AMT kit has them too, the decal sheet is basically a blown up version of the smaller PL kit sheet. Yes, I know the AMT kit isn't the greatest, but making it look good seems like a fun challenge to me.

You guys are going to convince me to buy a few of these yet, aren't you?

Love them! Gotta get the Crosley body.