Chuck Most

Forgot about those- I have yet to run into one but I've heard of them.

The only exception seems to be the promos. They were molded from acetate and warp pretty badly, and who wants a bent '56 DeSoto? The late 80's/early '90's X-El versions were molded from polystyrene and don't warp, so it's one of very few instances where the reissues fetch more than the originals. Other than maybe the '59 Rambler wagon reissue, most of the "newest" JoHan stuff is pushing 25 or more years old, and by that time Johan wasn't pumping out thousands of kits at a time to begin with. Simple supply and demand.

Certainly not what I was expecting! I like it.

They're Fujimi figures, but I needed to cut a few pieces off and adjust to get the poses I wanted. I had to cut off the right guy's head and swap on another one so it wouldn't look like he was trying to do a somersault. So it was like this weird horror movie going on at the workbench for a bit. Speaking of those guys, they're painted now. Going by the sign Foreign Objects has been around since 1978, I'm just going to arbitrarily say that Carl was in his mid-twenties when he started the business, which would put him in his mid 60's now, so I gave him grey hair, making him somewhat resemble an abnormally tall Leslie Nielsen. The guy on the right.... I'll call him Mike, because he sort of resembles my junior high biology teacher, got a goatee painted on, and some John Lennon sunglasses from a Detail Master photoetch sheet. I also gave him some "pinstripe" tats (taken from a Revell '50 Olds custom sheet) and painted his shirt to resemble a bowling shirt, because I guess bowling shirts are a thing now. The figures need a little touch up in places (check out the heel of Mike's right shoe, for one example) but considering I've never painted figures before... I'm reasonably pleased with how they came out.

It was an earthquake induced by spinning the diorama around After some thought, I figured (hahaha) the diorama could use a human element. So, here we have the shop owner... let's call him Carl Sullivan... leaning on the fender of the Mini, explaining what he did to swap the Honda 13B into the car to an interested... maybe the guy on the right is the Mini's owner? Or maybe he's just a curious onlooker who saw the car in the bay and wanted to ask some questions. I'll figure it all out later. It was odd- I was watching the classic Lucio Fulci horror movie "City Of The Living Dead" while I was cutting and shaping these scale humans, in a movie where horrible things happen to the characters. It made me think what an odd hobby this can be sometimes, and how good zombie movies used to be before that genre got played out.

Now I'm at the stage where stuff is getting put up in it's permanent location. Along the bathroom wall I added two of the peg boards, along with the sign left over from the previous building's owner. There's also a resin refrigerator stuck in the corner... I have no idea who cast it, or when, but I've had it for years and finally had a use for it. I also stuck a Keep Out sign on it for kicks. A stack of used but still good tires are tucked into this corner, along with a safety cone I've also had lying around for years. The other peg board was positioned near the opening for the side bay, while one shelving unit and a toolbox were set along the wall. Down in the bottom of the photo are a couple of loose details for the front desk- a phone from the Fujimi tools set, and a tissue box from a Fujimi accessories set.

Last night, I got the building mounted to the base, and planted some shrubs under the lobby window. The lobby walls themselves were also installed, as was the restroom partition. The earquake only slightly jostled things around. The strangest part was that somehow the air compressor ended up on the restroom roof. I also stocked up a shelf with some photoreduced items and spare parts. The modified Honda radiator for the Mini is also plopped up there against an old Cragar box and some Subaru 360 hubcaps. I also found some old peg boards, and those were painted and some tools and other doodads were hung up on them.

This started out as the '69 Custom. From there, I did a little mixing and matching with the different variants of the kit to come up with a mild custom (or mildly accessorized?) '69 pickup with a 302 V8. The 1969 Rupp bikes came from two MPC Force 440 kits, and they sit on a scratch build transport platform in the bed. The Rupp logos came from the 1:20 scale MPC snow dragster, while the other letters are either from the '69 kit or from a Microscale letter sheet. Paint is Massey-Ferguson red, I'd originally planned to paint the bikes to match, but went with orange and green instead just because I felt like it.

As a guy who owns a Ferguson 35, I love the kit, and I love your model on it. And believe it or not I've seen a few Fergusons that were painted red. In fact, I think I know where there's a real one that looks EXACTLY like your model.

If the owner is a typical Corvette guy, when he goes to sell it on craigslist the ad will be chock full of "one of a kind" "rare" "now lowballers I know what I got."

If we're casually tossing out ugly designs we still love for some reason, allow me to treat you to the 1955 Mercury D-528 concept. I especially like the fact that I don't think they could possibly have picked a less flattering color for it if they'd tried. Going by the roof line I think somebody involved in the styling was having coffee with a guy from Nash's styling studio. On the other hand... squint and you can see a little '56 Continental MKII in the front end. Well, I can anyway.

Made a little progress today. I added edge moldings (whatever you'd call them) to the corners of the building to cover up where the shingles meet. I did a little finish work to the foundation and then sprayed the entire mess in Rustoleum Almond gloss. Window frames have yet to be finished, they will be done in the accent color... probably more NATO brown. I also did more work on the lobby. Please excuse the misaligned carpet- it's not yet glued down and is just kind of laying there for the photo. The desk was finished and painted to match the decor, and a couple of pictures were hung on the wall- one of a Rover Mini and a Subaru 360. I'm trying to drop clues of the building's past into the project. Prior to being home to Foreign Objects, the building's previous owner ran a dealership out of the premises, selling Austins from 1960 to 1997, then switching to Subaru after the Mini stopped being imported to the US. Yes... the Mini in the picture is too new for that period, but it gets the point across. The "paintings" came from two sources. The Mini came from the end panel of a Heller 1:43 scale Mini kit, while the Subaru came from the flyer included in an Arii 1:32 scale Owner's Club kit. They were mounted to .020" plastic sheet with the spray adhesive, then superglued to the wall. I cut the bottom and right side off of the Subaru image to hide a stock number printed on it, then cut down the Mini image to the same size. A TV will be mounted to the corner of the wall for customers in the lobby to watch, but I may squeeze in a couple more "paintings" or photos to decorate the wall. The restroom door and the two-way door that leads out into the shop were made from plastic sheet and strip, and the male/female restroom icon was hand drawn. I'll cut some windows from thin styrene sheet at some point, and add some general signage.

There was a scratchbuilding school article in the magazine some time ago (it was written by either Scott Colmer or Alyn Loya) that showed how it was done. It looked very tedious but the article went into detail on making the tool to do it and demonstrating how to use it on foil. I'll have to see if I can see which particular issue it was in, unless somebody beats me to it.

Wasn't on the road, but in a Meijer parking lot. Which is only about 1/8 mile from the road, so...

This started out with the Teague stock car kit, I built it as a filler piece for a diorama I'm building. Other than leaving out some parts it's mostly box stock. I added the headlight bucket structure to the driver's side fender, repositioned the side trim on the driver's side door to represent a donor door from a '51 model, and used wheel hubs from Scenes Unlimited.

Nice! That reminds me that I have a Routemaster and a Vespa I need to get around to one of these days. I was worried about the spray adhesive reacting to the foam, but since the foam I'm using is paper lined there were no problems. I also stacked the deck in my favor by spraying the adhesive only to the back of the wood, rather than directly to the foam board.

When I saw this thread I thought it was going to be about the Aisle Of Mann TT. It's nice not to be let down for once. I'm not a motorcycle guy at all, but the TT has always fascinated me.

The last few nights have been devoted to fleshing out the lobby. I stumbled across some flocked paper in the craft section of M-57 Surplus in Chesaning, MI. They ended up with quite a bit of stock left over from when my local hobby shop closed up, so even though I usually go there for tools, I still haunt the craft aisles for interesting stuff. The brown pattern looked like carpeting to me... in fact, it might be intended for use as doll house carpeting. Whatever the case may be, I plunked down the fifty cents for it and cut a piece to fit once I got home. After setting it into place and taking it in, I decided to go with it. This also set the tone for the "decor" of the lobby. Since I had plenty of the milled basswood left over from the outside, I chose to use some on the inside walls. The foam board walls were covered with some almond-colored card stock, and the basswood was cut to fit. After being sprayed with some Tamiya NATO Brown, more Elmer's spray adhesive was used to attach the wood to the walls. A restroom door facade, an aluminum-framed glass door, and windows will be added later, as well as a base board. The desk is built into the wall, it was built from various bits of Evergreen plastic stock. An office chair from the old Fujimi parts pack will sit behind it, and the desk itself will be cluttered with various doodads such as a laptop, a phone, and some paperwork. I'll also need to make up some customer seating... chairs, benches built into the window sills, a sofa... maybe a combination. Some wall ornamentation and a TV may also come into play at some point.

Here's what I don't get- ever since Bugatti was revived in the mid '90's it's been a performance car. Weren't they originally luxury cars (with some performance undertones)? Imagine what kind of luxury you'd get for 8 million.

Just got the latest offering from Jeff over at Motor City Resin Casters- a complete Slant Six engine with automatic transmission. The kit builds into a stock Slant, or into the Mopar performance Hyper Pak version, using parts duplicated from the ancient Revell '62 Valiant... or was it a Lancer? Anyway, I had the parts and loaned them out to Jeff so he could offer it with his engine. Get with Jeff on pricing. The way he was saying it the Hyper Pak parts will be included with the engine kit, but that may NOT be the case. And I don't know if he's planning on it, but I'm certain if you ask Jeff nicely enough he'd be willing to sell just the Hyper Pak components. Casting quality is great overall, I can find nary a pinhole and there's minimal flash, oddly the worst flash is on the smallest parts. Here's a general parts overlay- complete down to front engine mounts. There's a distributor tower but no cap- one of Morgan Automotive Detail's pre-wired units would do nicely there And the Hyper Pak parts- intake and exhaust manifolds and the cast aluminum valve cover.

Been a while, but... After weighing the options of starting over with the building or using the foam board mockup as the base, I opted to go the latter direction. But how to dress it up? The building I'm thinking of (and the one that loosely serves as a pattern for this scale building) is a 1920's-ish wood frame building. That particular building has had vinyl siding and a new steel roof added fairly recently, but I wanted a more "rustic" look. So, chose to go with wood siding. Then the problem became how to do it. I'd planned to use individual strips of basswood, layering them much as you would with a 1:1 siding project like this. I have to admit I've never paid much attention to the MIdwest wood display at the hobby shop. As I was scanning over the various sizes and thicknesses of wood strips, I stumbled across lengths of basswood that were milled to resemble siding. Thinking that would save some time, I scanned through those and picked one that looked good to me. I bought six sheets, which ended up being almost the perfect amount, leaving me with several still-usable sections and one complete strip. I left a bit bare at the bottom to represent the concrete foundation of the building. The edges of the wood are a bit rough in spots, but no matter- eventually I'll add some 90 degree moldings to the corners of the building, as well as door and window frames. There's a small bare spot on the opposite side of the building just beneath the peak of the roof- a "metal" panel will reside there for routing the chimney. You'll see another bare spot across the face of the building- this is where the Foreign Objects sign will sit. This was the first time I'd used Elmer's spray adhesive. I expected it to be kind of so-so, but it has quite a strong bond. I had to work quickly to reposition the front wood paneling, and I had just enough time to get it straight and level before the adhesive snugged up!

It's a Bro-Dozer, the only time it goes off road is when he parks it on grass.

Getting back to what I was saying earlier- you can now purchase a complete Slant Six from Motor City Resin Casters, and the engine includes the optional Hyper Pak parts. I don't think he has it on the site yet, but I'll get some pictures of the contents later.

Wonderful model.

Very nice! I built one of these about 12 years ago from the AMT/Ertl Rides Magazine version (same kit, different boxing). I also painted mine red. Some of the decals split on me, I wasn't using decal solvents back then. One of these days I want to buy another one and build a better version.