2002p51

Oh I do too. The area I live has been described as the "Buckle of the Bible Belt", and a lot of businesses around here are closed on Sunday's including Hobby Lobby, and I completely understand that. But I still think a hobby shop isn't like a restaurant or a grocery store and you need to be open when your customers are most likely to shop.

Maybe a side topic to this is; do you guys think the hours a local shop is open has anything to do with it's success or failure? The Hobbytown USA that I go to is closed on Sundays! That makes no sense to me as what better time to participate in the hobby shopping than weekends? I think a hobby shop should be open at around 11:00 am on weekdays to provide service to those who can swing by on their lunch hour then stay open until at least 8:00 pm. Then Saturday and Sunday it should be open a minimum of 12 hours, say 8 to 8 or 9 to 9. A closed shop is an open invitation to shop on-line. If the shop owner absolutely must have a day or two off make it Monday and/or Tuesday. Yes, this would be a tough routine and it would be hard to find and schedule quality employees to cover all those hours but running any business is tough if it is to succeed. Thoughts?

I have access to two national chain stores in my area but no "mom&pop" type stores that some of you wax so nostalgically about. One, Hobby Lobby, is very close but carries almost nothing that I want. I can get quality paint brushes in their art supply section but their selection of kits is minimal. They have a small rack of Testors paint, but no other modeling supplies of any kind. I rarely go in there. There is a Hobbytown USA, but it's a 50 mile round trip so, because of that, I don't go there too often. These guys have decent customer service and a couple of employees know who I am and are friendly. But like Harry, I know way more about what I plan to buy when I walk in there than they do. The store is focused on R/C stuff and a most of the square footage is given to that side of the business. They have decent model railroad stuff which I buy but their selection of model car kits, like Hobby Lobby, is limited. Also their prices on most of those kits are the same or higher than what you would pay on-line including shipping, so I rarely buy kits there. They do have a wide selection of paint and Evergreen. The problem there is when they're out of stock on that stuff, it could be months before they get more in. They don't carry anything like Bare Metal foil, resin parts, etc. so that has to be purchased on-line. They can't handle special orders, so that option is out too. So consequently I buy the majority of my kits on eBay. And again, like Harry, I shop price, price, price. Other hobby supplies I buy mostly direct from the manufacturer's web site. I like the convenience of shopping on-line and having stuff delivered to my door. I like doing my own research to find what I want. If there was a local mom & pop type place that carried everything I wanted, at competitive prices, and was a place I could hang out, I'd probably shop there all the time. Trouble is, in today's economy that's not a viable business plan and the days of places like that existing and surviving are long gone.

In no specific order: Motorsports Driving our hot rod and '47 Mercury to car shows and rod runs Model Railroading Slot cars Collecting antique cameras Collecting automotive books and magazines Road trips Race photography (although that's not really a hobby anymore since I get paid to do it. )

I'm going to play Devil's Advocate here and recommend against the Paasche. I used a simple Badger 150 for many, many years and when it finally wore out I followed the "party line" and "upgraded" to a Paasche. I had a real love hate relationship with it, well no, it was purely a hate relationship. Maybe it was me but I never could get used to that &^%$&^ thing and I screwed up more paint jobs and had more problems with it than I like to think about. It was very fussy about the paint being precisely thinned and other problems. It was just very temperamental. A couple of years ago I finally got fed up enough and bought another Badger 150 and I've been happy again. I know I'm probably the lone voice in the wilderness but I will never buy another Paasche. Just sayin'

Ah Jesse, I know I can always count on you!

I enjoy the research phase of a project as much, if not more, then the actual building. Besides, it gives me an excuse to delve into my other hobby; collecting books and magazines. The result is a massive library. When we moved from California to Tennessee seven years ago this is the contents of my reference library waiting to be picked up by the shipper: Like I said, that was 7 years ago. There's more now.

And for the last 30 years I've been been in the Cup garages from coast to coast, but what do I know.

And I can tell you with absolute certainty that they aren't. The vinyl used for wraps is very thin and it can be very difficult to see the seams, but they are there if you know where to look. Here's the deal, the one thing you have to realize is that racing may be a sport to you and me but running a race team is a business. And like any other business, to be successful and to stay in business you have to watch the cost of overhead and labor. Three or four guys can wrap a car in an hour or two, versus a mulit-color paint job that may take a couple of days in the paint booth. Now figure in the fact that sponsor schemes are now changed almost on a race-to-race basis and it just makes poor business practice to paint these cars any more. Compare how long it would take to completely change the paint from one scheme to another compared to peeling off the wrap and putting on a new one. And trust me, NOBODY is painting numbers any more. Even your local Saturday night hobby racers use vinyl for that!

They may well be from AMT. I wasn't sure because I never bought any and wouldn't.

All the usual stuff plus a roll of paper towels and a stack of Post-it notes. Not for posting notes of course but to use as disposable paint pallets, glue pallets and even for masking off small areas for a quick shot with the airbrush.

How then do you explain the sales of the Trumpeter Falcons or those awful Revell COT Cup cars?

Well, fortunately for me at least, I have absolutely zero interest in building modern NASCAR race cars so it's not an issue.

No, I don't mean that at all. Revell's '50 Olds, the new '57 Ford 2-door sedan, and the '57 Chevy 150 sedan are amazing kits in their accuracy and detail, just to name a few, and people are buying them. But we also recently had Trumpeter's recent series of kits that were merely rough approximations of '64 Falcons and modelers lined up to buy them too. My point is that, although it has been slowly getting better, we car modelers, as a market, have been much less fussy about accuracy and scale fidelity in the products we buy. Therefore the kit manufacturers have been less willing to invest the time and money into producing kits that reach the level of detail and accuracy that the typical model railroad product has. For many years we sent the clear message to kit manufacturers that we, as a group, are not concerned about absolute accuracy. And that brings us back to the original point of this thread. There is still a fairly large segment of this hobby that builds to a certain taste and is simply not as concerned about scale fidelity, or plausible realism, as is the typical model railroader or military modeler.

I'm 100% in agreement with this.

It's an interesting aspect of the model car hobby that sets it apart from other modeling hobbies. I'm an active model railroader and while that hobby does have a faction called "free lancing" where it's perfectly acceptable to create your own fictional railroad, it's generally expected that it will be done in a realistic manner. But for the most part, scale realism and fidelity to some prototype is the expected norm. The manufacturers that produce models for that hobby go to great lengths and spend a tremendous amount of R&D money to get the details right. The typical model railroad consumer demands it and is willing to pay for it. I have also been active in IPMS chapters in the past and see the same thing in military modelers. Absolute accuracy and scale fidelity rule the day. On the other hand the model car hobby has always had a more "creative' side to it. A sort of "do your own thing" mentality that is acceptable even though fidelity to the real subject may be missing. And although it has slowly been changing in recent years, we modelers have paid the price for this more loose attitude in the products that the manufacturers have given us. We all know of the many, many kits that have been marketed with inaccuracies and multiple errors in scale fidelity, markings, and other areas. We as consumers have accepted this and bought the products in spite of this, where buyers in other hobby segments have not. As most of you must know by now my preference is to accuracy. Even in the very rare instance that I build a fictional race car I will make every attempt to do it in a realistic manner so that, if it were a model of an actual car, it would be believable. It's the same way with street rods that I build. It may not be a replica of an actual car but I will make every attempt to make as realistic and as plausible to be a real car as possible. So in the end, yes, it's your model and you can build it any way you like. But if you expect your model to give a viewer the impression that this is a replica of an actual car or car that could exist in the 1:1 world, it MUST be done correctly and with accuracy in components and finish as the very first consideration

Exactly.

That's because it's all just one big sticker. Watch the Joe Gibbs video above.

But that completely defeats one of the most important reasons for using a vinyl wrap; it's removable! There was a video I saw a couple of years ago of an interview with crew chief Chad Knaus. It was shot in the race shop and in the background you could see two crew guys pulling all of the decals and wrap off of the 48 car. They couldn't have done that if it had a clear coat over it. Watch the video at this link: http://joegibbsracing.com/category/videos/ Not a paint booth in sight.

You are hereby sentenced to enter an IPMS National where you will be stoned into submission and forced to count every rivet on a 1/600 scale HMS Titanic!. Resistance is futile.

First of all, they are not NASCARs, but that's a whole 'nother rant! Second, while it's true they only represent one segment of racing, these are the cars most commonly seen with over done gloss on contest tables.

Okay Pete, as counter point to your shot of the Red Bull F1 car I submit the following cars that I shot at Bristol this year: Okay, okay, that was a ringer. This car is obviously done in a satin finish on purpose. But look at Tony Stewart's car: This is what the original poster is talking about. This car is less shiny than the F1 car and way less glossy than most of the models you see on a contest table.. This car is 100% wrapped in vinyl, there's no paint used here at all. You can go to the Joe Gibbs Racing web site and see time-lapse videos of the wrapping process. It too is far less glossy than most models. And that's all he and I are saying.

I agree 100%

This is why I have always said that restored race cars are an unreliable reference for an accurate model.