2002p51

Okay, here's my dream space. First of all I have to admit I'm very fortunate. I have the most understanding wife in the world and we own a 3-bedroom home and there's just the two of us so I have lots of room. So here's the nickel tour: My wife and I share the office/model room. This is the south wall, technically on my wife's side of the room. My wife's desk looks messy but she does a great job of keeping all the bills paid and everything running smoothly. This is my side of the room. My workbench isn't always this neat and clean but you caught me right after my twice a year cleanup! This is the north wall. Most of the models on this side of the room are NASCAR Cup cars. This is the new shelf unit that I just built and installed next to the entrance to the room. When I was writing magazine articles and doing a monthly column I really needed to be organized. So I found these great cardboard boxes in an office supply store and built this shelf to hold them all. Here's a better look at the workbench itself. Also, in addition to a small TV above my wife's desk I also have a full component stereo system in the room so there's plenty of entertainment too!

Since I really have no choice but open shelving I've simply learned to live with it. When ever I've got nothing to do or the spirit moves me while watching TV I will grab a few of the dustiest ones and give them a quick going over. I use a make up brush for most of the dusting. It is nice and soft so it mostly won't knock off the small details and you can get one cheap in any store that sells make up for women. I used to use those cans of compressed air but found them to be too aggressive. But the bottom line is that I just don't get too stressed over it. I've got models in my collection that are more than 30 - 35 years old and the aging of the decals and yellowing of the white paint looks way worse than a little dust.

First of all I have to admit I haven’t read this entire thread. By the time I got through the first six pages I wanted to stick a pencil in my eye! So if I’ve missed a point or two please forgive me. I recently built one of those old Monogram Cessna 180 kits and if you haven’t seen it cruise on over to the “All the Rest” forum and check it out. Go ahead, we’ll wait. Welcome back. This is a kit that epitomizes 1950’s model technology, i.e. it’s scaled to fit the box, not some arbitrary “standard scale”. It has a minimum of details and clunky working doors that don’t fit well. The wings also don’t fit very well. The interior is very basic and the instrument panel is overly simplified. Now I could’ve spent many hours correcting these and other shortcomings of the model. In fact, a Google search took me to a forum where an IPMS’er did exactly that. The model he built from this basic kit was beautiful and featured many added, well done details. But guess what? Mine did not. And it did not on purpose because, well, I just didn’t feel like putting that much time into correcting all its faults. Why? To find the answer, go back to my post about it and notice one thing I said about this model; “It was fun to build.” I know, I know, everybody has their own definition of what constitutes fun in this screwy little hobby of ours, and yours may be attempting to turn out the most accurate scale model humanly possible. I know this because I’m like that too. Or at least I used to be. And every once in a while I revert back to the accuracy maniac that I used to be. “Hello, my name is Drew and I’m a rivet counter.” So where am I going with this rambling post? I’m not sure. I know I can’t change anybody’s mind or their attitude about model building. (Although I would desperately love to wipe out the use of the word “build” as noun, but I digress.) Nor should I expect to change anybody. I guess I just want to relate that in recent years I think I’ve learned how to relax and have more fun building models that might not stand up to critical scrutiny and not to sweat the small stuff. So, did any of the previous 402 words make any sense?

Nobody?

Post up your Daytona 500 winners! Here's a link to mine: http://public.fotki.com/2002p51/model_cars/daytona_500_winners/

I've always liked these old Monogram civilian airplanes and lately I've been picking them up on eBay. Yea, I know they're crude by today's kit standards, the door hinges are clunky and the doors don't fit well, (actually nothing fits well!) but they are still fun to build. I did a Google image search looking for ideas for a paint scheme and I saw a couple that were polished instead of completely painted so I thought I'd try something like that. I covered the entire model with Bare Metal Foil then masked off the areas I wanted painted. This was easier to do than I thought it would be, but I did use up a lot of foil! This will go nicely with the Monogram Piper Tri-Pacer I built about a year ago. As always, comments are welcome.

That's awesome work. I love the way the bed looks!

Some of you may or may not know that my "day job" is a race photographer. Sometimes this job includes selling photos to racers and teams, etc. Well, one of my dreams has always been to fix up our trailer and equip it to do photo editing, printing, and sales right on site at the race track. And since I can't afford to do this in real life what better than to at least build a model of what it might look like. So here it is. Of course I used a Galaxie trailer kit. As an aside it's funny that, for being basically just a simple box, this thing is pretty fussy to build. But I digress. Here's an overall view of the inside. Just about everything you see here is scratch built from Evergreen styrene shapes and sheet. Here's the "customer entrance". All of the photos on the walls are mine, reduced to size and printed on photo paper. The frames for the photos are made from Evergreen square stock painted flat black. The lap top on the right side of the counter is used by the "sales clerk" (me probably) to help the customer see the photo he wants on the larger slave monitor on the left. Behind the sale counter is my work area with another lap top and a printer. Both are scratch built. The lap top's "keyboard" is simply a photo, reduced to scale size in Photoshop and printed on glossy photo paper. The printer and stool are also scratched from Evergreen. The overhead cabinets are for storage of supplies and equipment. At the front of the trailer is a closet for coats and jackets, a microwave, the face of which is another photo, a small refrigerator, and a few drawers for whatever. Anyway, while I may never do this for real, it was fun to build in scale.

There are a few here: http://public.fotki.com/2002p51/model_cars/sprint_cars/ And there are a couple here mixed in with some other stuff: http://public.fotki.com/2002p51/model_cars/fictional_short/

Done! Like I said earlier, I'm pretty happy with the way this one came out. Will it ever see a contest room? Of course not. And you could nit pick a few things, (and believe me I saw them all before you did), but I feel that it captures the look and "feel" of the real car pretty well and that's always my number one goal. As always comments and critiques are encouraged.

It's not as hard as you might think, Dave. Just takes a little bit of technique and some practice. Back in the seventies I was a sign painter and pinstriper and I hand lettered most of my race car models because there was no aftermarket decal industry yet. But I haven't done any of that sort of stuff for at least 25 years and considering I don't have a proper striping brush and the wrong type of paint, I think this came out okay. Thanks.

Okay, decals are done. The gold outlines around the numbers and the edges of the maroon panels are hand painted. I haven't done any thing like this in probably 25 years and, considering the Testors Model Master gold paint I used isn't a striping paint, I think it all came out okay. This thing will never see the inside of a contest room anyway. The decals, like the resin body, are an aftermarket product that I've had for so long I don't remember who made them or where I got them. They were designed for a Harry Gant Cup car but they worked pretty well here. Anyway, I'm happy with how it's going so far.

Who needs decals? I was getting ready to shoot the maroon and since it was important that the roof number match the body color, I thought I'd try cutting them out of the roof mask. It worked pretty well so I thought I'd try it for the door numbers too. I cut four individual 1's out of tape. Obviously there's some clean up to do and they will need a gold outline but, overall, I'm happy with the way this came out. By the way, the color is a custom mix using "Sign Painters One Shot" paint. I started with a Bright Red base then added Bright Blue a little at a time until I got the shade of Maroon that looked about right.

So, I've started working on a model of one of Jack Ingram's Late Model Sportsman cars; this one: The chassis is done. It's basically an AMT Cup car with a modified cage. The body is resin but I've had it for so long that I no longer remember when or where I got it or who produced it. It got the base coat of gloss white (Testors Model Master) since I shot this photo and so far so good. I've got decals that will duplicate all of the markings on the car except for one slightly important part, the numbers! I've been searching every website and doing every Google search I can think of trying to find those "11's" with no luck. It looks like Blue Ridge Decals made them at one point quite a while ago but they are no longer available anywhere. I may have to resort to hand painting them, which I used to do all the time but I haven't done anything like that in years and I'm very much out of practice. So, we'll see what happens!

Thank you Jeff.

I built this a few months ago and just got around to photographing it last week. AMT kit, of course, built as a curbside of sorts. No engine or chassis detail. I made the roll cage from Evergreen rod and replaced much of the interior with Evergreen sheet. Plain white wrapper, aftermarket decals, MPC wheels, aftermarket tires, bada boom, bada bing, done!

Well poop! After searching the web for several weeks while I was researching this project I never found a photo of the back of the truck. So of course, now that it's done, guess what pops up on the Wood Brothers Facebook page just this very morning: I'm not going to re-do the model now but I'm excited about getting starting on that modified!

Thank you to everybody who has posted compliments on here, I appreciate all of you.

That's amazing!

Bingo! I agree and this is also why I use an airbrush. Think about this, with a spray can you are trying to get a 1/25 scale paint job with a full size spray nozzle. By their very design spray cans are applying too much paint!

Math makes my head hurt!

Ditto.

And that's a good point. It brings up the old "rule of thumb" for two color paint jobs that you always paint the lighter color first. In my case, even for single color paint jobs, I always use white primer. It makes the final color cover easily and look much brighter than the typical gray primer. Which ultimately means I use much less paint.

I was reading a post on that “other” board, (I know, I know, I shouldn’t do that but . . . .) and the poster had a question about airbrushing. He wondered if a 2 ounce jar of paint was enough to paint a model car body. One responder said that 2 ounces was more than enough but that you should use at least one ounce of a single color to be on the safe side. And I’m thinking to myself; what? Now I’m not putting myself up as some big painting expert or anything but I’ve been building model cars for more than 50 years now and painting them with an airbrush exclusively for over 30 of those years and I’ve never, ever used an entire ounce of paint on a single model. In fact, I can get several full body paint jobs from one of those ½ ounce bottles of Testors Model Master paint. I say several meaning at least three and more likely four. Again I’m no expert but my paint jobs usually look pretty good and I get everything covered and smoothed with about 1/8, or a little more, of an ounce. So this brings up the following discussion question; how much paint do some of you use on a single model? And if you are using an ounce or more, why are you using so much paint? And of course I’m talking to airbrush users only.

I could say the same about him, good modeler and good friend.