Mark Brown

No, the actual boot is phone wire insulation. After I cut the plug wire to length and stick both ends in the boot, I usually dip the whole boot in a drop of CA to make it all hang together. You can squeeze the loop a bit to hold the boot at the right 90-degree angle while the CA dries.

The best part of the reissued SVO, for me, is the fact that I won't have to deal with red plastic, or at least I assume that they'll be molding it in a more builder-friendly color. I was going to build the old red version I've got for the Fox build, but now I'll hold off until the repop shows up.

For years one of my favorite tools has been a simple needle mounted in a short length of scrap sprue. I break off the needle so that only about 3/4" is left, so that it won't break off during use (experience) and use find the sharpest needle I can find. The resulting tool is a sort of awl, that's really great for making pilot holes before drilling. If you make one and keep it on your desk, you'll find loads of other uses for it, and best of all, it's free. It's not that hard to make 90-degree boots, too. Here's a drawing I made a few years back that shows how - the toughest part is making the notch in the thin insulation, but with practice it gets easier. And here's what the finished boots look like on a big block Ford.

You got that right - I think the last time I used thread for plug wires LBJ was still president!

You don't have to bother coloring it, Dave - I found this place online where you can buy 100-ft rolls of the wrapping wire in several colors, including yellow. I used the Sharpie method in the past, but found that CA cement removes the coloration, so I was very happy to find this place. The prices are great, too. One spool of each should last a lifetime. http://www.web-tronics.com/10spof30awgw.html

Heh heh - if you could figure out a way to come get it, you probably could. I'm in the process of replacing the old office desk with a 7-ft long solid door so I can spread out a bit.

I try to keep the stuff I use most at arm's length. Since I've been saving all my model parts for 45 years, there's a lot of stuff to keep organized, but if it's not organized, I spend way too much time finding what I'm after. If you can make them out on both sides of my work area, I've got tires on 1/4" diameter dowels attached to 1" wide wood strips. Very cheap to make and it does a great job of keeping tires organized. (by the way, my desktop rarely looks this clean )

Sounds like you've got the bug pretty bad! Here's the '93 coupe I bought last year - ended up selling it about six months later to a buddy of Eric Stone's. It had 46K miles on it and I just couldn't bring myself to beat on it, or even drive it much. Now I'm sorta looking for another one. The yellow big block car was supposed to be a street/strip car but it didn't turn out that way - I'd still like to build a 500hp car to horse around with on the street. The yellow car will be a drag radial/limited street car - should go low 8s or high 7s eventually, if he's gonna be competitive with it.

It's the one I built and raced a couple years ago. I had a big block/Glide in it but it's got a Procharged 5.4 Navi motor now. I'm registered on both those forums but haven't done anything on them in a while. Here's another pic of the coupe - it's actually an '87 with an '86 nose - I wanted a four-eye but found the '87 first so I backdated it.

I guess I'm game, though I've got a long history of not finishing group build projects (or projects in general!). I'll either get going on this '93 Cobra tube chassis XTF car, either with a nitrous big block or turbo'd big block. I might do a stock build with an '85 SVO, too. See which gets to the finish(ed) line first.

There you go! I'd recommend getting a selection of the stuff - I've got several sizes that are tight slip-fits within one another and it works great for things like working suspension parts and hinges and so forth. Once you get it, you'll start finding all sorts of uses for it. I haven't seen the big needles for horse shots, Terry - how long are they? I couldn't find any needles longer than 1.25" at Walgreens and that's what prompted me to look online. I found one outfit that sold the tubing (before I knew about smallparts) but they only sold large amounts. The lady I spoke with was nice enough to go out to the warehouse and pick me up a big bag of cutoff scraps, and she even sent them to me for free. Made my day! Good to see you still around, too, Terry! Maybe I'll have to sit down and look at making that BBC again. I've got factory blueprints and a ton of photos of bare engine parts.....just have to decide whether to go stock or modern aftermarket (big heads, tall deck, sheetmetal valve covers,etc).

Here's another little scratchbuilding exercise I did using the same materials. Believe it or not, each of these wheelie bar casters contains something like 16 pieces - the wheels themselves are made up of six pieces - I guess I got a little carried away. It's all K&S tubing, stainless hypo tubing, and a couple pieces of aluminum sheet and plastic stock. I'm not sure I'd do this again, but once I got started I had to finish.

I believe there's three different sizes of K&S tubing - 1/16", 5/64",and 3/32", and there's a piece of .050 stainless hypo tubing in each shock as well - that's the leftmost piece of the three in the photo. The 5/64" is used for the two collars. I had to order the 5/64" from K&S (min order 100-ft) and I found a place online to get the hypo tubing. That stainless hypodermic tubing is one of my favorite scratchbuilding materials.....all sorts of uses for it, and I'm always finding more. I've got about ten different diameters and it's great stuff, though it's not easy to work with. You can't drill it and to cut it, it has to be scored and broken. It's the same stuff that R&B uses for four-link bars.

That looks great, Terry. I think I remember when you built that - it has been a while. Did you ever finish that 1:16 big block Chevy you were working on years ago? I keep thinking I ought to make one, and every time I do, your name pops into my head.

Thanks, guys. Yes, those are the RB Motion parts on the end of the shock. Some things you're better off buying than trying to make from scratch, and those rod ends are a great example.

Here's one I made from the materials mentioned above. Again, a pretty simple and straightforward scratchbuilding task, and it looks much better than the kit part. When you compare the time spent making the shocks from scratch to the time to remove mold lines and paint the kit item, it's well worth it, IMO. By the way, the piece of plastic sprue is how I hold very small pieces of aluminum tubing for shaping and polishing.

Go to Michael's or Hobby Lobby and pick up a couple spools of stainless beading wire. You'll want to look at 26ga or thereabouts...get two or three spools so you're covered. It's pretty inexpensive and will be useful for other scratchbuilding projects. It makes perfect material for winding scale coil springs. I've made coilovers with aluminum tubing as described above, and I used RB Motion four-link rod ends for the mounts at each end of the spring. Very easy scratchbuilding project. Once you get all the parts made you can polish them up with polishing cloth.

I'd love to see that English wheel, too. I've dreamed of making a working scale English wheel, and a working scale bead roller, for years.

Those look great, Dan - but I'd expect nothing less! You're sure right about the camera - when you can blow a one-inch-long part up to fill a 21-inch monitor, you're not going to miss much, and you'll probably see things you didn't want to! The website looks really good - I check it from time to time to see how things are progressing.

Well, you know my feelings on the subject, Dan. I'd venture that "hardcore scratchbuilding" would be worthy of its own subforum. And I agree that treating subassemblies as models in their own right is a great way to accomplish daunting tasks. Baby steps, on the road to a completed model. Forget the slapper bars, Eric - nobody uses 'em anymore. Think "CalTracs"! BTW, Dan - you owe me an email!

The Tamiya site says it's not for plastic, but I thought I'd check here and see if anyone has tried it. I picked up a couple cans at my LHS last week and they make quite a few colors that aren't in the regular paint line, including Translucent Silver and Semigloss Silver Anodized Aluminum. Has anyone tried this stuff? What happens when it's sprayed on plastic? If it's not useful on plastic, how about resin or metals? Anyone here got any experience with this RC paint?

I couldn't agree more.....although I've not really been knocked out by the alternatives, to me, plated plastic looks exactly like.....plated plastic. It invariably looks like plastic and it's almost always too shiny....unrealistically so. I build almost all racecars, and unless they're trailer queens or just got the expensive detailing treatment, real racecars rarely have ultra-shiny chrome, even on the few parts that are chromed. The same thing is true, to a lesser degree, on non-race cars and trucks. The vast majority have chrome that's not nearly as shiny as the plated plastic in our model kits. Now, whether these products are the solution, I'm not convinced. But it's nice to see people thinking outside the (vacuum plated) box. Mark

You wouldn't need adhesion promoters for modeling applications - the vinyl/fabric paints stick to plastic just fine without them. I never even used them when using the paints on cars, and never had any problem with the paint not sticking (as long as the surface was prepped/cleaned adequately).

I've always used it over primer just to be on the safe side, but I'd be surprised if it caused problems since it's formulated to use on plastics, as well as fabric. When I recolored the red interior on my original '86 hatch (the one that I had to scrap because of the terrible cage install) I painted the plastic without primer and didn't have any problems at all.