Nick Allen

That's an amazing build, really crisp, and I love the amount of detail you've put on there. Nick.

Sam, thankyou. As I mentioned in the post, they were built over 10 years ago, I've moved on a bit since then but now I've become self critical of everything I build, alway's striving for realism. Every now and again I stop and build something silly just to bring me down to earth and to prove that this is a hobby. I've been looking through this forum, mainly at the truck builds, there's some amazing builders on here, just when you think you've reached a certain standard, you find something that is mind blowing. This is a good site to spend a few hours browsing, thankyou for allowing me to rest here for a while. I have a couple of builds in progress, I'll post them here and look forward to your comments. Nick.

Thanks Mike, I've just noticed your signature, I've got several builds unfinished, maybe I should place a couple on here, it may spurn me on to finish a few? As a retired firefighter of 27 years operational experience, my main modelling love is fire trucks. There are so many in the stash I've lost count. I've also got one main ambition, to use my favourite kit, the Mack AC, as a basis for a 1930's New York Pumper, one day? Nick.

Every so often, I look at some of the models I've built over the years. Sometimes I shudder to think did I really build that? Then there are times when I seem to be looking at an old friend, a model that has taught me so much. Here's a couple of my old builds, both over 10 years old. First is the 1926 Mack AC ... ... it was given to be as a built model by a friend who emigrated to Australia, rather than give it away or destroy it, he wanted it to go somewhere it would be appreciated. I'd had it a couple of years on display, but then I thought why not strip it down and rebuild it? ... so I did. It had been put together with the old tube styrene glue, and painted in water based paints. I stripped it down to manageable chunks, those sections which would not separate, I cleaned them up as best I could, and then reassembled the model. I painted it in enamels and then started to weather it. It received a couple of black washes, using thinned black enamel, this dulled the paintwork and gave a good base for the pastels. The rust was achieved using a soldering iron with a pointed tip, just touching the plastic enough to mark it, then the damaged area was rubbed with a fine wet n' dry paper (wet), and then the area was washed before finally attacking the rusted area with various shades of pastels. The plastic seats and cab floor were replaced with wood, the roof was given a covering of leathercloth, and then gently picked with the tip of a scalpel in order to simulate small tears. The engine was wired using photographs from a book by John B Montville. I learnt so much from this model, it really has become an old friend. The second build is the Italeri Opel Blitz. again, this model taught me so much. Nick.

Thankyou, I'd like to have another go at building something similar, I've moved on somewhat since I built that. Nick.

I'm new to this forum so I thought by the way of introduction, I'd show you one of my past builds. It's based on the old Esci Landrover 109 and the build is well over 10 years old ... ... I added the roll bars, looking at it now they're a tad overscale, but at the time, it looked reasonable. I also wanted to show a bit of damage so painted the o/s front wing in grey ro represent a replacement part, but also damaged the n/s front wing and side using a warm spoon heated in water to acomplish the damage. The windscreen was also damaged using the blade from a scalpel, and I also added a bit of weathering. I don't have the model anymore, a friend of mine, a collector of Landover models took a shine to it, so I let him keep it. Nick.

Dingo, I've just landed on this forum by sheer chance and found it has a truck section, although looking through some of the amazing car builds, I'm tempted to flip over to the dark side for a while, maybe build that Ferrari 250 GTO I keep promising myself, one day eh? Good to find you here and I'm pleased to see you persevered with this build. I have several of those old AMT Mack's in the stash, one of which will eventually become the basis of a 1930's NYFD Mack Pumper. I'm off to spend a couple of hours looking through the postings here. Nick.