chepp

Ah, such memories. I had been building model cars since I was a little kid and kept on in my teen years when others' interests had moved on. I didn't have any money and my parents wouldn't consider my having my own car in high school ('68-'71). I grew up in the San Fernando Valley area of Los Angeles. In junior high, the only hot car was a brand new '66 Chevelle SS396 in Marina Blue with a black interior that the janitor bought new. He parked it next to the shop buildings and we all drooled over it. In high school, surprisingly there weren't a lot of interesting cars but there were a few oddities. One brother and sister each had Barris-customized cars: Albert had a '67 Malibu SS with a custom hood and spoiler with some custom paint. His sister had a custom-painted Opel GT with panels and lace. A guy in auto shop had a bare frame with a '50s Hemi and a kitchen chair welded to it so he could putt it around on the school access road. One of my buddies (non car guy) drove his grandmother's hand-me-down '62 Dodge convertible. It was black on black on black with rust, dirt a tattered top and the interior was filthy but it was sort-of cool in its own weird way. I did my senior photography project (10 minute slide show) on Van Nuys Blvd. cruising and still have most of the photos. In my last two years of college ('74-'75) in central Missouri a guy living in my boarding house (similar to a frat without the frat stuff) was buying up Superbird, Daytona and any Charger/Roadrunner/GTX with a Hemi or 440. Remember, this was right after the first "gas shock" in '73 when people were unloading any gas-guzzler for a pittance. His name was Ed Burn (or Burns -- I may have the spelling wrong). I have no idea if he kept them long enough to capitalize on their huge run-up in value in later decades. My college car was a 4-cyl. sub-compact. Oh, well.

You guys all make valid points and I agree with most of them. However, I think that there is a vast difference between a model that is acceptable to us and what is acceptable to the person who offers to buy a kit, a can of paint and pays you $20. If you want to do it for them and the car was available as a '60s style AMT annual, here's what you do: Body: Snip the sprue off. Glue the hood on. Wash it in soapy water and set it aside to dry. Later, spray it with one coat of color. No primer, no removal of mold defects, no BMF, no decals, no detail painting, no nothing. Interior: Snip the sprues off. Don't waste time washing it. Spray the dash, steering wheel, front seats and the bucket with whatever paint you already have that is vaguely close to the desired color. Or flat black, the recipient won't care. Glue them together. Again, no detail painting. Don't even bother glueing in the chrome stick shift. Chassis and wheels: Snip the sprues off. Don't wash it. Spray the chassis and wheel inners flat black. Press the chrome wheels into the tires and wheels then onto the steel axles. No engine. Final assembly: Snip the sprues off the chrome bumpers. Put the windows and interior into the body. Place the bumpers in position and screw on the chassis. If the kit came with clear red taillights and you're feeling generous, put some white glue on them and press them in place. Really, it's a weekend of spare time. The recipient will be thrilled and won't notice what we notice. It will look good from ten feet away sitting on a shelf or perched on the dashboard of their car at a cruise night.

Build a garage scene with several of them in various stages of construction and repair. This would be a good opportunity to practice making crashed parts such as body panels. The "damaged" pieces could be stacked in the corner of the shop as if they had been already removed from a race car. There wouldn't be any pressure to make a full car in wrecked condition.

More (I presume) serious adult model builders. This results in more of everything for everybody: 1. More new kits and accessory parts that are accurate and detailed as well as more variety in subject matter 2. More online resources, from model car websites/forums as well as reference material for production vehicles and race cars/modified vehicles from today and the past; plus, more art of fantasy and phantom vehicles that can provide inspiration (or ridicule about what doesn't "work") 3. Useful tools, often from fields that modelers haven't known about or haven't had access to 4. More venues to show our work, from non-competition displays to contests that cater from "everyday" good modelers to the amazing best-of-the-best craftsmen So, essentially, I'm repeating what you wrote.

Oh, yes! Candy Tahitian Orange, mmmmm.

I like it. The 1/24 scale is fine with me but I think that there are a considerable number of builders (or are they just forum posters?) who won't buy anything that isn't 1/25. I remember liking to build 1/25 AMT car kits with Revell 1/24 engines and wheels/tires because of their slightly larger size.

Me, too, except that my memory is from this boxtop.

What if Tucker had become a viable manufacturer and thus cause the others to "catch up" to its innovations? Was the central "bullet" on the fronts of the late '40s Studebaker and Ford cars a coincidence or were they fillers for a central headlight that steered with the front wheels like the Tucker?

Never. I don't agree with the causes that they donate to. Besides, one of the greatest, and it's not a chain, hobby shops (Pegasus) is closer to me.

Door molding? It's supposed to be a gap.

4. Paint won't stick to polished plastic. I figured that more people would comment on this one. To me, the conventional wisdom is that you need some "tooth" on the surface to be painted -- such as scuffing with 400 grit wet-or-dry for a coat of flat primer. On my next model, I'm going to try the polished plastic method and spray on many light coats of diluted gloss paint, skipping the primer. How about posting some more myths?

Not me! I can't think of any full-size cars or wagons that appeal to me after 1969. I was graduated from high school in 1971. I drove Mom's 1967 Impala 2-door hardtop with a 283 and Powerglide until I went off to college with my own car ('72 Opel 1900 coupe -- the car that the Vega should have been). I like the style of '67 Impala and earlier mid-sized and big cars and wagons like the Olds Vista Cruiser but I don't care for the later ones. Hey Ed Shaver, I too had a '69 Econoline long wheelbase with the 240 and three-on-the-tree (but it was the E100 and probably had the standard rear axle). I bought it used in 1976 as a soda vending machine service truck and customized it. It served well until 1987 when I bought a new Astro van. The period from 1973 through about 1985 is often mentioned as the malaise era for 1:1 cars -- and for good reason. Often they had poor build quality, unattractive styling as the manufacturers tried to integrate (as cheaply as possible) the required safety features such as 5 mph bumpers, poor performance due to a long learning curve for reducing emissions and increasing gas mileage. I think it was the 5.0 Mustang in the mid '80s that got folks interested in performance again.

4. Paint won't stick to polished plastic.

Like, say a '60 Ford? Here's mine:

Squadron Putty (either green or white, they seem to be the same except for color) works great for me.

This isn't quite a measured blueprint but it's a drawing of the molds for Goodyear 7.75-15 and 7.35-15 tires, mainly to show the lettering. The 7.75-15 tire was used on the 1965 Corvette.

Great save! Thanks for replacing those headlights with ones put on straight. The taillights look cool.

Here's another alternative that I use successfully on an old iMac (Motorola chip -- can't upgrade): TenFourFox browser http://www.floodgap.com/software/tenfourfox/ Best of all, it's free!

Me too, except that I was a high school senior and felt the '71 Sylmar quake at home a few miles further away than you (Tarzana). As a result of the shaking, about a foot of water sloshed out of the swimming pool against the sliding glass doors. Man, in North Hills you were practically on top of the epicenter! It's probably better that you were too young to remember it. I felt the other quakes, too, but was in Torrance (about 20 miles southwest of downtown Los Angeles), so the effects were less but still scary. Now I live about 30 miles west of the San Andreas (a major fault where "The Big One" is expected sometime in the coming decades). Luckily, I don't have any PTSD but I can certainly understand why others could have it. The easy answer is to move to some area that has the lowest chance of disasters but, practically, it's difficult to do before retirement.

1. What is a model kit? A collection of parts and instructions that can be used to make a representation of another object. Typically, the kit is composed of plastic shapes molded in the shape of the object's parts. Other materials are sometimes included such as steel axles, screws or other structural parts. Decals, and sometimes photo-etched bright metal details, are also typical components. 2. What activities (e.g. painting, sanding, burnishing) do you associate with modelling? Removing the parts from sprues, sanding/scraping mold parting lines, gluing sub-assemblies together, painting and polishing are typical activities. Cutting, grinding, re-shaping, adding parts from other kits and/or making additional parts from non-kit materials such as sheet plastic, metal tubing and so on are also common activities for more advanced model builders. 3. Do you follow instructions when building a model? I refer to them when building sub-assemblies that are not easily understood by observing the parts, but generally I don't build the kit following the instructions from beginning to end. Most of my builds tend to use one or more kits to make models that have little in common with the kits they started from. 4. How skilled are you at modelling? Advanced amateur. I often don't get it looking "right" the first time but I have the patience to continue shaping/sanding/painting until it is -- or completely re-make a part. 5. What are kit conversions? Have you ever done a kit conversion? I'm guessing that it means making a different item than the kit was designed to represent, For example, converting a Camaro Z/28 coupe into a Camaro SS convertible. No. 6. What is kitbashing? Have you ever kitbashed? Kitbashing is using parts from two or more kits to make a model. A simple example would be using the body from one kit on a chassis from another. Yes. 7. What is the object of model-making? What is the end product? For me, it's a creative activity that I use to make something that I like to look at. I may enter the model in a contest to see how it compares with other entries. Whether in-person or online, building and showing the model (both during construction as well as finished) is a social activity as well even though I'm alone when building it. In a literal sense, the end product is a small version of an actual or imagined larger object, usually a vehicle. In a broader sense, the end product represents the skill of the builder where the process of building is probably more important than the model itself.

Me, too. Here's a circa 1960 show rod that I'm working on. It's a Club de Mer (1956 Pontiac experimental vehicle) on a Beatnik Bandit chassis.

Cool! I hope that it inspired your buddy.

...it was when I sold my first article to a model car magazine in 1969. I was sixteen when I shot photos and wrote an article about a fully-scenicked HO slot car layout that my buddies and I built. I sent it off to Car Model and didn't get any response from them until their check arrived in the mail about three months later. No magazine, just a check. So I rushed down to the magazine stand (remember those?) and bought several copies. I had built plastic 1/24-1/25 cars since I was a kid and my parents were not pleased that I was still "playing" with toy cars as a teen. That led to my bright idea that I'd make it more acceptable if I could sell articles. My first one was a two-part article on building a mid-engined Javelin funny car with an intricate paint job that appeared in Model Car Science in 1970 or 1971 with the title Speed Freak. So, it became a "grown up" activity since I could make a little (unfortunately, with the emphasis on "little") money at it. I went on to get a degree in photojournalism that convinced me that I had little skill and no interest in the news business. Instead, I've had a career since 1982 in the new products departments of die-cast toy car manufacturers. When MCS stopped publishing, the editor told me: "Quick, learn how to build trains!" In addition to a different model car magazine from Argus he edited a model train magazine, too. So, I did articles for both through the '80s and a few model trains articles since then. That resulted in a second hobby that I still participate in: HO model railroading.

You've crossed the line from a hobby to art! That is one outstanding model car.

I don't mind spending a lot of time sanding/filing/fitting/filling. I spent about a week of hobby time (5 minutes here, a half hour there for a total of about three hours) assembling and painting the five pieces of the Beatnik Bandit frame shown below. Now I'm moving on to the engine and rear axle. That three-piece engine block is nice looking, especially for an early '60s kit, but it results in seams in the "wrong" places that require some work to eliminate (shown by the gray paint). I try to do a nice job. Another way to look at it is to appreciate that you don't have to scratchbuild the part(s) that you are cleaning up. Then the time you take for cleanup is almost nothing compared to what you would have to spend to carve or fabricate that part from sheet styrene.