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Now that I have your attention. What size to you resize pictures to for posting on the Forum so that they come out as a picture not a thumbnail sized picture?

Tim, I remember that Car from the first time around. Still a beauty! Gotta wonder if those "Airliner Decals" are still around? They sure fit in with the graphics that were being used about that time. Taught me to look around at other stuff with a different eye especially when it could be converted for use on a model car.

I am getting similar results using. Duplicolor Primer + Valspar Gloss Black + Valspar Chrome Silver. (The one with the Chrome Cap). I've been doing all of the three right out of the Rattle Cans! So clean up is zero! This is nearly as good and in some cases better than Alclad II, the only drawback to this system is that it is Enamel so it takes longer to cure out. I have tried curing in the food dehydrator and curing on its own and there seems to be no difference in shine. Like Alcad the Black Base has to be really glossy to get the Chrome Silver to Gloss like Chrome. I haven't tried any other silver or black after the Valspar, I actually figured this combo out by accident painting some Silver and Gold colored PVC Banner poles for a church Kids Christmas Pagent, the Gold came out really shiny too and the Silver like Chrome. I used the Valspar because there is a Lowes about a mile and a half from the house and that's what they carry for cheap paint. I wasn't really even trying for gleaming Gold and Silver, just wanted a good base to lay down the metallics. Once it cures out it stands up fairly good to handling with very little rub off or dulling from rub off.

I've got the Paasche HSSB 22-16 booth and am happy with it too, used cheap LED strip lights on the sides works well. Picked mine up at Coast Airbrush a while ago when I was in Southern California, no idea what the freight would have been, it's all sheet metal so it's heavy package. Don't think Coast carries the Pace Booths or not, this was the one Dave Monnig recommended for the type of stuff I paint.

I've stood next to the Maroon '40 it is a "Survivor" faithfully restored, very beautiful restoration, the proportions look very good in person.

JB Weld is capable of being drilled and tapped, I've never had a failure using it. I've used it to repair no structural engine block stuff like holes in the block or oil pan. Devon is another metalizer epoxy product that works well, it should for the price!

Normally prime almost everything that isn't painted a flat color as well. Always prime prior to painting with acrylics. Helps to seal in some of the funky colored styrene, except red. The best advice on primer ever passed on to me is matching the color of the primer with the color of the top coat. Gray = Gray to Black, Hotrod Black = Black, Red Oxide = Red and Oranges, White = Any light or Transparent Color really makes yellows, Reds, oranges Pop if you want a really bright topcoat try White Primer. Hotrod Black primer makes a pretty good flat black too.

My magnetic chassis jig cost me next to nothing since all the stuff used was leftover or being tossed from one project or another. The plate is .125 X 12 X 8 mild steel sheet, and a bunch of magnetic cabinet door latches, the kind with the magnet sandwiched between two peices of steel sheet metal. Works well can be squared up really easy. I have seen similar sized mild steel sheet for sale on eBay, the magnetic closures too. You can get the magnetic latches at Lowes or Home Depot or almost any hardware store. You can set yourself up with a magnetic chassis plate for $10 - $12 bucks or less versus whatever the commercial type ones sell for at Model Expo or similar suppliers. If you get the steel sheet to use as the baseplate just make sure you file the sharp edges down, when they saw it there will be sharp edges that will cut you, I filed all edges and all four corners.

That's exactly what I thought when I saw that. Another method of marbelizing can be done with soot from either a dirty candle flame or acetylene soot onto a wet coat of paint then clear coated either with a candy color or just straight clear. It's an old technique that pops up every once in a while, looks great when done right. First time I think I saw it explained was like in Model Car Science or Car Model magazine, they used a dirty sooty candle flame. I've heard it called marbelizing, Spyder Webbing or Sooting. Spyder webbing is not to be confused with cob webbing where un-reduced paint is used to make whe cobweb effect. Some of those old custom paint tricks are really cool to learn how to do yourself.

Cool front end, almost looks like some of the urethane mounts that they are using today. The front axle is really interesting, it does look like some of the fronts that Chassis Research and a few others were using in form, the shape is much wilder! All in all the car is great!

That was my next step to go with a frame built out of Evergreen tubing, I have already bought the 2" X 3" scale sized tubing to build it. Would love to see what you did on yours, it "sits" really well that's why I was sort of thinking "Little T" that frame can be made to look really good with a few tweaks too.q

Wow! Steelies are not modern at all, nor are those hubcaps or beauty rings. That combination has been around forever, I like it a whole lot better than wire wheels, even the Kelsey Hayes "Bent Spoke" wire wheels. Those wheels are probably off of something really "new" like a Forty or something. That combination was popular when swapping mechanical brakes for "Juice" brakes from a Forty or later Ford. Take a look at the "Lakes Roadsters" from the 40's and 50's and you'll see that combination of Big-n-Littles on a whoe lot of them. Nothing wrong with that "Banger" engine either. That car is about as Traditional as they come. If you were talking about the AMBR Winner, that's another well executed Hot Rod. The wheel design is definitely not a modern one, they're either original Halibrand or nice copies of the original Halibrand design. Paint work is right out of the early it mid 60's, in my mind the only thing that deters from the lines of the car is the way the hood is hinged, it's not that bad though. There was just a '33 - '34 in Rodders Journal a few issues ago along the lines of this one, they're hardly billet promoters! This would be a take on '60's Traditional. I'd clear out a spot in my garage for this one to park. Edited due to Autocorrect inserting the wrong word in place of the right word!

Blair, what frame did you use under that? Looks really good, sits right, especially if you look at full size Highboy T Coupes. Most frames have that slight stretch to them that you've got down just right. That's not a modified Monogram "T Bucket" frame which probably would trace back to the Little T is it? I have a Flintstone '27 Coupe that I've been trying to come up with a decent, plausable frame for. The AMT '25 T Coupe frame looks too narrow and short, Revell Tweedy Pie is way too short, AMT '25 T "Fruit Wagon" looks way long. I don't have a Monogram T frame on hand to try, but being that it is 1/24 scale it might look right under my coupe with alterations. I've seen a few full size T Coupes on Deuce frames, they just don't look quite right even if they're narrowed or pinched. I'll keep an eye on this one, you've already got a winning combination going here!

Brush painting models was a lot like sign painting, you didn't slop paint on straight from the bottle and get a smooth finish. When I was a kid my Uncle showed me how to brush paint and get a decent finish. He showed me that you wet the brush in thinner then load with paint, this makes the paint flow off the brush in a smooth fashion. (I learned his same principle doing Signs.) The other thing is to use a good quality brush, really soft "camel hair" brush. (Incidentally a camel hair brush is not made of camels hair, probably a lesser quality squirrel hair.) The third thing is to brush in one direction only, not back and forth this gets small air bubbles in the finish and makes brush marks. Just using a good brush and thinner will yield a good quality finish which could be polished out probably good enough to rival rattle can. I thought someone posted pictures of a couple of really nicely brush painted models, I think it was one of our "Foriegn Corespondents". Hopefully someone remembers that thread too so they can link it to this one. Point is, it can be done. Takes patience, it's a learned skill that does take a bit more work to get right, done right it can yield a deep lustrous finish.

No wonder we used to burn and firecracker models! Hopefully none of those survived. I can see the fleaBay auction now, "Super Rare Big Wheel Ferrari, Last One Known To Exist...." That one looks like it needs a lot of help from some Testers orange label (toluene) Model glue and a couple of very large firecrackers, now that would be a real glue bomb!

I was impressed when I saw your amazing work in the magazine, this is something else all together! Almost a shame to cover that up with paint, which looks great too by the way.

The "Little T" always makes me wax nostalgic, one of the first few kits that I built with the help of my Uncle. He showed me how to do light detail paint, use sewing thread for plug wires, Polish the plastic body to a really nice shine. Today, I'd love to have a coupe "Little T's" one to recreate the memory, another to swap in an injected Nailhead to create TV Tomy Ivo's T Bucket. From what I remember the Little T was/is a well designed kit, the bones were there to build pretty much any late 50's early 60's "High End" T Bucket Hot Rod. Funny in all the times that I built that kit I always used the small block Chev engine, but I can't remember how well Monogram did it. If it was anything like the rest of the kit it would have been well done, back when model companies were really competing for the Dollar or Two they got per kit.

Normally just use a calculator, just as easy to divide by 25 to get the dimension.

Entering this a little late but I picked up the Fruit Wagon, I didn't think that the amount of flash was that bad. I have noticed that on some kits that I've bought multiples of that there is always one kit out of the bunch that has a little more flash than the others, probably the fault of an individual set of molds versus the kit. There are a lot of things that could be done to tighten up molds, it has to be cost effective for the manufacturer to do so though.

Drew, That's beautiful! Did you do anything special to those wire wheels? Those have to be about the most realistic wire wheels Ive seen in scale. Your clear coated plastic is amazing, can't use a "Hot" Clear Coat and get away with that too many times I'd bet. Love going to the "All British Field Meets", there are a couple within an hour or three that the Mini Club I belong to attends as a club every year. Morgan is always well represented, from the vintage to nearly new what a beautiful car in full size too. Lotus is another Brit manufacturer that always has a lot of cars in it's group, especially the Sevens and variant spinn offs. Good place to get fret reference pictures for British cars, they're held all over he US even UK!

As a "Actual Size" Mini owner, I like it! Good job! Thanks for sharing.

I understood the question from the beginning, this same ideology pervades nearly every hobby where creativity and skill is a factor. I see it when I attend nearly any car show, whether it be a Mark Specific, British even Hot Rod show. There are rivet counters in nearly every hobby. This type of mentality both burns people out on their hobbies and creates bad feelings which eventually lead to people leaving ______________ (insert hobby). Look at the Riddler Award competitors, until recently the builders were an ever changing group, it would drive the average person nuts to build to this level each and every car built, to ask a person to build to that level on every project is too much to even expect. That's where the personal drive and devotion to their hobby come into play, it has to be up to the builder alone not the minions. Do individuals owe it to the hobby to knock it out of the park with every single model they build, no they don't. Why shouldn't a highly skilled builder be forced to build super detail every time they build, sometimes it might be something they choose to build to experiment with a concept of a highly detailed model. I think we saw this in the 80's with the "Slammers" models which focused on the body and bodywork, executing the best paint the builder could pull off. These models were both criticized by some and loved by others, from what I remember they started out as design concepts which were entered in contests. From what I recall there were people as upset with this type of model as a village chasing Frankenstein with garden tools! Let people build what and how they want to build, if it bothers you maybe you're the one with the issue not the builder. Only then will the hobby grow and attract new blood, acting like a bunch of inbred whiners will do nothing but drive accomplished builders as well as the prospective builders of the future away in droves.

Only one mistake! The New MINI is spelled in all caps, while the Classic Mini has only the "M" capitalized, I used to know why, if I remember it had to do something with Liscensing when BMW bought the rights to the Mini name and concept. Now for your MINI, that's a nice job, checkered roofs are always good, surprised that you don't see a whole lot of modified MINI on the road. I would have thought by now that the prices on the MINI would have dropped enough that more of the Tuners could afford to be modifying them.

Very Nice Rendition of a '67, you did good!

Morris Minor