Matt Bacon

Lovely job, Jason... it looks really wicked! I love that last shot as well... they look "just like the real thing"! bestest, M.

Biggest problem I've found is wrinkling in the packet, after a while. Once you've got wrinkles, it'll crack where it was wrinkled. It's not useless, but you have to cut your pieces between the wrinkles. And it seems to vary -- my latest pack of Super Chrome is very different from my three year old one. The new BMF is much "springier" and hard to handle. It tends to roll up as you peel it off the backing and stick to itself. If you've got 5 year old stock, and it's not too badly wrinkled, you're probably in luck! bestest, M.

You don't need Photoshop... pretty much any image manipulation programme will do, or just use your printer controls. All you need to do is scale an image. Find a picture of the cover of the magazine you want, and paste it into an A4/Letter document (in Word, even) and size the image to fit the width (most magazines are kind of A4 size -- in the US, they are mostly just a bit shorter). Then print the document, and in the "scaling" box, set it to print at 4% (1/25) actual size. For posters, do the same, but set it to 6% or 8% or 16% depending how large you want the poster to be... Set the print resolution (DPI) as high as you can get away with on the paper you are using... All of these controls should be in the Page Setup or Print dialogue box. bestest, M.

Thanks! It's been a rather busy "holiday" so far, but I finally got back to the bench today. First step, those hinges... They're a very distinctive shape, and pretty complex, because the seat backs tilt both forwards AND inwards to give access to the rear seat bench. Plastic card and rod, and some cursing... The seats are mounted canted up on higher, tapering rails. After a bit of washing with Citadel Gryffonne Sepia and a drybrush with beige, the leather interior is complete. The handbrake is in the wrong place, so I've shortened it and moved it forward. I also carved the cone-shaped gear-lever "glove" into something more soft-leather shaped and brushed it with liquid cement to smooth it a bit. And here's a test fit to see how it looks with the dash. The lighting ain't great, but I think it DOES resemble the real thing... You can see that there will be some fudging, because the firewall will leave the side vents half in the cabin... bestest, M.

We have some stuff called "Sticky Stuff Remover" which is sort of orange-smelling. It's intended for getting tape or sticker residue off (eg price stickers, or when your kids plaster their beds with Snoopy stickers and want to replace them with Bratz ones five years later). It works a treat, and has no effect on paint or gloss coated areas (though check for YOUR paint and gloss first, obviously). Came from a homeware store in the cleaning products section. Lemon juice might work as well... bestest, M.

Thanks, guys... some more progress today (it's being on holiday!) Door liners, with body colour at the top. Tan/beige upholstery, done using Vallejo Dark Sand for the seats and a Citadel "Stone" for the carpets. Dash, awaiting the "grab handle" across the glovebox. Coils in place in the engine bay, which was assembled using the chassis as a jig. And the engine bay mocked up, to see how it all fits. I need to build the front suspension before fixing it together properly. ...and this is how the bench is looking tonight. Suspension and those seat hinges next, I reckon... bestest, M.

Thanks, guys... A small update... the snow has melted, so I can get back to the bench: The seats are way too skinny, so I have bulked them out with plastic card: The next stage of detailing is the interesting hinges, which allow the back of the seats to fold forward and twist inwards at the same time. Mine won't do that, but it accounts for the complicated "Flash Gordon" shape... I've been worrying about the state of the decals. You can see the cracks across the number plates. I painted this with Microscale decal solution a couple of weeks ago, and I've used Klear to snug it down. It looks OK though, and this is the most critical of all of the decals... the others are replaceable or paintable relatively easily... These are about 1cm (0.4") long. These coils are quite visible on the firewall. Teeny-tiny, but took over an hour to make between them! I hope it's worth it! There's some "bigger picture" stuff going on off-stage, but as my old editor used to say, "only fules and bairns should see a job half done..." bestest, M.

That looks lovely, Tom... great job, and lovely colour scheme. If you want to get the hood to close, it's only the wiper pivots that get in the way. You could pop them off, sand them down and repaint them... bestest, M.

Siku also do diecasts of the Veyron and the Grand Sport for about £4 each, in 1:55 scale, so the licensing can't be a killer... bestest, M.

Thanks, Skip... I'm a bit scared of living up to the billing, now! And today, I finally made it through the snow out to the workbench... Something else I haven't been looking forward to: Not the greatest pictures (the lighting seemed to confuse the camera), but you can see the effect. I've removed the trident from the original one-piece kit grille, which of course doesn't fit the reshaped nose. A combination of Humbrol polished chrome spray and BMF does the rest. The engine with that detail painting and the last bits attached. Citadel metallics blended in various proportions for those details... I think, looking out the window, that progress will be slow the next few days... bestest, M.

...and before parting with that kind of money, I'd want to know a bit more about the people who were building the car. Eagle has been a major restoration house for E-Types (and nothing else) for 30 years, and knows the cars, engineering, panel work etc inside out. The Lyonheart web site doesn't tell you much about the team other than its address. bestest, M.

Too fussy for my tastes -- it looks like a Chrysler Crossfire put through a blender with an XKR. Personally, if I was in the market for a modern take on an E-type, I'd much prefer an Eagle Speedster... (which I would have in a heartbeat if I had the money) bestest, M.

I don't think the main problem with decals is creating artwork. It's outputting the things as artwork you can transfer to your model (I'm deliberately not saying "decals" because I hope there's some out of the box thinking out there...) Most of the professional decal designers _I_ know (YMMV, obviously) use Illustrator, because they are creating (in black and white) colour separations for screen printing solid inks. That's not an option for most of us, obviously. What I'd like to hear is your recommendations, tips and tricks for the right products (eg paper, film, varnish) for printing out home-made decal art. Especially, my single biggest problem is to find a way to print metal/chrome logos. I have no way of printing silver ink, although I've seen some arty "ink-jet foil" (http://www.craftycomputerpaper.co.uk/.Laser-Transfer-Foils_FOIL-LAZ1M.htm) which might do the trick but I'd like to hear from anyone who's tried it. I have both clear and white decal paper, but it's quite thick, especially when you have the varnish layer on it. The colour density on the clear film is very poor, and the white film ends up with a border (if you don't cut well outside the printed area, the ink bleeds when you put it in water to release the decal). I've had some success with printing artwork on clear and applying it over a cut out plain white decal to back it up. That works OK for simple shapes (eg race number circles) but try cutting out a Vargas pin-up nose art for a bomber... I'd love to hear how anyone manages this without an ALPS printer (and boy, do I wish 1/10th of the effort that's gone into 3D printing had been devoted to a hobbyist 2D printer than can deal with silver, white etc inks...) bestest, M.

Oh, you're SOOO out of practice... ;-P They look great. The Dino is my favorite -- it's one of my top most-wanted cars, and I love it in yellow, which is what mine will be when I get round to building it. I'm not so convinced by the metallic blue on the TR (personal taste, I'm sure), but the build looks excellent. My only nit-pick is that there looks to be a bit of a gap where the dash fits to the coaming and at the undernose panel on the Dino. I've heard that there's some tricky assembly there, and that the chassis doesn't fit in if you build the body up as one piece, though, so it may be there's no alternative... Good stuff! bestest, M.

Here's something I have NOT been looking forward to... This Maserati is a GTi, it appears, with fuel injection. And two plugs per cylinder. And a duct for the wiring. So, armed with some more excellent reference material courtesy of Skip Jordan, we begin. No way can I drill a distributor cap for 12 wires, so I used a piece of electric flex with the insulation cut back to leave twelve wires (with some superglue at the bottom to hold them in). These are glued into the widened end of some aluminium tube, which I then drilled for the individual plug wires. Those wires are fixed into holes drilled into the the plug locations in the cylinder head. Then I drilled the fuel injection system for some more shiny wires for the injector tubes. The end result after some cursing. There's a whole lot of touch-up and detail painting to do, but this is as good as I can manage (no tiny hose clamps for this cack-handed modeller!). And yes, those injection tubes really are a mare's nest like that on the real thing... I wonder if it's something to do with having the same length for each tube, despite some cylinders being much closer to the unit than others. bestest, M.

Thanks! If you're going to buy resin wheels anyway, something like the Renaissance Campagnolos (for the Ferrari 275) with a dish hubcap would look pretty much like the factory options... ... and here we go with the shiny: There are a couple of areas on the body that'll need a bit of a polish, but that can wait a few days until this stuff has set thoroughly hard. You can see the brownish tint to the red here, though. Rectangular grille etch arrived today (along with a Nardi steering wheel) As you can see, the basic mesh turns out to be far too big. However, gluing two pieces together with an offset doesn't look too bad. I'll keep an eye open for something better, but if I can't find it, I think this looks OK... bestest, M.

...certainly am. I just tend to do it with a brush and some Humbrol matt enamel after the outside is done. It's easier than masking against overspray, whichever way round you do it... bestest, M.

Rosso Brunello Micalizzato going on. Nice colour, eh? You can just about see the "mica" in it... definitely slightly pearlescent in the flesh. Time for the 2K clear now... bestest, M.

Thanks, guys! OK... not shiny and red. I decided it was definitely better to get everything fitting properly BEFORE I painted it! The bonnet and boot have some issues -- the boot at the sides, and the bonnet at the windscreen end. And there's some serious gappage around the doors at the "shoulder". I also decided that the rear lights as provided in the kit are pretty irredeemable. There's an entirely different style with a one-piece coloured plastic light unit which has a chrome "hood". It seems quite common, so I'll go for that instead -- I made a similar set-up for the DB4GT, so I know that it can be done, and how... Time to break out the plastic card. I think for problems like this, plastic card and liquid cement is the best answer -- any kind of filler will just fall off, and the styrene is exactly as hard as the plastic of the kit part for easier sanding. Some time later... I fixed the hinge parts to be a little more realistic (not perfect scale, but not a toy, either). In case you were wondering about the colour, here it is in sunlight: There 's a fine, light, metal flake in there, which isn't so obvious behind the dust and reflections in this pic, mind... And finally, here's where I am this evening: I have test fitted the doors, boot etc before committing to primer. There are a couple of bit son the boot and one door that will need cleaning up, filling, and re-priming, but I think that'll be about it. bestest, M.

...and as if by magic... Yep... that's the colour I'm aiming for. Sorry it's been a while since the last update -- I've been travelling away from the bench all week... Anyway... I finished a few details, and have got to the stage when I can try a first coat of primer to see how it looks (and what needs fixing...) There's obviously some filling, sanding and repriming to do here and there, but overall, I'm pretty happy. As you can see, I've fitted the rear valance. I figured out that you can get the interior in and then fit the chassis in at the front and finally join the two, which means that you don't need to put the whole thing in as a unit and fit the valance last. I think I can get a much better finish on the back end by doing it this way, with the valance seamlessly blended before painting. Not quite seamless yet, obviously, but getting there. The other main details are proper "scoops" over the engine bay vents, the windscreen trim, and fixing some odd damage at the rear lights. Not the best picture, but you get the idea. I added a thin strip of plastic card to the moulded ridge, and then built up and blended it using superglue + micro balloons, because I thought it would be structurally tougher than plastic putty, but still easy to sand and shape. It'll need a smear of regular putty to deal with a few imperfections, but you can see that there's now a decent, and thin, lip for the grille to hide behind. Skip pointed out earlier that there's actually a gap between the windscreen and door chrome trim on the A-pillar, so I scribed and sanded one to give me something to work on with the BMF. I think that minimising the "weight" of the chrome on the kit will be key to achieving the elegant look of the real thing, especially on the door windows. And finally, an odd one. On my kit, the outside lower edge of the rear light "oval" was misshaped on both sides -- almost as though it was "torn" outward. It's near the worst mould seam on the kit, between the light clusters and the boot opening, so I suspect it's something to do with the way the mould opens to eject the body... Anyway, once again out with the microballoons and superglue. Still not perfect, but much improved. Next task is to hit those areas that these photos have highlighted as needing some more attention with the plastic putty, as well as a few more I haven't shown you (mostly front end seams...). I'm hopeful that she'll be shiny and red by the end of the weekend... bestest, M.

Did you guys have "Top Trumps" in the US? Card game where you had a deck of 40 or so cards in a category (eg Star Wars, Military Aircraft, Top Gear Supercars...) and you had to pick one of six characteristics (eg Maximum Speed, or Payload) and if your friend's card was lower or slower or had less Magical Power, you took it and had the next go? The supercar guys are either selling to brand loyalists... in which case "fastest ever round Fiorano" matters, or they're in a game of Top Trumps with million dollar stakes... Just LOOK at the press releases for the LaFerrari, McLaren P1 and Lambo Veneno. They've got that old Veyron dinosaur in their sights and they're hunting him down. Neutral drivers at the 'Ring... It's the only solution... Bestest, M.

Read the press release... It's CFD'd and wind tunnel tested to the same degree as the F1 cars, (and those guys worry about the effect of tar splatter and the placement of sponsor decals on airflow), and the designers worked completely hand in hand with the aero engineers to fine tune the shape. At worst, I imagine every aesthetic line has zero negative impact on drag, downforce, cooling airflow etc. Can you imagine the conversation...? "You want to add 0.3 seconds to our Fiorano lap time because you want a crease in the fender?" When I did the fluid mechanics courses during my engineering degree, I was still writing Fortran IV, and the Silicon Graphics workstations had to be booked out in 10 minute slots. I imagine things have moved on since then, and there's NO excuse for not knowing EXACTLY what your neat-looking curve on the drawing board will do to the fuel consumption or on-limit road-holding... Bestest, M.

I think the point is that there are NO "pointless" creases. It's all aero... bestest, M.

Dr Cranky.... do you have any decent link or title for the "New" Pat Covert book? It sounds great if it combines stuff from his previous hard to find and expensive books, but I can't find anything on Amazon UK or Com, and I can't even find a web site for Motor Books International to look in their "Forthcoming Titles" section... ? bestest, M.

Surely if that's what they're after it should be "la Ferrarissima"... ;-P Seriously, what happens in five years time when the next ultimate expression of Ferrari-ness comes along? Or maybe that range-topping model is ALWAYS LaFerrari now... Personally, I think the cylinders/capacity number thing is part of Ferraris DNA, and they mess with it at their peril! Bestest, M.