Matt Bacon

Me too.... I've stashed it away for when I can finally get a hold of that most recent green-box re-issue. I want to build it as Charlie's car from the TV series Poker Face... Plus I'm sure there must be one of those Master Box 1/24 figures that would make a passable Charlie best, M.

Really looking forward to this! And if anyone felt like 3D printing a set of accurate wheels in 1/16, I’d take them like a shot! best, M.

That looks fantastic, Jason. Brilliant work, and the distressed effects are to die for. Bookbinders leather and a pizza cutter, eh? I shall have to file THAT one away in the back of my mind... best, M.

Try lemon juice on a rag or get some “Sticky Stuff Remover”… no risk of damaging the plastic… best, M.

Thanks, all.... a quick mockup to settle the seat and dash in place... and to see how it looks! I went for Tamiya Camel Yellow instead of a brighter chrome yellow, as a nod to the orange in Roy Cross's original painting. The British Green is actually green, but you can see why it looks black in some period photos. Now to leave the paint for a few days to harden fully before joining the body permanently and masking to paint the rear shell, so the tape doesn't leave marks. Then it'll be time for a polish. best, M.

Reasonable progress off-screen. First, the dash: Primed with white, Tamiya semi-gloss black for the dials, AK matt black for the "crackle" dash, white markings scratched through the dials to the white primer, finished with Citadel 'ardcoat gloss varnish for the glass. The wheel rim is red-brown primer overcoated with Citadel contrast paint "Wyldwood" brown and varnished with Tamiya Clear Orange.. Body colour is Tamiya TS-9 "British Green." A-Stand "White Aluminum" for the cast magnesium rear wheels and Humbrol Metalcote Polished Aluminium for the front wires. Tony Brooks in his seat. Colors are based on the only color picture I can find of Tony in a Vanwall, possibly the previous year. The helmet is some kind of moulded leather or bakelite, I think. His goggles are not as dark as they look in this! So, he can hold the wheel (which is not glued, to give a bit more wiggle room when we have to fit all the parts together) And I've started the green for the body. The horizontal seam is mostly there as a panel line on the real thing. I've masked the rear shell, which doesn't have a seam, so I can glue it then clean up the seam and reprime and paint the rear shell separately from the rest of the car. best, M.

I can highly recommend BBC Radio 6 Music, which you can stream in the USA with the BBC Sounds app on your phone or via the website: https://www.bbc.co.uk/schedules/p00fzl65 Eclectic music for grown-ups curated by a variety of experienced DJs and musicians… in proper radio shows. There’s a wide range of tastes and styles represented over the week, but Craig Charles’ funk and soul show on a Saturday, Cerys Matthews, Guy Garvey and Iggy Pop’s shows on a Sunday, and Stuart Maconie’s Freak Zone are all favourites of mine… best, M. PS: re below. And NO ads!

I’ve heard lots of people being very positive about Gaahleri brushes… a step up from no brand Chinese quality-lottery products, but not A-brand: https://amzn.eu/d/46gNAVP This is a UK link, but I’m sure they’ll be on Amazon.com. Grex are very popular your side of the pond, it seems (hard to get in the UK so I haven’t tried one), and the Tritium fits your need, if you can find an offer at the right price… best, Matt

Looks great, and no sign of the struggles you (and I) had to get it together. Lovely paintwork. And it’s such an iconic car. It even has all four wheels on the ground at the same time, which means you nailed the landing on this high degree of difficulty project! best, M.

So here's Roy, eyes on the road and hands upon the wheel... and the scoop opened up. The top half and wheel will also lift off out of his hands without disturbing anything. Time for some Milliput and shaping around the shoulders... best, M.

This^^^^^ I AM pretty experienced in building cars, and the Fujimi 288 GTO remains the most difficult kit I’ve ever built. @Simo5555 is doing a great job. But the whole back end around the engine requires dozens of parts to be joined together often with tiny pips or no locating mechanism at all, sometimes in sequences of multiple parts that have two well defined endpoints with nothing in between (I’m looking at you, exhausts, turbos and manifolds…). The suspension that the engine plumbing has to fit round and through is equally complex and multipart, and at the end of assembly all four wheels have to end up on the ground even in spite of the fact that nothing’s weight-bearing until it’s all assembled and the glue is set. Very good work going on here! best, M.

Wheels from Kyiv. The DB5 ones are going on the Revell kit along with the grille. The GTO wheels are actually for something else, and the Mercredes SLR wheels are an upgrade to the wheels in the old Merit Mercedes 196 F1 kit. 'bay bargain. Spotted this 911SC rally with 15 minutes to go and no takers at a starting bid of £40. Which I won it for. Turns out that these are made to order and usually run about €200, so price-wise it was a bargain, and the quality and detail is VERY impressive. Decals for the colorful scheme of the most successful team rallying Porsches look very nice, too... best, M.

Progress is a bit glacial -- I'm feeling under the weather at the moment with a painful lurgy... but I have got back to the bench. As I suspected, it took several of those scoops I moulded to get a good one that I didn't mess up cutting out, but I got there in the end. I'm not completely convinced it shouldn't be open at the back, but it's not shown that way on any drawings I have, and I can't find a picture of the rear of the scoop at all. It didn't last long on the real thing, and the only pictures I can find of the car with it fitted are naturally, action shots from the front. None of the surviving cars have still got it. So if anyone was hard evidence, I've still got time to open it up... Time to start getting Tony knocked into shape, so this is the first of many trial fits. I've scribed the panel lines, too... my drawings say 1/10" panel gaps, so they are visible on the real thing (though don't worry, the horizontal seam is just the two halves sitting one atop the other...) best, M.

Is there a setting I can use to turn off thumbnail images in index pages, so I only have to load the pictures if I go into the original post? Loading 50 thumbnails into the same post preview takes an age and stops me navigating the index until they’ve all loaded… best, M.

BRG is not one colour, anyway (even Tamiya's rattle cans have two... TS-9 and TS-43). 1930s Bentleys were Brunswick Green with matt-finish olive green fabric bodywork. Racing Jaguars in the 1950s and early 60s were very dark; Lotus race cars in the green with yellow stripes schemes were much brighter. Vanwalls are somewhere in between. Jaguar's E-Type racing green is dark and slightly bluish.... unless it's "Opalescent Racing Green", which is beautiful, but different again. Broadly, I'd go for neutral grey primer. But it's important to make sure that the red pigment of the plastic won't come through and make it brown, so test as @Ace-Garageguy says. In my experience, Tamiya Fine Surface Grey Primer with multiple _light_ coats of colour on top will not leach the plastic pigment. The problem arises if the solvent in the coloured paint layer can penetrate the primer and pull the plastic pigment through. So don't have wet coats, and remember the same thing can happen with the clear coat as well. In fact, the couple of times I've had this problem, it's been with Zero Paints 2K clear (which is intended to be applied wet) pulling pigment through the matt finish porous base coat (which is designed to give a really good "key" for the gloss coat on top), best, M.

Surely if anything will persuade Academy to tool up a new global-market 1/24 state of the art car kit… best, M.

Well, this box art certainly helped me decide I wanted one of these kits... best, M.

This is partly triggered by the "What use is box art?" thread. Which got me thinking... why do I make models at all? Recognizing that this is just me, and we all have our different motivations, I guess I'd say mine are, more or less in order of importance: 1) It's something to do with my hands, tools, and skills that's a complete break from the day job that is all about typing and screens (which is why I don't really fancy learning CAD and 3D printing...) which provides me an opportunity to relax and think different (as I'm sure sports do for many people). 2) It's a problem-solving skill that lets me think around how i want to do things and how I'm going achieve this effect or that. 3) It's a nostalgia trip back to a more innocent time and the less-complex world of my youth. 4) It's about producing an accurate replica of an original 1:1 object that I find cool and interesting that I can put in my display cabinet. I guess all of the above is why I'm currently occupied producing visual illusions of comic book covers from well before my time using relatively simple and somewhat crude kits for the craic (and to celebrate the life of someone who had a significant influence on my childhood.) It's probably also why my work is unlikely to trouble the judges at competitions, but that matters to me very little... YMMV, very much so... best, M.

Lovely job. That big snake is pretty much mandatory with these, I reckon… best, M.

I can’t agree with Steve. Growing up in England with Airfix through the 70s, Roy Cross’s box art was fundamental to the attraction and joy of the kits. I’m sure the same is true for folks the other side of the pond with the outstanding work of Brian Knight and Jack Leynwood for Revell. Sure, some planes need no introduction, but Roy’s “Bit O Lace” and “G-George” are iconic images even if a B-17 or Lancaster is familiar fodder. Our Classic British Kits IPMS SIG has done “Classic Box Art” diorama displays at the UK Nats twice in the last decade or so, and they’ve always been the most popular themes we’ve run, with hundreds of people coming up to chat about what those images mean to them. So I’m going to say the box art is a substantial part of the appeal of older kits to me. And Adam Tooby, who is the current Airfix box artist, is doing a great job of keeping up the Roy Cross tradition for a new generation.. best, M.

I've had a look, Pierre, but I don't have any that are suitable. I've got a bunch of printed wheels, but they are all 15" and reasonably wide. The fronts on the Vanwall are 16" x 5.5" , and I'm loath to break the Fernando Pinto full set I just "discovered" because there's an Alfa P3 or Maserati 4CLT still to come that they might work on... These etched ones aren't ideal, but they are the right size, and will hopefully will just be one detail in a "bigger picture" (literally!) best, M.

Well, those nice folks at Squires have sorted me out with the spare parts to complete the Miller wheels as intended, so I now have the pleasure of figuring out what I CAN use the FPPM wheels on... ? best, M.

I get confused between Model Car Garage, Model Builders Warehouse and Model Car Warehouse regularly, and I’m sure I’m not the only one. Same with Historic Racing Miniatures and Vintage Racing Miniatures, never mind the various different incarnations of Scale Finishes. Hiroboy.com not so much… there’s a lesson there somewhere… best, M.

On with the next installment of my Roy Cross (Illustrator and Airfix box artist ) tribute builds following his passing earlier this year aged 100. This one is the 1958 Vanwall, based on this Eagle comic cover from January 1963: Since I was building display bases already for the Delage, I decided to get this one done early... Which means now I have to build a car... this is the starting point: Merit kits are pretty simple, but the shapes are generally good. The wheels need help, though, since they are solid with a transparent front onto which you are meant to apply a decal printed with the spokes. The bag at the left of the picture are some of the spare etch and white metal wheels and tires I've accumulated over the years... After a fair bit of rummaging around and test fitting, I think we are sorted. Vanwall experimented with cast alloy wheels instead of wires in 1958. They tried complete replacement, but it turned out that the steering and front-end grip were better with the more flexible wire wheels than the stiffer cast alternatives. For the Italian Grand Prix depicted on the cover, Tony Brooks drove with wires at the front and cast wheels at the back. As you can also see on the cover picture, there was a small scoop intake for the oil cooler on top of the nose... I carved a master from balsa based on some decades old plans from the UK's contemporary Model Maker and Model Cars Magazine . I've plunge molded a few copies to make sure there's scope for errors while cutting, prepping and fitting! best, M.

I’m not sure they are… which is maybe why this stalled! He sells the “Talbot Lago” set as “suitable for many pre-war race cars” so maybe that’s what they are… The only problem is that almost uniquely in period, and completely uniquely in the Auto Kits range, the Miller Special is front wheel drive, and has noticeably heftier hubs on the front than the back… best,