Matt Bacon

Very nice indeed. Excellent colour combo. These are great little kits, I reckon… best, M.

Thank you @Richard Bartrop that’s a great resource! best, M.

Continuing my quest to collect all the Wills Finecast/AutoKit white metal models, I just snagged the “1928 Miller”. I don’t know much about Indy Cars, especially older ones, so this is outside my comfort zone. There are some very cool photos of a black and silver one online, but it seems that lots of people ran one of these cars. Anyone have a reasonably comprehensive list of the colors and race numbers I can choose from? beat, M.

I thought the same a while back and have one in the stash. I picked up a stack of the shortlived (three years) UK “Scale Auto Modeller” which ran from late 98-late 2001 and there are two build articles in separate issues early in the run… one for the original release and one for the Polish-American Racing Team boxing, which is the one I have. The main message is follow the instructions to the letter and test fit everything and fine tune it first before committing to glue and paint! Even so, the rear clip doesn’t fit properly on the first build, and the second one learned from that and still had to do a fair amount of work to get it properly seated, so that’s clearly a potential gotcha… best, M.

So, ultimately the idea with these is to display them as a tribute to Roy Cross, who painted the Eagle magazine covers, reproducing them as best I can. I have decided on a "picture frame" approach, where the car sits on an angled plinth to present it in the attitude it is painted in on the cover, and the Eagle masthead and cover furniture "frame" it to set the viewpoint. This is a prototype base using low res printouts and some spare corrugated card for structure. Once I'm happy with the exact angles, I'll make up the final version with foamcore board and best quality print. I also want to wait until I've had a go at the second one before finalising it, because if possible I'd like the cover "frames" to be the same size for all of them, but that obviously depends on if that's feasible with different sized cars in different perspectives in the cover painting. The printed patterns on the base and backdrop are the result of some fairly busy Photoshop sessions to remove the main subject from teh original picture and clone the surrounding texture in its place. Time to adjust the angles slightly and make a final version of the base... best, M.

Those look great! I supect they'll need re-covering in the workshop, rather than just "preserving" Seriously, for display, have you considered using a set of the Fujumi "Mechanics" figures representing the restoration team starting to get to grips with what they need to do, and dismantling the car? The "Classic Cars" magazine I subscribe to has an "Epic Restoration" feature every month documenting, and illustrating, every stage of the barn-find --> Concours winner process for an interesting car... best, M.

I guess I'm pretty equal-opportunity here. My choices are primarily driven by what I want to build and what I want in my cabinet. Of my last few, the Super Samuri 240Z had an engine but wasn't designed to have an open hood,and yet I cut it open and detailed it because the engine is part of what makes a Samuri a Samuri; the AC289 Sports MkIII had an engine swap into the base Cobra 427 S/C because the "289" was kinda the point, though the bodywork was the toughest task; the Lotus Esprit Mk1 had no engine in the kit, but it's the body shape that was the point of the build, so I certainly wasn't going to scratch a chassis and engine details; and the 1927 Delage racer is a white metal kit with no engine and the work to open it up and put one in was WAY beyond what I was prepared to do for its display purpose... I guess it mostly comes down to what I want the model I've built for, what it's intended to show off, and what the kit comes with that I can work with. Given the number of Fujimi Enthusiast kits in my stash, I guess I quite like good engine detail in a kit, but given the number of Fujimi Enthusiast kits in my stash, I'm not so good at building them.... best, M.

1960s-vintage white metal kit, with a reasonable amount of detail and wind-it-yourself wire wheels. This build was inspired by this: ...of which more later... best, M.

Great work, Jay… it looks fabulous! Are you going to make the requisite 1/24 scale $8m. and change it will take to buy this barn find when it’s discovered? best, M.

Thanks for following along, guys... that's it for the workbench, I think. Made my own stencils for the numbers, drybrushed on the radiator grille and hand painted on the sides (I figured that they'd have been painted on with whitewash on the race day for real, so didn't want to get too sophisticated...) This one will be back in Under Glass once I've done some thinking and construction.... best, M.

Thanks, both. I think this is the building pretty much complete... And finally, starting to play about with the angles to reproduce the cover... Time for a bit more paint, and to make up a badge! best, M.

My Lord... can you imagine an LLM trained on the "One Sentence Game"? Should be fairly easy to spot, mind... best, M.

Absolutely lovely. Beautifully detailed and the finish is perfectly in scale. I love these kits, and this is something to aspire to when I can work up the courage to build one of mine… Very well done indeed. best, M.

Thanks, all... Sadly, a family bereavement has slowed things down this last week, but I'm back at the bench now. I'm not completely convinced by the colors of suit and helmet from reference material, but he matches the Eagle cover, which is mostly what I'm aiming for! Lots more finishing, tidying and detailing to do, but I'm feeling reasonably confident it will come together as I want... Time to start the Vanwall in the background. best, M.

This looks great... what a brilliant idea. If you haven't seen it, this article has some great pictures of the award-winning "half and half" restoration by Corrado Lopresto of an Alfa Romeo Giulietta SZ Coda Tronca, which gives a real sense of how an "as found" car compares to a restored beauty... https://apex.custodian.club/duccio-lopresto/ Looking forward to seeing more. You will of course need 1/24 mice in nests in the seats... best, M.

Another thing is that if you go to the "Unread Content" stream as your default way of finding new stuff to read, according to the web developer tools console on Firefox every one of the "thumbnail" pictures it's loading inline in the page is the full size image file. So if the server is already being hit by many requests, having to serve 10-20 250KB plus image files 3-4 at a time can't be helping matters... best, M.

"Preventive" is generally favoured in American English, whereas "Preventative" is the more common in British English usage. Neither, however, is incorrect.

Cool.... reminds me very much of a picture book I loved as a kid: "Mick Mulligan and his Steam Shovel.," and even more so with your steam conversion. I read it dozens of times when the mobile library came to our village in the very early 70s, but it was a "vintage classic" even then... Mick and his shovel have to retire, so he digs the foundations of one last apartment block and the steam shovel settles down to life as the heating furnace with Mick as its janitor... ? best, M.

The last thing I did last night was dust some microballoons onto the thick superglue to help the filling process and set the joints a bit more. And here he is removed from the cockpit.... holding his pose quite nicely, I think. Final sculpting and smoothing to come, but I'm letting the Milliput set solid with his hands back on the wheel to make certain an movement as I filled the big gaps has been readjusted so he retains his grip. Time to go and investigate the decal stash in search of appropriate numbers. And if that gets me nowhere, fonts to create masks.... at least the 2's don't have any closed loops! best, M.

Back from holiday, so time to crack on with this... The front axle and steering components took some (very careful) straightening out and a good hard look at some reference images to get together... there are no positive locations for the parts and the instructions are pretty unclear. The steering wheel is a bit the worse for wear as a result of my first efforts to fit the driver. It's not glued in place because he has to go in first, and will be repainted where needed once that's all done (of which more later). To take the weight off the wheels/axles, I've made a little perspex pillar (a trick I learned on the Silver Ghost). I make a cylinder of Blu-Tak (Silly Putty?) about 1cm in diameter and a bit taller than needed and press the car down onto it until the wheels are sitting on the mat. Pick the car up again and the Blu-Tak has squished to exactly the height you need your pillar to be. The pillar looks chunky in the first picture, but when it's under the car it's pretty unobtrusive. I was trying to avoid having to do this, but the seating position of a 1927 driver with a wheel canted at 45 degrees is just too different from the low-seat, vertical wheel of a later race car for the Fujimi figure to fit without substantial re-animation. The elbows are cut, rounded and pinned with wire, and the shoulders are drilled. The shoulder wires are firmly fixed in the body, but the tops of the arms are free to rotate and slide in and out. The process begins. With M. Benoist gripping the wheel, I've applied gap-filling superglue to all the joints. It's not got to fill them, just hold them firmly in place when I remove the figure and the wheel. Then I can fill the gaps and re-sculpt the figure where needed using Milliput. Let's see how cleanly he emerges from the cockpit after the superglue has set really solid for 24 hours this evening... best, M.

I can’t remember where I saw it online, but the technique I use for Tamiya rattle cans was invented by a pro modeller. It uses “splatter coats”. You don’t make any attempt to get even coverage coats, light or wet. You just do pass after pass, lightly, and build up to an even dense coverage by overlaying many light speckled coats. It doesn’t give orange peel because the paint goes on wet from reasonably close but moving fast. You can apply the coats 5-10 minutes apart because there’s not much thickness of paint and the solvent goes pretty rapidly. And because it’s painted in one session, you don’t get the issues of cracking due to differential shrinkage that can occur if you do solid coats of Tamiya rattle can paint spread out over a 24-48 hours to allow the first layer to “dry” before applying the next. (Actually, in my experience Tamiya acrylic takes several days to fully cure and shrink as far as it’s going to, which is why I wait a week or so before using Novus on it. Any surface texture you can see 12 hours after painting has usually tightened up and disappeared into a glossy surface after a few days.) Painting wet coats from a Tamiya can risks not just runs, but the pigment, especially metallic flake becoming unevenly distributed… best, M.

I think if you mean TS-17 Gloss Aluminium then yes. If you’re talking about AS-12 Bare Metal Silver then no, it’s too bright. The Light Gunmetal is actually quite dark, and too dark for Silver Birch. best, M.

The interior’s basically black. Semi Gloss for the leather, Matt for the carpets and dash. If you want to add some interest you can use NATO Black and/or Rubber Black for some parts (eg dash top). The exterior is NOT silver. “Silver Birch” is actually an opalescent grey, with no visible flake. Gloss Aluminium is OK, Light Grey Fine Surface Primer or Royal Grey with Pearl Clear over the top in light coats would work… do a spoon test to check it looks as you want. When I did mine, I used a Zero Paints Pearl white with literally one drop of very dark blue in an airbrush jar of paint, and then added black a drop at a time until it looked right to me. best, M.

Spanish soccer players seem to be rather better than English ones, on the available evidence.

Vorspung Durch Technik 1938-style. Amazing… best, M.