Matt Bacon

Looks fabulous, Justin. All those add ins really lift the base kit. Super clean building and painting, and all in a very stylish colour scheme to boot. Love it! best, M.

Great work on this @Dave B. It’s such a beautiful car. This will also be very helpful when I come to build my Fujimi issue, so thanks for that! As to the rear vents, I guess youthful enthusiasm — plus there seem to be different options. This one has two on each side: https://petrolicious.com/blogs/articles/the-beauty-of-the-alfa-romeo-tipo-33-stradale-is-more-than-skin-deep Basically your top one plus a single vent combining the lower two. And this one has one large vent, mirroring the one behind the front wheel arch: https://www.autozine.org/Archive/Alfa/classic/Tipo_33.html So you may well have seen an original picture with three, or just thought it looked more stylish that way… best, M.

Popped the rather imposing radiator on for a test fit, which is pretty impressive given that everything is just resting in place... I'm going to diverge slightly from the instructions, and build the rumble seat and mechanism up from underneath with the opening panel taped in place like this, rather than assembling the whole thing as a unit and then trying to plug it into the open hole at the back. best, M.

Took the masking off after letting the decanted and airbrushed Tamiya Gloss Black cure for 24 hours in an unseasonably warm workshop... The running boards, believe it or not, are the much-maligned "New Improved Chrome" Bare Metal Foil. I've finally run out of the old stuff, and this envelope had been sitting unopened behind the bench for years, so I didn't have high hopes. But it worked brilliantly. There are a few touch-ups to do, and detail painting on both the main body and hood sections, but overall I'm pretty happy with how this has come out. best, M.

Back from a lovely break in the midst of the Forest of Bowland, I can now see how all the bits I left to cure thoroughly got on while I was paying no attention... That's the chassis (and the first part of the four-stage instructions) completed. The steering column and box need to be clipped in place before attaching the floor and fender part, and then rotated to the correct orientation and fixed permanently into the location on the kick-panel of the floor. I'd stripped the chrome from all the parts to clean them up and glue together the various assemblies firmly, and this is the first to be repainted. I stuck the grille, radiator housing and mascot together, and then sprayed with SMS Hyperchrome over a base of Tamiya Gloss Black from a rattle can. Quick test assembly. Now time to do a few hours of masking before painting the black body mouldings. best, M.

Not cheap (but only PCB-bit expensive): I bought some of the Tamiya modelling bits for the smaller sizes. They really are designed for modelling, and the trick is that the standard 3mm diameter shank has a shorter and shorter cutting bit on it as you get into smaller diameters. Let's face it, if you are drilling a 0.2mm or 0.3mm hole on a model, you probably don't need a 15mm deep cut. So the smallest cutting bit is only about 4mm long before the shank, but you are a lot less likely to put lateral stresses on it, or apply high torque to the smallest cross-section. The worst case scenario for the PCB drills is hard to cut plastic at the tip with 15mm of 0.3mm bit between the load and the chuck, which makes the stress at the point where the thin bit meets the thick shank incredibly high, especially combined with bending loads from the pressure on the drill. The Tamiya small-section bits are long enough to go through a 1/48 airplane wing for rigging, or drill a reliable anchor for a 1/24 spark plug wire, and I can't think why you'd need anything much longer. PCB drills are designed to reliably and repeatedly cut through metal and a very hard plastic substrate when mounted in a computer controlled drilling machine with a chuck positioning motion that's accurate to 0.001mm and rock solid in the vertical plane, unlike you or I... best, M.

So, I have found the missing part that stalled the build -- the back half of one of the wheels, which is the same as one for the spare wheel on the fender. However, I have another Jo-han Cadillac in the stash so I have stolen a bright blue alternative to the green piece in the kit. Having now gone rummaging, i would very highly recommend that if you want to build one of these, seek out an original 60s issue rather than the "white box" re-issue version from the 70s/80s. The newer kit is plagued by very heavy flash everywhere, and rough textured moldings, including the transparencies and chrome. I think if I'd opened the "Dual Cowl Phaeton" first, I'd have filed the Jo-han kits under "more trouble than it's worth" and moved on. But I didn't, and the newer kit is an excellent source of spare parts... The chassis is now fully assembled and painted: "What's with the red brake drums?" you are probably thinking. Well, I have settled on a real car to act as the prototype and solve my color conundrums, and here it is... It's a deep cream/yellow beige in real life, not a virulent chrome yellow. This is a more or less 50/50 mix of Tamiya TS-34 "Camel Yellow" and TS-7 "Racing White" decanted and sprayed with the airbrush. The fender molding is just the kit part with the plastic polished, which looks OK to me. I don't think priming it, painting it in gloss black and polishing it again will make it any better! The wheels are a bit more sophisticated than the kit colors and chrome would allow. The picture of the real thing above demonstrates that the wheels are basically black with chrome details, not chrome all over. The two wheel/spoke parts are glossed in black, and then the spokes colored in chrome with AK and Hyperchrome pens. The rims on the real thing are mostly black, so only the outside edge is also colored in chrome. The hub is chrome, but I'm going to leave that until after gluing the wheel parts together so I can apply pressure to the hub while they dry. The whitewalls have been primered in white and then painted with Gunze "off-White" spray. One of the reasons I love this color scheme is that as well as the red brake drums, it's been refurbished with a glorious red leather interior.This is Citadel Evil Sunz Scarlet diluted slightly with water and with some acrylic flow enhancer added. I don't know why it's taken me so long to figure this out, but while it takes several coats to build up the color density, you end up with no texture from the paint at all. Lots still to do, but I feel like I've taken all the big decisions now, so I can just plug along building it. best, M,

Try a craft shop that sells material for flower arranging, or an actual florists. You can get 1mm, 1.5mm and 2mm diameter aluminum wire that they use in arrangements this side of the pond, but I don't know what sizes might be available in the US. If you only want a few inches, a florist might just give you an offcut... best, M.

Well, it's described as low temperature soldering. This is the tutorial I found: I just use my regular soldering iron at its standard temperature, and if you look at the pictures in the thread I linked to above, you can see that the join completely disappears when you use low temperature solder on white metal parts -- the two pieces become one, essentially. So I'm going to say if it's not exactly the same composition, then low temp solder and casting white metal are very, very similar. On the "melting" part, you never touch the white metal parts directly with the soldering iron, and you don't hold the iron in place with the liquid solder on the tip touching the white metal parts either. Not to get too "physics" about it, but there's a certain amount of heat energy in your blob of molten solder, which is enough to keep it liquid. When you touch the blob onto the two parts, it runs along the seams. If the soldering iron is no longer touching anything, all the heat energy you have got is in that small amount of molten solder. As it runs along the joint, it cools as the heat energy goes into the bulk white metal (which is a good conductor of heat) on each side of the joint, and the heat is dissipated into a much larger amount of room temperature white metal. There isn't enough energy to melt any more metal, just warm it up a bit. In practice, all the soldering I did (a bit at a time) to join the top and bottom shells of a 1/24 race car made it noticeably warm to the touch, but not hot. With a bit of practice, and keeping the iron moving, you can "stroke" the solder along the join, just melting it under the tip and letting the capillary action take it further and further. You have to be careful with small parts, where there's not enough material to dissipate the heat of the molten solder, so I still use epoxy or superglue for those. But for joining major parts low melt solder is great. And if you have to repair broken white metal (which is not as flexible and easy to just to bend as you might think) it means you get an invisible repair that's as strong as the original material instead of having to mess around with pins and epoxy... best, M.

Welcome to the club! First of all, you need to know that you don’t solder white metal kits like you’d solder electrical components or brass. You need “low temperature solder” (which is basically the same stuff as white metal itself). And instead of heating the parts you are soldering with the iron and touching the solder to the hot parts, you melt the low temperature solder on the iron and let it flow onto the cold parts you are joining and into the gap between them by capillary action. So you need to be able to hold the parts you are joining together as you want them to be when joined. Use clamps or tape, and do the bits that are exposed, then move the tape and do the other bits. The solder sets really fast. You can probably source some old gaming figures or model soldiers to practice on if you want, but when I took the plunge with the white metal Finecast kits I have been building I just went ahead and did it, after watching a couple of videos online. Google “low temperature soldering” to find them. Any questions, just ask… best, M.

Yes... I didn't realise until I started reading the instructions carefully, but the original owner had put together the ladder frame sides, under engine floor and a couple of the transverse frames before I got it. Again, although there are some sink marks in the frame sides, they are both as straight as a die and the cross-pieces fit perfectly between them and lock into position. best, M.

Starting to make some progress... The engine stripped of chrome and repainted. Given the brittleness of the plastic, I didn't try to disassemble it any further and contented myself with repainting. Look closely, and you can see (and read) the "Delco" badge on the water pump bottom right. I "wired" the distributor using thread, smoothed with PVA glue, making up two eight-strand skeins which are fixed into slots cut in the distributor cap. I wouldn't try and use it if the wires had to be routed visibly to each cylinder but as it is the fabric-covered wires just have to disappear into the front of the cylinder head. In case you're wondering how big this engine is (and it's a monster) here it is in comparison to a 1/24 427 V8 from a Monogram Cobra that I had lying around. The main elements of the chassis. I've added the exterior brake drums,, held on by the green pins so they rotate. The white-ish patches on the frame rails are the sink marks I mentioned, filled using superglue and microballoons. Quick test of the engine in the chassis. You can see why the car has such a long nose. An example of that ambition and attention to detail I mentioned above. This is the steering actuator lever. If you look closely you can see that the hole in the chassis is extended vertically by a slot, and there are two tiny pins moulded on the axle of the lever. This means that the lever can be inserted through the chassis with the lever lying along the chassis rail, and then rotated to its correct vertical orientation where it is retained in the hole by the pins which are now behind the chassis. I've never seen that done before. That gives plenty of wiggle room for clipping together the steering mechanism. The suspension is very nicely detailed with the shock absorber dampers and arms applied separately. And the steering works prototypically. The rear suspension is equally well detailed: note the hex nuts on the differential and brake actuator rods as well as separate damper arms. Here's the completely assembled chassis. I'm going to paint it as one piece because it is all black, and given the plastic's general resistance to glue I wanted to be sure I was always gluing plastic directly to plastic and using hot MEK liquid cement wherever possible. The engine fits perfectly on its mounts and to the prop shaft. Now to pop it out and paint the chassis and powertrain. And make some decisions about what color the car is going to be! best, M.

Which he shared with Phil Hill, apparently: https://www.goodingco.com/lot/1924-bugatti-type-35-grand-prix-model-by-art-collection-auto/ That's good company to be keeping.... 😜 best, M.

Get some black drafting/technical pen ink. Rotring pretty much owns the market this side of the pond, not sure if the same is true in the US, but someone will still make it. Very dense black but with very fine pigment. Add it a drop or two at a time until you get the density you want (though bear in mind it’ll get a bit darker as it dries…) best, M.

Not much to show yet, but things I have learned. 1) The styrene in this older boxing is really hard, and brittle, which I guess is the price you pay for the sharpness of detail and the lack of flash. 2) There are serious sink marks in many of the thicker parts (see above) 3) They thought very hard about how to mold it so you can build without paint. Unfortunately, not all "silver" parts are "chrome", and not all "body color" parts are the same green, even if your basic body color is green. This also means the paint call-outs are very limited: the section in the instructions only mentions things that you can't in all conscience leave the color they are molded. 4) On the plus side, I was very pleased to read that the designers of the Chevy V16 made it very "neat" with all the plumbing and wiring hidden. In practice, this means that the 16 spark plug wires from the distributor come out one side and disappear down around its base rather than having to be led to each cylinder in both blocks. Go Chevrolet. 5) It's designed beyond the limits of early-60s injection molding technology. For example, there are a couple of parts that are intended to be the folded "irons" for the fabric roof. They are slim, accurate, beautiful... and distorted and broken. I think even Meng with 2020s slide molding tech and using ABS instead of polystyrene would have struggled to make them work. But someone mastered them and they tried, so well done. 6) I genuinely don't think I've ever come across a "classic" kit so completely uncompromising in its ambition to get everything right, so of its time, and so close to succeeding, with the possible exception of some of Heller's greatest hits from the late 60s and early 70s. (And by that I also mean never taking the "easy to assemble/foolproof/fun to build" design solution if accuracy is on the line...) best, M.

Amerang is just a UK distributor of other people’s kits. In the 70s snd 80s, before the Japanese brands were well known here, distributors like Amerang, AA Hales and RiKo (Richard Kohnstam) used to put stickers on or even brand boxes from Bandai, Gunze, Tamiya and Hasegawa. best, M.

And now, as they used to say, for something completely different... Clearly my subconscious had been working on what I should build after the RX-7 kitbash, because this came to me in a dream, literally. More accurately, maybe because I'd been reading some vintage modelling magazines, I woke up knowing I should build one of the Jo-Han oldies in my stash, or one of the Monogram 1/24 "The Classic...." series. After weighing up this one, the Jo-Han Carraciola Mercedes 500K, and the Monogram Duesenberg, I plumped for this. It couldn't be further from a JDM rotary of the early 2000s... I've never built a Jo-Han kit before, but opening the box everything I've heard about these (compared to their annuals) is borne out, even though it had been slightly started by the previous owner. The detail is astonishing for any vintage, never mind the late 60s, and the way the parts trees lock together to protect everything in the box is genius. The instructions are properly old school, like vintage Heller, where you have to read the words three times and trial assemble everything before committing to glue. I've stripped all the chrome (mostly the trees at the bottom right of the picture) and will repaint the bits that need it. This is a first-release boxing (the later re-release has a largely white box) and the whole kit, including the chromed tree, is 99% flash-free. The engine had been mostly assembled (albeit with chromed parts) and the front axle had been part built, but that's as far as it went. I'm not sure why the previous builder had stopped... nothing seems to be FUBARed and all the parts are there. Anyway, their loss is my gain. So, just a straightforward build of a regular (and rather nice-looking albeit classic) kit according to the instructions. What could possibly go wrong? best, M.

Now, you may be wondering "Why Tamiyujimi?" Well, I saw this ad on an auction site: And not having the requisite £80,000 spare, I decided to build one. Shouldn't be too difficult, surely? Fujimi makes a kit of this very car, the FD3S RX-7 Spirit R Type A. But... the body in the box doesn't have the unique nosecone or aggressive splitter. And a fellow Britmodeller pointed out some time ago that the chassis in the kit is actually from an R-32 GTR, not an accurate RX-7 chassis, and the brakes are far too far inboard. So I resolved to use the chassis from a spare Tamiya RX-7R1 (an earlier vintage FD-3S) mated with the much-modified Fujimi body and essential Spirit R parts like the unique wheels and Kevlar-backed Recaro seats. And this is the result: Paint is a Zero Paints Gunmetal intended for a R35 GT-R that I had to hand, with Zero 2K clear coat. The tires are Michelin Pilot Sports that I found in the spares box, because I wanted something a little less "rubber band" than the ones that came in the kit, and I wanted them to fit the wheels without stretching (I have a couple of nice models in the cabinet whose tires have started to crack as they've aged because they were stretched over a 1" bigger wheel than they were made for...). The track is just slightly too wide front and back, which is a consequence of the chassis swap and Tamiya's way of molding the suspension with a small number of large and complex parts including wishbones, links etc in one piece, which makes it much more difficult to take a couple of mm out of each side... There is an engine in there as well, but with the amount of work the body needed already, I wasn't going to open the hood and build hinges! But I now have my very own Spirit R Type A... best, M.

Suspension and chassis coming together: Very much in the classic Tamiya mold of a small number of large and complex parts requiring detail painting rather than many separate, this rear suspension is made up of a top frame, one-piece differential with drive shafts, two wheel carriers, two brake disks and a one-piece lower frame with integrated suspension arms and underbody panels. There are just 16 molded parts visible in the picture above (and four polycaps hidden in the wheel hubs). I think they do a pretty convincing job of representing the suspension and drivetrain (and certainly better than using the chassis from an R32 GT-R...) I'm calling it a day in this thread... I have battled to the end, but was utterly useless at documenting the process. It was "just" fitting the body to the chassis, adding the wheels and few more details, and decalling. But it was kinda frustrating and way more difficult than it should have been (which is mostly my fault...). Anyway, see you over in Under Glass... best, M.

...and the engine bay and the interior, of course... You can see a faint "crocodile skin" texture on the one piece airbox/ducting part at the front of the bay. I have no idea what happened there -- my trusty can of Citadel Chaos Black primer/base went on too thick and "curdled" into clumps, and the lines where it didn't cover ended up etched by, I assume, neat solvent. I dumped it straight into IPA, but the damaged had already been done. The IPA removed all the paint overnight, but left the ghost texture behind. If it was ever going to be seen again, I'd have had to do more about it, but as things are in this basically curbside model, I'm just going to chalk it up to a "learning experience". The interior is pretty simple, but the decals add some nice details and further splash of colour. Note to self... brush off that dusty fingermark on the dash top... best, M.

A Starship still flying would be really rare groove, however cool… It’s a bit hard to figure out from the published stats, but there are maybe two in the US and one in Europe still extant. When Beech washed their hands of them, it became really hard to keep one in the air. Another possibility is a Diamond: https://www.diamondaircraft.com/en/private-owners/aircraft/da42/overview/ Best, M.

That looks absolutely beautiful. Great job. best, M.

If you're thinking "This is taking a while," so am I... On the plus side, I have now completed Stage Two of the instructions... One of the standout features of the Spirit R is carbon/Kevlar-shelled Recaro race seats... a must-do highlight in an otherwise grey and black cabin. These are mostly Tamiya Flat red, and yellow oversprayed with black through a handy piece of gauze for the backs. In reality they are a bit more muted, but in the gloom of that dark cabin, I think they'll be fine. I'm not sure why I'm spending time on the engine, other than "Because it's there." I'm not planning to open the hood in the Fujimi body shell, and I'm certainly not building hinges for it like I did for the Super Samuri. But Tamiya moulded it, so I guess I'd better color it in a bit... Terrible picture, but the blacked out tail light bar is now in position. Hard to tell from this angle, but the outer lens is the orange indicator, and the inner pair are red tail and brake lights. The glass is temporarily tacked in place, and needs a darn good clean before it's fixed. I mostly wanted to check that the tub would fit under it, and it would all close up with the engine in place. Which it mostly does, though I may need to glue the splitter under the nose to make it stay where it should. And though I might moan about them when they are provided, I really could have done with some masks or templates for the black areas around the window borders, even though they are frosted on the plastic molding... Just the suspension, wheels and stance now, then... best, M.

There seem to be quite a few warped, broken or short shot parts in these, as well… best, M.

I understand the concern, but I’ve used the Zero system without sanding on dozens of models over the last two decades without any issues no matter what the colour or finish. In my experience, the biggest challenge is with two (or in one case three: solid base colour, tinted metallic, and transparent topcoat) layer basecoats: getting each layer evenly dense across multiple part assemblies. For example when I’m painting doors, engine cover, opening clips and pop up lights separately before final assembly. But I’ve always found the Zero system just works when I do exactly what the instructions say. It’s not for everyone, because of the noxious chemicals, extensive precautions, and the kit you need to use it safely (I wouldn’t be using it if my modelling den was in the house, for example…) But for modern cars and colour matched finishes, it’s hard to beat… especially if you’re in the UK and the alternatives come from overseas with the additional shipping cost and difficulty that brings. best, M.