khier

I have decided to replace the trailer.

Little progress and a lot of adjustment.

Progress today: The trailer started. Axle and wheel details:

Now it is the time to return to the interior. Apart from the impossible to paint gauges, I am generally satisfied (which is a rare feeling). If I am going to build it again, I would choose different shades of grey to avoid the monotony I ended up with. I still have two kits in my inventory, but they will not be built soon. I had enough frustration with is one.

This is a sheet of some fabric I bought from Tedi, the German one dollar store.

The steering column is finished. Now all the components of the boat are complete except the wind shield. Now the boring part will start: kit engineering.

I have never been happy with Tamiya acrylics for exterior. To me, the clear never get hard enough for proper polishing. They wouldn't accept solvent based clear on top either. Perhaps if it it is done very, very carefully.

First attempt to apply a carpet. I would say it is perfect success. Much better than painting.

Repaired the hood finally. A shift of colour occured. It might be not that clear in the pictures but it is greener in reality. This is indeed frustrating

Very nice. I built it a while ago. Highly detailed but somewhat troublesome to fix the body on the chassis.

Frustrated by the pitfalls in the1950 Ford F1 project, I decided to do something different, and to move my daughter away from the retarded material on the TV screen. I asked her to work with me on the interior. She chose this tan shade, and I decided to try cheap artist acrylic to reproduce the colour, and here where the fun begins. I mixed some sienna brown with white and got quickly a close shade. I used my home brew acrylic thinner to spray the paint with airbrush. Well, I didn't have enough thinner and it remained relatively thick. However, it could be sprayed at 2.5 bar. The airbrush was merely spitting the paint rather than spraying. It looks like it is poorly pigmented or the pigment of a strange type. However, the spitting and the suspended pigment particles create a fantastic wood effect. Well, not really what I wanted but I have never seen such a perfect imitation of wood before. Spraying further changed the effect to leather look. Now I know how I will finish my 3d printed luggage when I finally come to print them. These paints are real dog to cover. After a lot of layers the seats looked like perfectly weathered. Finally, after several tens of layers I arrived at that. Ah, I forgot to say my daughter was gave up and the last, say, twenty layers were sprayed by me. So to summarize: Cheap artist acrylics are great for wood and leather effects and weathering. They cover very poorly. Therefore take a lot of time to apply properly. Although they are dirt cheap, they need great amount of acrylic thinners. Unless the thinner is home made, they are financial disaster. I have seen only solid acrylics. They can be probably mixed with Tamiya clear to create gloss and semi gloss colours. This what I will try in part 2 to make the seats stand out a bit. Finally, here is the body.

Progress today: The steering wheel started taking shape.

Burned through the paint after repainting another burned through spot. So I will strip the hood.... Again. I am starting to believe this kit was made 6th of June at 6:00 am. The ugly point is I ran out of paint and had to buy an extra tin. The paint shades are not identical ?

Yes

The dashboard is almost finished

Finished the wood effect on the bed. BMF would be a serious undertaking. Brush painting might be easier despite exhaustive masking work.

WIP today: the bed

Finally some progress. I was stuck with the dashboard. It took me 5 official iterations to reach a somewhat convincing shape.

Thanks, The shade is blue/green in reality rather than the light grey shown here.

I hate the advanced stages of the work. The progress becomes too slow. Finalized the seat and created door panels. First digital mock up using STL car from the internet.

Polishing finished. Now I have to fight with the burn through spots.

WIP today: repeated the seat. The back rest is still too high, or to be precise, the surface of the boat is too low.

I would stick to the el-camino roof style, but this also has the 1959 DNA in it.

After going that far I thought why not make a matching phantom nomad? Here is the first pencil sketch:

WIP today: The seat is too large. Back to the drawing board.....?