oldcarfan

Experience has taught me that even if the scenario for a movie sounds interesting, if Tom Cruise is in it I can just skip it. Saves both time and money.

I loved MacGuyver, especially the episodes with his pilot friend that would always get him in trouble!

I tried this a few times years ago. On one base I used a piece of fine sandpaper, sprayed flat white. For another I used some of that textured spray paint from Walmart , I also tried that canned snow that they sell around Christmas time to spray on windows. It was a bit too coarse, but wasn't too bad. You might also just put a base coat of flat white and then pull back and dust some more from a distance.

You might check this site too. http://www.forgottenfiberglass.com/ They cover old kit cars...

If you are exacting, you can vac-form a new windshield and trim it to size. I'm not that particular so I epoxied mine in place and used a fine tip Sharpie to simulate the rubber gasket. It came out pretty good.

I would so love to find one of these.I tried to make one of these a few years ago, but couldn't manage it. I've scratchbuilt several Scotty and a few teardrop trailers, but I could not manage to carve one of these. Love it and have fun with it.

I love those!I have a couple of these somewhere. I should build them some day.

Sorry my last post was a little off topic perhaps. Once this equipment becomes more commonplace, I'm sure that many hobbyists will be passing files back and forth online just like we trade music downloads. It's concievable that the model companies might even start selling digital files in some cases in lieu of actual kits.

Just saw this today from Makerbot.It is a 3d scanner that can be used to create a file that can then be printed by a 3d printer. http://store.makerbot.com/digitizer.html If I read it right, it does up to 8x8 inches currently. It's still too exensive for most of us at $1500. But if the techonology follows the same curve as calculators, VCR's and other electronics, it wont be too many years before the quality and resolution will increase and the price will drop. They'll probably be sold cheaply at Megalomart! I suppose that will open up the whole file-sharing issue just like Napster and copyright CD's and stuff, but it would sure be nice to be able to be able to reproduce parts or kits that no longer exist.

We've just moved here and am looking for a place to buy. The last place we lived was 3 hours from a hobby shop, Wild Bills in Arlington, but at least it was worth the trip! King's Hobby is here, but the selection is not too good. Village Hobby is long gone. Also no one carries MCM here either. Help?

I have a couple that I wish I still had, but the one I really miss is a 1957 MGA that I pulled out of a field. It had only surface rust and rotted wood floorboards. I traded it to someone before I really got the chance to do anything with it. The guy that got it tied a rope to the bumper and pulled it to free up the motor. Then he put fresh gas and a battery in it and it started up.

Thanks, I like to do things like this every once in a while for a change of pace.

Love your build! As I get older, I find myself wanting to build less common cars. I'm tired of Mustangs and Camaros.

My kids came across my old Disney comics a while ago and I looked through them and in one featuring Gyro Gearloose, I saw what used to be my favorite. I don't think he had a name, but he was always helping Gyro and sometimes saving the day. I decided to make him using copperttubing, some beads for joints and a light bulb. He is what would be 1;1 scale of 12 inches, assuming Gyro to be adult human size. Anyway, here he is.

Both silicone and resin have a limited shelf life, so whenever aI get in th emood to do any of that, I try to put together enough parts to use up all the silicone. Then I buy it and make my molds all at the same time. Then I cast parts until I end use up the resin. That way I can add them to my parts box. Once I am through casting for a while, I put the molds into a zip lock to keep them clean.To cut expenses, if you have any unusable molds, either ones that didn't come out right or ones that have been used up, you can chop them up, and drop them in as you pour the new mold. The finer you chop them up the better.They will take up space and you will end up using less new silicone. I have done this several times and have never had a problem with it.

Looks good, nice work! Jada made a diecast a few years ago and I always wanted to get one and make it stock, but never found one in the local stores.

I knew a guy a few years ago who would buy memorabilia (Star Wars and Star Trek stuff) and figures that other people had made. He would make a mold of it to sell on Ebay and at shows. He was pretty bold about it, sometimes he wouldn't even take the copyright off of the legit stuff before making a mold. He said that the big guys were too busy to pick on a little guy like him.

Casting is kind of like taping a show off of TV. You can do it for your own use and no one cares, but if you copy someone else's work to sell, then people are going to start noticing. The Hobby Lobbys around here have the Aluminite casting products for $29, and you can use the 40% online coupon and get them for around $18. There isn't enough to do a body in just one kit, but you can do a lot of engine blocks and other small parts.

That last drawing is from the mentioned website. Hope that is ok.

Most of the original belly tanks were a bit over 10 feet long, though some of the racers stretched them, so there is a lot of leeway for us modelers unless you are building a specific car. I don't have any drawing programs, so I found an old line drawing on a website, ]www.ww2aircraft.net/forum/technical-requests/p-38-drop-tank-blueprints-18116.html . I copied the drawing into Word and then enlarged it up to the size I wanted which for 1/25 scale is just a bit over 5 inches and printed it out. One note here, if you are doing a male plug rather than a female, make your plug just a little undersize to compensate for the thickness of the fiberglass part. I then glued the outline to a thin piece of basswood to make sure that both sides would be the same and then used another half of the same glued at a 90 degree angle down the center of the first one to get the profile. Then I filled the open areas with balsa and sanded it to the correct shape. I have since coated the whole thing with fiberglass resin just to make it waterproof. Here are three pictures I took this morning. I put a removable L-brace on it so I could clamp it into a vise to make it easier to handle. Then I stretched a single layer of T-shirt over the tin foil and stapled it to the bottom. I used T shirt material because I happened to have some old ones that were going to be thrown out. Then I coated the whole thing with a few coats of fiberglass resin, the cheap Bondo kind. While it was still a little soft, I trimmed the bottom close and then left it to harden. I wet sanded it next so the plug would support the part. Then I removed the handle and sanded the bottom flush. Repeat the process and you have two halves. These were then glued together and bondoed to smooth it out. I used some thin plastruct to make the seam where the real tanks are joined together. After that, you can cut open the hatches or what ever else you may want. This method may not be as good as one of the resin or vac kits, but the advantage is that the materials are cheap and you can make as many as you want using only readily available materials. The whole mold making process was only about 2 hours since balsa is so easy to sand. I made several parts before I was happy with them. Once I had them bonded together, I added the fairing behind the driver out of a vacuformed toothbrush package. Due to the flexibility of the parts, I would definitely recommend some bulkheads inside to keep the proper round shape! Hope all this helps.This is the drawing from the website that I used to start with.

I would love to see a picture if you have one.

I built it as a 1/25 car. I've heard them listed as 1/32 scale, the body is 6 1/2" by 2 1/2" but it's only about 5/8" tall not counting where it flares over the wheels so it does take some careful packaging. In doing internet research, I came across some pretty small streamliners so I decided to go ahead and give it a try. It works pretty well. One could probably be stretched and widened to add more room inside the body. Think of it as a reverse sectioning!

Glad everyone likes it. Since the balsa was so soft and porous and I was in too much of a hurry to seal it properly, I just wrapped the plug in aluminum foil. I did wax that a little. I then stretched the T shirt material over it. Once I had 2 or 3 layers of resin on it, I sanded it until it was pretty smooth then trimmed the edges. Once that was done, I popped the body half off and did another. The inside was a little rough and had to be sanded because it takes on any wrinkles in the tin foil. Then I glued the two halves together and bondoed the seam and primed it like any model. Incidentally, I did the same thing to make one 18 inches long using a foam plug, but should have made it a little thicker as its pretty flexible.

The engine is just a parts box flathead. I think it may be from the 53 Ford F100. I made an air cleaner, but I don't think I'll keep oit, its too big.

I just set up a Photobucket account and am trying to figure out how to post with it. I'll try posting more when I get it worked out.