Aaronw

I build a little bit of everything, cars, trucks, airplanes, helicopters, armor, space, sci-fi, science (visible eyeball etc), figures and the occasional ship. I haven't built a motorcycle yet, but have some ideas for the Italeri 1/9 scale WW2 Harley Davidson. Actually that is not entirely true, I did build some 1/35 WW2 German motorcycles when I was a kid.

Thanks, the one on the '60 looked pretty close to the Revell '64 but I wasn't sure.

Are the pickup beds on Chevy pickups the same 1960-65? I have a bunch of the AMT 1960 Chevy trucks which are fleetside beds and I'm wondering if I can swap the beds with the recently re-issued Revell 1965 Stepside allowing an accurate 1965 Fleetside or 1960 Stepside. Thanks

For the size of the blower 6" vent pipe is needed to get the best performance, 4" is too restrictive. It does require an adaptor to go to round vent pipe since the exhaust is rectangular. Yes is needs to vent outside, I had it set up on its own stand and was getting ready to run the vent pipe when a bear broke in and trashed the garage. That is why the booth is just sitting on a table in the photo. Stupid bear went on a rampage breaking into about a 1/2 dozen homes in 2 days, including the bear control ladies house, so that bear is in the land of picinic baskets and won't be bothering me again.

There are a few 1/25 tank kits available, Tamiya did a Tiger, a Centurian and I think a Sherman. I think Trumpeter and / or Dragon have done some 1/25 armor too.

The main reason is I got tired of seeing a kit on the shelf for months, then when I wanted to build it, one couldn't be found anywhere. If I could be sure of finding the kits I want at a fair price I would have a much smaller stash of kits. As far as never getting them built, that assumes I won't live forever.

There are actually quite a few 1940-50s resin COEs available RMR has several Chevrolet, Ford and Dodge COEs. http://www.freewebs.com/rmrresin/ There is a very nice Cannonball out there, and decent cab shells (no interior) for 1938 and 41-47 Ford COEs but I'll have to find the info for those. There have been some early Peterbilt and Freightliner snub nosed cab overs but I'm not sure if they are currently available or who did them.

I've seen a few models here that used Testors Fiery Orange which looks similar but I'm just going by photos of models to your photo.

I don't think it is fair to say US companies are not giving "adult" modelers a chance, I think they have and it has been shown the US car modeler has not stepped up to support the high end market. Just look at the Accurate Minitures corvettes that from what I have heard were great kits, however they didn't sell well causing Acc Min to drop out of car models, similarly Monogram's detailed Pro-modeler kits with PE and such included also did not do well enough to continue the series. Galaxie's kits are well detailed but they also have not done that well sales wise (although I can buy argument that the subject is an issue in this case). The Japanese and European kit makers can push their high end models because they are not reliant on US modelers for their sales. Military subjects have many advantages, theoretically easier to mold, and not as many legal issues but there is no question military modelers are more willing to spend money than US car modelers.

I can neither confirm nor deny that zombies have over run the factory, but I have a friend whos cousin's, uncle's, sister's brother works for homeland security (life challenged division) and he told me I better carry a golf club when I open my Lindberg kits from now on.

Be careful with cheap powdered latex gloves, latex is an alergen and the cheap gloves usually use recycled latex which is even worse. I was only working about a year as an EMT when I developed a nasty allergy to the gloves. Obviously I wore them more than an average modeler but it only took a year for me to develop an alergy, swollen eyes, red blotches on my hands and arms, and difficulty breathing and several trips to the emergency room until it was narrowed down to the gloves. It is worth paying just a bit more for a good powder free latex glove or even better nitrile gloves. When you look at the prices it comes down to pennies per glove to use a good quality one. The nitrile gloves are really tough too, so you could probably re-use them a few times if you are really thrifty. Sorry for the safety sally side track.

I don't think the cosmetic aspect was a bad thing, but when it basically just comes down to a name plate and very minor option / cosmetic differences it was pretty pointless. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder so I could see sales of a Camaro vs Firebird or Mustang vs Cougar that have the same car under the skin but major styling differences. It also seems like a lot of unneccessary duplication, I don't see why they feel the need to give each brand a copy of each car, and their own dealer network. Offer one or two high end Mercurys, not offered under the Ford brand and sell them right alongside the Fords.

I built my own last year, the fan is a 485 cfm shaded pole blower from Grainger and cost about $150, my total for the booth was just over $200. Yes, lots of people use cheap bathroom or stove top fans successfully, under the right conditions you can also safely throw matches in a pan of gasoline. All of the commercial booths I have seen use a squirrel cage blower, there is probably a reason for that. Admittedly it isn't a huge risk and many will never have a problem using one of these cheap fans, but I wasn't willing to take the risk just to save $50-100. Most use a furnace filter which should catch any over spray, so only fumes should be exiting the ducting.

I would also recommend Grainger, I don't recall the number of mine but it is 485 cfm and I paid around $150. The complete booth cost me $200 so the fan is the primary expense.

I don't know of a 2005, but there are several options for the earlier version (1999-2004?). The resin LA County squad from SSB linked above is very nice, $99 might seem a bit steep but it includes a lot of stuff, light bar, LA county decals, wheels etc. You might try emailing him if you don't want the whole kit, I understand he will negotiate with people to provide just what they need. The quality of the castings is very good.

I'm not sure if Duplicolor offers the blue DD color, but if they dont you might be able to find the right color at a truck repair place. I was able to get some touch up paint in Cummins Beige and IH Blue at a local International repair shop.

Pixel based programs have to draw everything with dots, as you get smaller the dots have to rearrange, and at a certain point detail gets lost regardless of how good the original image was, examples are MS Word, MS Paint, and most photo editing programs etc. Vector based programs maintain a ratio, so you do not get distortion (pixelation) when you change size. The most common examples of these programs are Corel Draw and Adobe Illustrator, but there are some free programs out there. The benefit of these programs are you can start with a very large easily edited image, then shrink it to your needed size. I generally begin with a 5-10" image to work with but the decal is usually 1/2" or smaller. The printer you use really has little to do with image quality these days, even the cheapest are usually around 600 dpi these days. If you are thinking about doing decals commercially, even only as a sideline I would suggest you consider buying Corel Draw, as it seems to be the most popular program used for decals. You can find older versions cheap on ebay.

I'm not really sure that this is that big of an issue, you can get name brand yellow paint or a close generic, and it is an easy color to put homemade decals over. The AMT kit straddles the period with the earlier style branding (I think 1964-65 is when they swithed from simple text to the stylized triangular logo). Unfortunately the licensing issue is going to be with us until someone realizes they might be better off encouraging the use of their trademarks on model kits. This was mine, decals for personal use only of course. I wish they would re-issue this kit, I did this several years ago, and I'd like to do another one with the skills I've picked up since then.

Thanks for posting that, I've heard it was out there but never found the article before.

Thanks, I won't write off the metal bodies then. Too bad the '37 Packard is 1/16, I'm not really interested in adding yet another scale to my building.

I don't see it so much in the 2009+ like the last posted, it still has a bit of it, but not nearly as much. The earlier series that ran from 1991-2002 doesn't have that look at all. Granted the IH is more of while that Mazda is one of these guys

I've bought stuff from Uptown Automotive, its good quality stuff when he has it in stock, good service too.

Yep, that is the one.

I ran across this photo I took at NNL West 2009, it is a rather striking car. Any idea what kit this is? Well that was still in negotiations at the time.

Blame International, the 2003-2008 7300/7400 is nicknamed the Cheshire cat for good reason, the silly truck is smiling. I've forgiven it because it does perform, but I prefer a more serious look on my trucks.