62rebel

my worry would be the hundreds of Zeds who died wearing full face motorcycle helmets, now wandering the face of the earth with shatterproof skull encasements..................................... or those who were NFL players in the middle of a game........... now roaming the urban landscape with insatiable hunger for live human flesh............ wearing Official NFL gear. shoot them to pieces.... hack them to pieces.... impale them on spears, pikes, and pylons.... you still have to destroy the brain. before you get bitten.

shrinkwrap is one of those things that has a half-life measured in nanoseconds in my universe.

kinda puts the "shut up and build" to any and all problems with plastic kits, now doesn't it?

bull. Harry knows what EVERYTHING is. why, i bet he has a Cyclops brochure from the '50's.

convincing build; looks like it came right off the pages of "Ol Skool Rodz"... R2 just re-released the Fleetline kit in a tin box and they are absolutely NUTS if they think it's going to sell at that price, anniversary edition or not.

Charles, don't fret the little stuff; you're building great so far. for those small emblems, don't use a brush, use a toothpick. it'll carry just enough paint and won't smoosh out getting it all over. don't fret about leaving off stuff you don't like or think looks right, either; a lot of stuff doesn't eyeball correctly even in scale. get some good reference photos, plan out your colors, and have fun, more than anything. nice Boss, BTW!

well; the weathering job looks convincing, especially the rust poking through the paint around the trunk, but you really should Alclad that bumper. you chipped some paint gluing on the passenger side tailllight, too.... and where did you get that scale dog? very lifelike. not too many people put in the bracing between the floor and back window when they take out the back seat, either; nice touch! good photography, to make it look so lifelike! almost like you could get in and turn the key....

Mom? is that you?

cool collection of oldies there... welcome aboard.

it's a model that's seen NUMEROUS reissues in the last decade... and hails from the date of release. it was probably built on the kitchen table during Leave It To Beaver while Mom finished the dishes and Dad read Outdoor Life, and Sis was hogging the phone talking about Fabian with a friend from school..... it was probably built without the aid of an Ex-Acto knife, sandpaper, or any reference material except the box it came in.... it was probably the kid's absolute favorite model car (maybe his ONLY model car?) and had a place of honor on his bookshelf....

coulda been worse.... the builder could have chucked it in the trash. like some of my cousin's stuff.... he would lose it and across the room it would go.... he's old enough to be a grandfather now. i hope he's calmed down.

ohhh... yes, please; restore the original parts to these classics. not sure if the '40 Ford ever HAD stock parts.... but, YES, it needs them. if all the Monogram rods were reissued, i'd probably make the switch over to 1/24th for good.... (no, not really, but...)

i might have to finally build a purpose-built drag car.... showrod? i always thought the Crate was a beauty but never could rationalize it..... it's got so much going on in it... a buttload of chrome, eye-searing orange paint.. flip-up body... yep. going to need one of these.

did anyone recognize the Iranian Phantoms flying escort duty the other day, i forget what the article was in reference to, but those planes must be edging into 45 years of flight time by now.... and that is a beautiful representation regardless of marking accuracy. they are freaking HUGE.....

i take it you're not going to rebuild it, then, and keep it as a tribute to the original builder? cool; it does represent the hobby in an important period of growth and change. i have an old air cleaner from somebody's junk box that has a decal on it, that i refuse to use or remove the decal from. some gluebombs are actually pretty decent, considering the time period they might originate from.

when modern cars become too difficult/expensive to keep running due to obsolete/unavailable electronics, they are simply useless piles of junk. ECM's, ABS units, TCM's, all are designed for a narrow and specific band of vehicles and often cannot be reused from salvage yards without recoding... and are still aging, used parts at that. i know for a fact that VW New Beetle instrument clusters are nearly impossible to obtain for the '99-'03 range... and the cluster is more of a control unit and gateway than most car's ECM's. there are no work-arounds, no duct tape and baling wire repairs for these new cars. when there are no critical parts available, they're junk. so, fifty years from now, some guy will be lovingly polishing his inoperable 2012 Dodge Charger due to obsolete ECM's.

that right there is almost enough to make me quit model cars and take up ships again.... is that, indeed, the Calypso? Cousteau was a childhood hero of mine all the way through school..... i had the Cousteau PBY Catalina in my teens.... as far as inspiration for building, mine is half imagination and half stone cold reality. if i'm building a "normal" car or truck, it's firmly based on what reference material i can find. even if it's a "flight of fancy", i strive to maintain some sense of "correctness" in the structure and machinery. i've never felt any desire to build cartoons.

one thing i don't see happening? any sort of nostalgia for the current crop of cookie cutter cars..... i could be proved wrong, though.... somebody, fifty years from now, will no doubt be putting another coat of wax on his Geo Metro. hopefully the nursing home staff will get him sedated and back to the ward.

another tip: ditch the tube glue. use a solvent glue; my preference is straight Methyl Ethyl Ketone. you can buy it at Lowes, a quart can is about 9 bucks and it lasts forever.... BUT; DON'T try to use it straight from that can. use a large clean paint bottle or empty Liquid Cement bottle to hold your working supply. the fumes from it are bad, so don't leave the cap off. ANYWAY: what you've got already shouldn't be that difficult to finish the way you were going. add gussetting and "fish plates" to the joints, and give the solvent time to work. it welds the plastic chemically, so a small amount wicked into a joint will quickly "kick" and form a strong join. another trick i use on fragile or critical joints is to place a drop of superglue on the joint and work it all around and over it. superglue forms a very hard surface on the plastic, reacting to the styrene, and should be stronger than the original piece was. you could also use the frame you have now, and copy it in sheet styrene, laminated like plywood and sanded/filed to final shape. sheet styrene, if you don't have a hobby shop nearby, is as close as your neighborhood Wal-Mart. buy a few plastic "For Sale" signs in the hardware section; they're styrene and usually about equal to .020" sheet from Evergreen.

trunk, i'd leave in aluminum with that Nova frame. keep the power theme consistent.

um, NO... there are so many differences between the Merc and the Ford as to render swapping parts between them nearly impossible. the Merc is wider through the body and slightly lower than the same year Ford. look at the running boards on the Merc above... barely six inches wide at their widest, where the Ford's are significantly wider. the fenders, front and rear, have more bulge in them, more contour than the Ford. very few body parts interchanged between Ford and Mercury for MANY years... a few models, like the 49-51 wagons, were basically the same shell, but that's about it. in other words, you need a Flintstone resin body to build a 39-40 Merc, stock or otherwise.

the typical over-smoothed build from the '80's had no roll-under at the rocker panels, as if it were literally melting onto the pavement. bring your rocker panels/quarters under a bit.

no, i think you captured it succinctly. let's leave that sleeping dog lie.

wait till the descendants of the owners get hit with all the back registration fees and taxes.... not to mention the recovery bill! i hope the geico gecko (anole, from his color) doesn't get squashed. i stopped watching the derivatives of ST after TNG was cancelled, until Enterprise began, and then fizzled out. i never knew they had ANY Earth vehicles aboard any of the Starships! great looking build, with the rust in the right places!

i cringe a little when someone mentions bmc..... my own reasons.