62rebel

my eyesight is giving me the usual ###### lately, and affecting my hobby (GRRRRR) as well as my work; doing anything demanding is getting to be supremely aggravating and frustrating because i KNOW i used to be able to do better. case in point, the phantom '50 Ford Sportsman Convertible i'm doing as a companion piece to the '49 version i built some years ago. when i get some pics up i'll be able to show you guys my glitches.

Harry, i work on old crocks all the time. after 50 years in normal weather cycles even the best prepared sheetmetal is going to develop rust inside the framework (and GM wasn't spending money rustproofing ANYTHING in '59, none of them were) so i will stand out there on a limb and claim structural compromise added to (ADDED TO) the inherent insufficiency of the '59 design. i'll stand a little further out and state that even the seatbelt mounting points were probably not a designed-in factor for that year car. and 50 year old windshield gaskets will probably fail. i smell a rat. it's a rat i've smelled before; it's the same rat that tries, every so often, to get older cars legislated off the roads, and every time he tries, he wins a little, and he loses a little. the trick is how much he wins and how much loses. i personally hate and despise modern cars as being too complex, too expensive, and too gimmicky for their own good. it's people like ME that the rat is trying to defeat; the rat wants my old cars gone and new, monthly payment obligated ones in their place, and is using misinformation like this set-up public service announcement to get his point across. so while the old crock has problems in it's design, they are problems that can be addressed and dealt with in many cases.

did you mean Bantam? too big to be a Bantam. no 4 door Bantams IIRC. very interesting headlights... late '20's but not newr than '33 or '34 if American made.

wow... it never occured to me how vulnerable a situation can be. i've been set up at shows and went for a walkaround leaving my wife in charge... granted my stuff was actual car parts and such but just the same... dang. i'd hate to think i'd been thieved by people with whom i share such an important part of my life. and actual models off show tables? what kind of ...... person.... (lack of definable term here) could simply take a piece of someone's WORK and imagination and walk away with it... knowing it was not THEIR work, their toil. gggrrrrrrrr. perhaps the honest simply can't prepare for how the dishonest think.

EXCEPT the Mustang II? which outsold the original 4 years running? which BTW kept the "Mustang" name on the Ford rolls so they could use a Fairmont chassis to build the NEXT one? i digress... front wheel drive was foisted on the driving public as the "next great thing" by Morris, Fiat, Volkswagen and Honda when they realized it was cheaper to build cars with all the drivetrain at one end... and MOST of these cars never DREAMED of more than 100bhp to begin with. FWD is great in a car capable of controlling torque steer (which took decades for Detroit to master) and downright dangerous in high HP cars (which is why Police Spec Taurus's never took off; the average cop could not handle a FWD car at speed) until the advent of traction control and ABS systems.... as for GM, they've been saddled with too many lines and too much saturation for too long. Cadillac should have two models, neither of which should be a poorly-disguised Suburban, and both CLEARLY Cadillac and owing NOTHING to the rest of the line (not even lug nuts). a modern Eldorado coupe and a DeVille sedan, both RWD or AWD. i admittedly have a hard time identifying various new cars.... to me they are all devoid of real character, and remind me of either a bar of soap left too long in the tub, or some kind of wheeled Japanese Anime concoction..... all angles and wings and spearpoints and no personality. now, a '70 Toronado..... or a '72 Riviera... no mistaking one of THOSE.

gruesome! cool! and if they actually made fiberglass skulls big enough SOME ratrodder WOULD use it for a grille! BTW: google Roger Dean, a very cool artist/sculptor who worked with Hipgnosis doing what we old people call "Album Covers" for "Albums" back when they were vinyl and 12" across and you could SEE the design on the cover without it being covered with "WARNING! Explict Lyric Content" stickers.... one of his sculptures was a jet plane which incorporated a bird's skull.... and that H/K team snap absolutely slew me. i squirreled away a bunch of 12" figures and eqpt to do picts like that one day, like a robotchicken sort of thing.

coming along very nicely, Nick; one fault of the original kit is the very fragile axles. be very careful handling this when it's finished! AMT/MPC abused their licensing referring to this Jeep as accurate for Daisy's, though... Monogram's CJ7 would be closer if you could find one. great job so far with this, get it finished! more pics!

i think it's neat... just the kind of stuff to weed out the cobwebs when you get stuck on something else. cool trick!

maybe different shades of the same color, or differing levels of sheen from semigloss to dead flat, or both in proportions? sometimes i do an interior in a lighter hue of the body color and accent that with depth of shades. my hands and eyes don't get along well together anymore, so two-toning for me is rare but not out of the question. one of our interior color schemes is what they call "Rawlings" or "baseball glove" leather, complete with rawhide style lacing. kinda neat but not my cuppa tea.

local Charleston paper? the Newly Spurious? it's so toxic you can't even use it to wrap fish with, the FDA will fine you. we HAVE to read somebody elses' news if we want to know what the heck is going on..... matter of fact, the stuff filling TODAYS' paper, i read 2 or 3 days ago on MSNBC. hi Scott, enjoying the rain? we can read about it Monday.

what do you end up with once the hood is open? is the chassis plate semi-accurate or just a plate? does it have accurate or close-to-it inner fenders, where you'd at least have a start at installing an engine? back in "THE DAY" almost all kits came as engineless "curbside" jobs; even when they started putting engines in the kits most were bloody awful and poorly detailed, and you STILL had to cut the hoods open on a lot of them. first off, is there a mainstream kit of a Toyota with the basic engine and accessories you need to fill that engine bay? if NOT, then my suggestion is to FAKE it. take a bunch of pictures of the real thing, raid the parts box and fabricate your own version of what you see, paint it to match, and glue it in place. doesn't AMT have a Supra in the Fast and Furious kits? base your engine on the unit in that, if it's close. this is your opportunity to be artistic and take some chances! i just realized that the gtr is a nissan. my goof. STILL....

i'm unfamiliar with DeLorean wheels but if i were doing it from scratch, i'd look at the wheel/tire as a complete unit and break it down from there. the tire and outer rim can be turned from wood, laminated styrene, PVC pipe; the tread and sidewall can be carved into the master and then resin units could be cast from that, and fine-tuned to suit your needs. one thing about model building; what is IS in real life isn't necessarily what it needs to be made of on a model. if rubber is a must, then i'd find the closest tires on a diecast car or even in the R/C world and modify them to suit. sounds like we'll be seeing a new subject in a 1/20th DeLorean soon!

collecting kits.... never made any sense if ya never build 'em. might as well be an empty box as a virgin kit, IMHO... and if that 40 year old '55 is indeed your initial build... you were already miles ahead of me. i remember using a steak knife to cut roofs off models (razor saw? what's that? eggsacter knife? never heard of it...) and painting them with POSTER PAINT of all things... poster paint, of course, dries dead flat and a scale 3-4 inches thick! it does TINT plastic after it's washed off... my trouble is completing a build. i probably have at least a dozen "almost finished" kits in the closet, and one by one they each get a few minutes once in a while..... i WISH my son had the bug; i'd almost willingly hand over MOST of them to him, but he's addicted to Warcraft. my Granddaughter, i don't think will be interested, but if she even HINTS at it she gets it ALL. she's got the fingers for it... piano players' fingers.

that's the way my Dad built 'em... sheet of plans and some balsa wood. i got a picture of a model T touring car he built when he was ten or eleven (1950!) and he said he had to steam-bend the fenders to get them curved right. he showed me a Hawk kit once that was little more than some unplated white metal parts and a half carved block of balsa...

it's amazing what you can do with a 40 plus year old, bastardized AMT kit isn't it? pretty darn nice and really shows some thought, insight and hard work. and i agree that "Rides" junk they stuck in the kit STINKS. might as well glue the wheels to the fenders as use that ######. but again THIS is a beautiful build. time-warp car. love the long XL armrests, too.

must be a rogue unit, i've built several of that issue and none of the shells were damaged. too bad RC2 or whoever they are now doesn't replace them as the old AMT did. they sent me a complete shell once for a 64 Impala too warped to straighten. maybe clamping that quarter between two pieces of basswood and dipping it in hot water will straighten it? worst comes to worse, cut it off and rebuild it from sheet plastic. best of luck correcting it; it's a subject model i love.

i understand what kind of dilemna you're in; especially with kits running near $20+ each now. this is where, if you see a model and you'd like to build it, but unwilling to pop $$ just to try it, asking about it here can get you lot's of insight. and while certain makers get blasted for old, less-detailed re-issues, it was a different game then. i'm pretty catholic on my building; i don't care who made the kit if it interests me. i grew up on metal axles and platform chassis, thinly disguised promo's in kit boxes and the smell of Testors' paint and glue. again, if you see a kit and can't make out from the box how well it goes together (and some box art models have had serious professional attention!) get the kit brand and catalog number and SOMEBODY here can give you intel on it. (from my experience, the only truly BAD kit maker was Palmer... but that's another story.)

i think i just threw up a little, in my mouth... yep, yep; i did. gonna go gargle with some Drano now, while i find SOMETHING to poke out my mind's eye.....

any particular reason why the hood is separated from the front fenders, other than massive rust? 1:1 GT6's and Spits (as well as Heralds) had tilt-up front ends that opened forwards and thus exposed the engine, not a central hood that opened "normally" towards the back. spectacular rust out portrayal, anyway.

no pics yet, struggle along with me on this. anybody building an open-topped '60's custom (usually one that has the rear seats deleted and panned over) needs to come up with a set or two of hip, stylish headrests.... the mainstay of the '60's wild showroom customs along with full length sidepipes and wide oval radials... trouble is, nobody molds these things. the few in kits are designed for THAT kit....so here's a short tutorial on faking some up. you'll need some old MPC or AMT front stock bucket seats, the less detailed the better, a razor saw, some sheet plastic, your fave glue/cement, and sandpaper in usual grades. pick your seats (NO the Car seats) and determine how much you want to use of it. the backrest is the major portion; if it has a headrest your choice is to cut it off or sand it flush with the wider seatback. either way works. follow along... cut the backrest off the seat bottom so that the bottom of the backrest forms a straight opening. smooth the cut. sand the front of the seat until it is smooth, no details at all. the sides and back can be ADZED smooth (adzing is scraping with the edge of the blade, leaving a very smooth area. adzing workds for several things. once the extrior of the unit is smooth, match the two pieces for length. MPC and AMT often had seats which were different sizes, no big thing, we're fixing that. once the headrests are the same length, cement a piece of scrap styrene over the open end to form a cushion pad for the unit.sand this piece until the seams disappear. you may want ADD a strip of thin styrene around the pad end to define the shape better. up to you. determine the centrerline of the bottom face and make some thin guidlines to follow there. cut some 1/9x1/4 strip diagonally to form bases for the hearest and cement in place. i give my base a forward thrust by putting the forward angle at the top of the base. once the cement is cured, a little shaping to give the base some style, and paint to match your '60's factory dream rod. the Dodge Polara "Charger" inspired kit i'm doing has these....

again a very nice and clean build of a beloved subject. very nice; very nice decal work! darn my very nice.... sound like a bloddy parrot i do... anyway: display this car with pride.

mine is lingering about a quarter built among the dozens like her.... picked up a bunch of import/sports cars on clearance last spring and fiddle a bit with each one in turn when i get builder's block on custom projects. love the lines of the alpine. yours is definitely sharp! an inspiration!

congrats on the baby; sympathy on the hobby room. tell you what you do.... i saw this setup at a local used furniture store a LONG time ago, it looked like it was made by a painter or other artist for a portable (sort of) shop. basically, it was a cabinet about 4' square and overall about 2' deep. it was split down the front into two separate opening cabinet/doors in which were even MORE cabinets built, as well as shelves. the back, proper, was a series of shallow shelves down each side with a pegboard section in the middle. it even had a folding work lamp attached to the inside back. there was a divider between the doors and the back which, when folded down, attached to the doors and formed a worktable. it had white or light grey linoleum on it. loaded with tools and paints, it'd be a laod for two men to move..... but it's an idea of how to make a portable shop that can be locked to keep the dangerous stuff out of childrens' reach. i'd have bought it but with 2 extra bedrooms i don't need it...

Ertl had a comprehensive line of agricultural eqpt and heavy IH trucks, and had lots of working (if out of scale!) features for plastic kits. i have an instruction book (!!) for a Massey Ferguson farm tractor (how cool would that be for a trailer load) and it is probably better for it's day than ANY instruction set today. in all honesty i wish i'd bought a bunch of these old kits when the local hobby shop clearanced them out in the eighties......

very nice job on an iconic showcar. i couldn't begin to imagine actually driving the real thing at speed......... whoa Nellie!