Scale-Master

A Tamiya kit from I guess a few years ago. Typical fit and construction one would expect from a contemporary Tamiya model. It went together easily, a relaxing “no responsibility†build over two partial weekends and the week nights in-between. Exterior paint is a combination of automotive urethane base colors and enamels. Clear is urethane. Interior colors are mostly Tamiya lacquers. The patterns on the seats are ScaleMotorSports decals as is the C/F on the hood and rear spoiler. The most effort required is the probably for doing all the window trim on the clear…

I have had this sitting around waiting "for the right time" for years. I know I bought it around this time of year, but what year? I have no idea. I had to play with it just for the engine... Once I got to the "waiting for the paint to dry before finishing it off time" on the GT-90, and having a couple holidays off, I figured the time was just right for this. A pretty straight forward build. A custom mixed DuPont base color from another project, urethane for the clear. Lots of hand painting of the details. Some ScaleMotorSport decals for the seat patterns, and some really old Scale-Master decals for the gauges. Some of the chrome parts were salvaged with Alclad, others, like the exhaust pipes for example, were, well lets just say "creatively" painted to hide some of the flaws, and some of the less seen and/or rougher parts became "aluminum" and "magnesium". I didn't try to fix everything, just make something fun in the short time I had to play. Well spent time in my world. Gotta love playin' with the toys...

The kit was a gift and this was something fun to do with it... It's an out of the box type build, just custom decals and some painting. - Mark

You can check this site out. http://www.hotworldcustoms.com/ It has several How-To's that I have done over the years. Lots of pictures and captions make it very easy to follow. If the link doesn't take you directly to my How-To section, look on the left side of the top of the page for "Features". Under that click on "The Scale-Master". Hope that helps. And I just use super glue to put them back together most of the time... Maybe I should write something for the magazine along these lines. Whaddya think Gregg?

I have been tinkering with Hot Wheels again. Some of the new castings are very well done, (just like they were lifted from some nice current kits in some cases...) All of these feature my decal art. Most are just quick and fun, but I did put a little extra effort into the Vette. I have gone back to my "real plastic toy models" instead of these "kids toys"... (for now.) Seriously though, these are great for getting a feel for and testing model paints and schemes without spending a ton of time to find out if it looks as good outside your head as it does inside... Grand Sport Vette (Jack Spaulding's Mecom Ride) Camaro (I know it's not an original idea anymore, but I got the date right if it happens next year) Cuda III (Well, the back looks a little Charger III ish to me...) And those who know me know how much I like these blues...

I think the reason you see so few of the real ones is due to the electronics. Once they turned about ten, many picked up problems and became very expensive to maintain.

I don't know exactly why, but this 300ZX is one of my personal favorites of all the builds I did for Tamiya America for their showroom umptine years ago. Maybe the sharp contrast of the basic white and crisp black trim is what sets it off for me. I have to admit after building it, I bought three or four of these kits for myself. (Some of you may remember a BRE Anniversary Edition I made with one of them?) This was built long before we had the Tamiya spray lacquers here in America, even before the Boyd's line of Testors enamels. I used Testors Classic White. The model was in very good condition when I received it back. Just a cleaning, waxing and some minor touch up on the black that I messed up while cleaning it was all that I did to it.

This is another of the models I built for Tamiya America (well over fifteen years ago) for their showroom and they were nice enough to allow me to have some of them back when they moved their headquarters recently. It was a nice bright metallic red the first time I built it , but was showing a little wear, mostly just the chrome wearing off and a couple of chipped decals. They did very good job of caring for the models. But I thought I'd have some fun with this and took it apart and "rebuilt" (mostly repainted) it in the span of less than 24 hours. Sometimes a simple and fun project is just what is needed. I used Tamiya lacquer military colors for the camo and some old Badger acrylics for the rust and mud. This is an interesting kit as it has fully working suspension. While simplified on a few levels it gives the model a nice feel without being too terribly toy-like. I guess I should have shot a photo or two before doing this to it, but it was just a wild hair project...

An old (circa 1990) resin kit. Wanted something different and this seem to fit the bill. The blue is all you are supposed to paint, the rest is decals, but the yellow portion cracked a lot so I hand painted the yellow. I still had to touch up some areas on the parts of the decals, but they did not crack anything like the yellow. Overall an enjoyable build that did not take too long, just week or so of evenings (every other day at that). One of the benefits of these old Starter 1/43rd kits. Not too detailed, but not too difficult to finish either...

I was in the mood for another simple fun build, and this kit had been beckoning me for some time. I finally had the time for it. Not much time was required. I started this on Saturday and finished it 8 days later by just working on it a couple/few hours a day/evening. I even followed the paint instructions and used almost only Tamiya paints. Except for some old Alclad I had for the raw metal finishes. And I did drill out the rotors, (can't help myself about that), but the rest is simply OOB. I admit to being spoiled by the newer Tamiya bikes, but this one was still well done and an easy build...

Just another fun short term project. It is mostly just an OOB build, except for the wheels/tires and brakes came from of all things, a Skyline, and the bench seat was replaced with some leftover Ferrari 360 seats. Paint is Tamiya Deep Metallic Blue. I made all the decals...

This is one of those on again off again long term projects. Been tinkering with it for years just for fun. I widened the rear fenders to put the big tires under it, did some machining for the rims, and some other body mods.

This is the other car to compliment the 512S posted earlier. Sam Posey's 1970 24 hr Daytona entry. (The 512 is his 1970 LeMans entry.) Yes, I know, I said the 312 was going to be the '69 LeMans version, but upon further research, the chassis numbers did not pan out for this presentation. An older Tameo kit, also white metal, built out of the box...

1/43rd white metal kit. Except for the wiring, it's pretty much a box stock build. The windshield was crushed in the box, so I had to make a mold and vac-u-form a new one. This model will share it's base with another LeMans Ferrari also driven by Sam Posey.

Drew and printed all the decals... Used a die-cast provided by the recipient. Tamiya Telephonica Blue with a custom mixed pearl silver. The client chose the sponsor package...

Try tape. Lay some on and rip it off, like a Band-Aid. Masking tape and Scotch tape seem to work the best.

Burn-through on a paint job you thought you were almost done with! It’s happened to just about everyone who builds to some degree. I was very surprised I did this in this spot, I didn't think the paint was all that thin, and it’s not like I was polishing an edge or peak. I was only polishing out a bit of dirt in the clear coat. But, it is not as bad as it looks; it is repairable without repainting the body, or even the upper half. Follow along and maybe the next time it happens you'll be able to fix it as easily as this one went… First, remove any wax you may have applied, I used rubbing alcohol. Then assess the situation and decide how much will get painted and where to make the blend so you can mask accordingly. I chose to put the blend up at the cowl and below the A-pillar. The hood side of the fender and the outside peak were masked off, as is the front edge. Those are the logical hard edges. Try to find an area that can allow the blend to disappear by distraction (the cowl vent and subsequent windshield wiper fit that description) or defined lines. If there was a peak on the cowl like on the center of a ’69 Camaro cowl, that would be a logical place to take the edge of the repair to. Here it is masked. Here, I have sprayed the black, the same Tamiya black as the original base color. Doesn't look so good yet does it...? And that is the way it dried. Now I've sprayed the urethane clear to the edges of the front and sides, but feathered it near the rear of the front fender, by the cowl / A-pillar. A little better, but not an acceptable touch up job. Yet... The idea here is to blend the “aura†or over spray haze with a little reducer, or even better, some blender as I used. The blender works better, but straight reducer does a pretty darn good job too. It’s just that you'll probably have to do a little polishing when using reducer, whereas the blender can eliminate that step in many cases. The trick is to wet the “dry†areas and let it all flow. Don't over do it! It may take two or three light passes with a couple minute between them. You can always add more, but too much will run like the wind, and in a blink of an eye too. Here it is after the final blend. And after it has dried… A quick and light polish and wax will smooth out the peak of the fender where the tape was, but I'm going to give it a few days before doing that... Hope this helps… Now go build something! - Mark

Done for a friend...Made all the decals. Used a 1/43rd scale Diecast toy as the base.

I have made some progress on this 1/43rd white metal kit I started last Thursday. Still have more decals to apply and some other mechanical stuff to add on. So far an enjoyable build...

Here's some shots with the nearly finished wheels under it. The rear will probably be a tad bit lower when done. Also included are shots of the basic engine and rear end...

Wheels & tires. Machining part is done, now they are being painted.

Thanks everyone! The front and rear are pretty much stock. I've always thought the ends of the car looked good, but I did re-engineer the way the kit builds a little to make it easier to paint it and assemble it. The rear fenders are pushed out at the fender peak line about 1/8 of an inch on each side. The car had great lines, but I'm putting some significant meat under the rear. Something in the range 18 X 14 wide rims, still being machined. Tires in the neighborhood of 385/60R18. Yeah, I know they probably don't exist in real, but then I'd never do this to a real GT 500 either. The louvers are now molded in with glass under them. Besides some cleaning up of the body and trim, not much else was changed. It has stock running gear and probably a stock(ish) interior, haven't done much on that part yet, it still has to tell me what it wants... The red paint is Tamiya Transparent Red over Mica Red over Bright Red over Gold. The clear is just two part urethane. The black is just Tamiya Black. More as it happens...

Shot the clear on this yesterday. It's the GT 500 I started about a year or so ago that has some custom work done to the body. The motor is done, I'm still working on the chassis and interior and I'm machining the wheels for it. More as it happens...

The Vette is not a '74, it ran in the '74 Le Mans. An old Starter resin kit. The body was bad enough, but the decals were worse, as if white over dark blue would even cover. They did not fit and they cracked like, well an old Vette body... This one got shelved a couple years ago after I became so disappointed with the way it was going and a couple weeks ago I decided to try to save it on some level by freehand brush painting the white on top of the decals and hoping for a decent shelf model. All in all it came out pretty well considering. At least I can start another kit without any guilt. Like that ever stopped me... The blue is Tamiya Deep Blue Metallic.

Thanks everyone! That's the rearview mirror atop the windscreen...