Scale-Master

Thank you Rich. My pleasure to share, especially if others can learn from it. It sure sparked a lot of memories for me.

This is an older 1/43rd scale white metal kit that I cast back in 1980/81 when I worked at Precision Miniatures. It is built out of the box but I used a non-kit set of decals to make a different livery. Aftermarket Scale-Master Decals were also used for the seat piping and chrome trim on the windshield. WIP Thread:

The last details to be added were the chrome decal stripes around the base of the windshield (Scale-Master Decals produced by Warbird) and the two prong knock-offs for the wheels. Finished Project Thread:

I made a circular punch and cut out a Mylar disc for the rearview mirror face. The tail lights are plated white metal painted with Tamiya Clear Red. The windshield fits OK, but there is very little material in contact with the body. I used RC560 canopy glue to secure it and create a small fillet.

It's up on its wheels and leveled. Paint has been cut & waxed. The dash and steering wheel/column are installed too. Wind (and the static it creates) doesn't play well with black paint…

I used the kit reflectors and lenses for the headlights, but I drilled out the reflectors and added halogen light bulbs. Steel and clear plastic for the bulbs. More work was done to the back side of the headlights for the electrical connectors. They are made of brass and styrene. They will get lightly weathered when the inside of the hood does. The loom for the light wiring was made the same way as the one for the engine. It takes 18 inches of armature wire to wrap one inch of the loom. The pigtails are just fastening features for the offshoots for each light assembly. It's tighter under there than I expected so I had to be careful how I routed the loom. The driver's side headlight is connected here. The lower driving lights have been turned into parking lights/turn indicators. The front section that supports them had to be reworked to accommodate some other changes I made too; still a little finish work to do on that. Those lights are connected here.

Now to let the clear dry for a while before final assembly…

The headlight covers are also vacuum formed clear Lexan and even more tedious to cut out than the windshield. Careful sanding is the trick to making them fit properly. On this car they are painted silver; I used Tamiya Mica Silver.

The rest of the car has been modified so much that when I revisited the front of the chassis I realized it needed to be reworked to match. When I first converted it from right to left hand drive (back in June of 2019) I used a "stock" configuration. But since the brakes and clutch systems have been upgraded, including the masters, it didn't fit the theme of the rest of the car anymore. Truly a victim of progress. I removed all the metal rivets that I made back then (except two that I temporarily used for alignment) and fabricated a new upper plate with a cleaner look that still followed the same style. I went with ¼ inch diameter rivets instead of 3/8 inch.

All the decals have been applied…

I used a couple sections of the same Scale-Master white stripe decals used on the seats to make up the white parts. Then I mixed some Tamiya X-7 Red and X-3 Yellow to fill in the rest with a brush. A close look shows where the repairs were made, but since it's on the bottom it won't really be visible. I also had to paint the lip of the grille opening.

The decals for this particular version were provided by the person I'm building it for. They aren't for this casting so while they scale out well, the nose band doesn't quite fit this kit. A couple gaps on the bottom need to be dealt with. Not a problem…

I don't have the dimensions handy, (I built the struts back in August of 2019), but they scale out to the real ones I copied.

The dash needed some detail so I drew a set of gauges and printed a set of decals.

I made decals for the printing on the gas struts for the doors (based on the struts I copied the physical dimensions from off one of our real cars).

The steering wheel is beautifully mastered. I still remember seeing the brass master Lloyd made the day he finished it. A real work of art; it even has the delicate finger notches on the other side of the rim. I used brown, candy red and black acrylics to paint the wood rim. It's attached to the steering box here. Keep in mind the diameter of the wheel is about the size of a pinky fingernail.

The windshield is vacuum-formed from very thin Lexan. (Lloyd Asbury was a master at vacuum-forming parts and making the masters for them. He was the guy behind Lancer slot car bodies and did some for Associated R/C cars too.) While there is a demarcation molded into show where to cut, it's on the faint side. But trimming with a knife leaves a more visible whitish line and as tedious as it seems, it is not that difficult once you get started. I used scissors to cut the base of the sides evenly after excising it from the sheet with a knife.

http://www.modelcarsmag.com/forums/topic/162469-66-sunoco-corvette/ http://www.modelcarsmag.com/forums/topic/162519-66-sunoco-sebring-corvette/

I decanted some TS-14 Black, thinned it and airbrushed the body with three light coats to help preserve the delicate details. When that dried for 24 hours I wet sanded the paint with 1200 and shot it with one more coat. This is the result.

The body needed a few little spots filled, I used CA (instead of solder) since they were so shallow. One was the panel line molded into the nose; this car does not have that line. I also scribed some of the panel lines a little bit deeper. I forgot how unforgiving that can be freehand in white metal…

The exhaust is made up of two parts per side. I find it is easier to cement the small pipe from the header to the main muffler/tailpipe section and install later as single units. The main parts have tabs that fit positively into the axle holes in the chassis so a little tape is all that's needed to keep them in place.

The interior features separate parts for the pedals, battery, electrical panel and shifter.

I mostly planned a way from the start to connect/disconnect the electrical for the lights in the removable hood assembly to the rest of the car. I found some easy-lock nine-pin connectors that would work and made one from brass with magnets so it should be easy to connect after the hood is installed to the body. I'll detail them later.

After the decaling was done the seats were sealed with clear flat.

Yeah, I'm pleasantly surprised by the interest. I shared four 1/43 builds here last year. Of better kits too... The seats were primed in gray (all the metal parts that get painted are primed first), and then TS-8 Italian Red was lightly and not uniformly airbrushed. The white piping was done with Scale-Master decal stripes. (They are being produced by Warbird Decals now.) Even though the stripes are straight, a little decal solvent makes them very pliable to follow the curves. Still a few more sections to add at this point. I used the "H" size which is a size that is consistent on all the Scale-Master stripe sheets, even from the 80's.