Chief Joseph

Nice job on the front marker lights-- almost no one puts those on their builds of this kit. In scale, they are about 0.06" in diameter and they are actually body-colored with just a small clear center. The big cornering lamps were optional and, IMHO, very garish-looking. Those were mounted in the fender, between the Judge decal and the corner of the valance panel. You've done a great job with this build and it's great to see a model of the original stock car.

Lookin' great, Mike! Don't forget that side-view mirror

Proxxon rotary tools have better bearings in them, so the runout at the collet is much less than your typical Dremel. Translation: a Proxxon wobbles less than a Dremel and is therefore more accurate. And as Tim said, the brushes are easy to change out in a Dremel and will usually fix performance problems, but if your speed controller is burned out then that's a little more expensive to fix, but the Dremel service center in Palm Springs can get you any part for any Dremel.

Nice start, Bruce! Are you putting a bench seat in it? How about an OHC straight-six? It's kind of sad that so many Le Mans and Tempests were hacked up to restore GTOs or to make clone GTOs; they are nice cars in their own right. I guess hacking up a model of a GTO to make a Le Mans is poetic justice

I think I was remembering a 1/24 diecast Charger that someone had converted to a General Lee when I wrote that. I'm still waiting for the printed wheel to arrive; it's coming from the other side of the planet so I have to be patient (boo). Once it's here I have to make sure it will fit my tires and I must also make a centerpiece and lug nuts for it.

Superb! That's a much better backdrop than a just a neutral colored piece of paper!!

"40 Days and 40 Nights." The protagonist resorts to building model cars in an attempt to take his mind off girls.

The guy who printed this wheel for me is not a full-time printer for hire, so he would not want me posting his info on the 'net. However, there's a place in San Francisco that is about to put a new printer into service that can do this kind of fine work. Their web site is www.moddler.com. I imagine Shapeways will have this capability soon, too. I'd like to add that the MakerBot Replicator 2 is a huge leap forward for the plastic-squirter type of printer, but a liquid resin printer like the B9Creator can make better parts, albeit with a higher material cost. I would love to have a desktop printer so that I could generate lower-resolution basic shapes that I could then finish with traditional modeling techniques. For really intricate parts, I would send them out for printing and in return, get a part back that would be virtually ready to go into rubber. This is the future, guys. I've been very slow in embracing it, but now that I'm in, I have a whole new enthusiasm for the hobby.

"The proof of the pudding is in the eating." Current state of the art for 3D printing: This is the 1/24 vector wheel I posted about in the Aftermarket section. It's sitting on a toothpick in the top lug hole. I see a couple of places where I could have done things a little differently when I designed the model, but overall I'm happy. Let me stress: this type of output is not cheap. An entire car model assembled completely from 3D-printed parts of this kind would easily be $2K just in printing cost alone, but using 3D-printed parts as masters for resin casting makes perfect sense right now.

If your intent is to sculpt items with the clay, then I suggest you maybe practice with air-dry clay, but do your actual work with a 2-part epoxy putty such as Milliput or Aves. Epoxy putty does not shrink and can be sanded and machined after it cures.

Hello General Lee and Turbo Regal fans: I have drawn my first wheel in 3D: It's a Vector wheel in 1:24 scale, patterned to fit my Eagle GT and Radial T/A tires that I've been making this year, as well as the GT Radial OWL tires from the Revellogram kits. I can have this wheel printed in high quality but the cost is also quite high. I want the wheel for my '85 Grand National model so I'll bite the bullet and have it made for myself, but I'd like to sell a few sets to offset the printing cost. Only the master is 3D printed; the actual production pieces will be resin. This wheel would work great for anyone wanting to build a 1:24 General Lee and don't want to use the undersized wheels from 1:25 kits. In addition to the '85 Grand National, this wheel is also on '86 & '87 Buick Turbo Regals. Plus it's an all-around cool design. If you'd be interested in a set of four accurate 1:24 resin Vector wheels, drop me a line. Thanks, Joseph

If you want to commission the work, then I would do them for you! The BFG tires have been a good success and I thank all of you for your support on this project!

For a little inspiration: [media=]http://youtu.be/_hU8Q62npkY The interface insists on trying to embed this video... just click the link

Easiest way would be to get the bumpers from a Buick GN kit and use them. Is the car 1/24?

Dropped by my local Hobby Lobby today to pick up some 3/32" K&S brass tube but all they had was aluminum tube, so that kind of sucked. Then I walked over to the clearance section to look for bargains and they had Iwata external MAC valves, regularly $29.97, on clearance for $1.07. SCORE!

Great finish on the paint!

That set was mailed on Saturday in Alabama and it was delivered to Pennsylvania on Monday... the USPS works properly most of the time!

Ya'll may be thinking about JW Etc Varnish. I use it for some clearcoating on non-auto models and it works very well.

You can try sanding out the rough areas to level them out, then re-spray the white over those areas. Just mask over your black so that you don't get overspray. Even if you do get white overspray on your black, you should be able to remove it without harming the Duplicolor clear-- that stuff is very tough. Like the examples that Pat and Dave showed, it's always best to stick with a single paint system than to mix & match different paint chemistry. Tamiya has model painting down to a science, so using their stuff according to their directions will leave little room for weird problems. Hope this helps!

Austin, when you sprayed your clear over the taped edge (Pat, it's to seal the edge of the tape and is usually either clear paint or the same paint that's under the tape), did you use the Duplicolor clear from a rattle can? It looks to me like your "light coat" may have soaked into the paper Tamiya tape and attacked the acrylic underneath.

Before I had a gravity-feed airbrush, I used those metal siphon cups, too. They are indeed a pain to clean, especially if you let the paint dry in them. I always dropped them into a container of lacquer thinner, too. I have six or seven of them, so I could always keep a couple of clean ones while I was soaking the rest. The best solution for me was to get a gravity feed airbrush and only use bottles (Iwata Big Mouth!) for the siphon airbrush.

Looking GREAT!

The first batch of orders have gone out!

All four versions of the tire are officially released as of right now. Information is on my website, which is linked in my signature line. I will be driving about 8 hours on Friday, so I may not be able to respond to emails quickly. Thanks for all your interest & support! Joseph

At first I thought you were talking about the RepRap hobbyist 3D printer, but I think you are talking about a vinyl printer/plotter like a Roland GX-24. That technology is common in the sign-making industry. No reason why it can't be used to print tiny little wraps for a model car.