Tom Geiger

God Bless You!

As promised, I finished the Snake tribute car! Follow the link below to the thread :

I logged into the board last week to find that our friend Snake, Richard Messner, had died. I was saddened because he was a fun part of the board. He will be sorely missed. We participated in the "Bring Out Your Dead" group builds that he moderated. I'll admit I failed to finish more than I finished! And he'd often jab me as to the whereabouts of my 1960 Plymouth Airport Limo. It has been my on again, off again project for probably 20 years. At least far enough back that this kit was cheap enough to cut up several for a project. So what better tribute could I pay to Snake than to finish this model in his honor. Then I saw that the MidAtlantic NNL Theme was station wagons. So it just had to be. My plan was to have this model on the table on Saturday May 11th! And here's where we were the last time anyone saw this model. After several attempts over the years, each time thwarted by my then skill level, with each attempt I'd get a bit further. It was up on wheels with an extended chassis. The stretched interior fit well. My issues were making the sides blend together well and adding the final pillars. So I figured if I could get past those two issues, I could indeed finish this model. So I started with less than two weeks to go. My first issue tackled was finishing the roof rack. Above is where I was last time. This attempt I glued down all the pieces, the round tire cover was meant to be a drum. I then made a mixture of water and Elmer's Glue. I cut down a brown McDonalds napkin that was already in my project box for this step. The soggy napkin looked awful! I figured I had crashed and burned, but let it sit over night. Come morning it looked salvageable. I gave it a coat of thick brown craft paint. Once that dried I dry brushed it with chalk dust. Added some ropes with my last 6 ship eyelets and it actually looked like I wanted! Here's the final result. Onward! I gave those center pillars like three tries before they finally looked good and stayed in place! Then a created the top drip rail from Evergreen rod. That covered some of the sins of the body joint! Here it is in white Tamiya primer. Next day I gave the sides a couple of coats of Tamiya Racing White. Here we are taped for the blue two tone. I include this photo to show that I used Tamiya tape for the critical edges, but cheaper blue painters tape where it was just protecting the paint. That's my answer to the guys who whine that it's too expensive to use Tamiya tape! While the blue paint... (my mistake was to use a hardware store satin blue paint) dried... well, it never completely dried... it was still slightly sticky as I applied BMF. My skills from the 24 Hour Build came in use here! I worked on the interior. The bucket was already painted. I added photoetch window cranks since the Johan engraving was nearly non-existent. I had the interior junk already done too. It was just a matter of doing some interesting and convincing placement and gluing it all in place. And bummer! It's hard to see through the windows. And as assemblies dried, I did the details like the steer horns and antenna. I continued on with my goals in mind. I needed to have this model on the table on Saturday to make Snake proud! I won't lie, as of 10pm Friday evening it wasn't going anywhere. I couldn't get the body to sit well with the chassis. I had it on and off many times and it always fell together! After awhile I deduced the back bumper was the culprit, I had never test fit the assembly with the bumper on! So I whittled the bumper mount off, and glued it to the body. Now we sat right. And by 1am Saturday morning, this is what we had on the bench! I made up a 1960s sounding band name and created the logo. The trick was to do the lettering large... the original is 11x17, then reduce the final art to tighten the linework. I then printed several copies. I'm very pleased with the roof rack. It came out as I had hoped. It's not glued in place, I used two sided tape in case I ever want to reposition it. The big secret? It hides the ill fitting roof joint. I never did try to fix it. I am soooo happy to have it done! I made it onto the show table, and got a lot of positive comments. I didn't win the theme award, which would have been the icing on the cake, but that was not the goal. My task was to honor my buddy Snake by actually finishing the model in his honor and making the show deadline! I hope he's pleased!

I am working on a Snake tribute car right now! I will share details after the weekend! He liked to be called Snake.. I used to bust his chops... "Does your mother call you Snake?" ?

Date stamped food at least ten years old was found in the cupboards of my rental house when my long standing tenant moved to her son's abode!

At the end of NNL East every year as we do the final comments, I have had the thought that someone in the room will not be with us the next year. It seems the very old guys just soldier on and we see them every year. The guys who pass are often a shock, some of them are younger and looked perfectly fine the last time we saw them. That's why we need to be good to each other. This past year I had one of those moments. I am 65 and was anticipating retiring at the 67 3/4 for full social security or even 70 since I liked my work and feel good. We were at our club meeting and talking about what we were going to do when we retired. Al Raab spoke about working another year to wind down his business and then was going to retire and spend his time resin casting the masters he had been saving up. He looked good at 66 and had just had Lasik surgery so he was without glasses for the first time in the 30 years I knew him. Within a month he was dead. Stepped out of the shower one morning, had a major heart attack and died on the spot. That changed everything for me. I retired on my 65th birthday. I know I have some time now, but maybe not 2 years from now. Today I work on growing my little eBay stamp business and play with hobbies. I spend time with my family. I babysit! Time much better spent than working for an ungrateful company!

Age is just a number, ask Willy Nelson!

Congrats! Funny thing, my daughter's friend just named her son "Maverick"... I told my daughter that it was a 1970s low cost car! I forgot the name was put on the new pickup. I see a lot of these and new Broncos around town.?

Lives spent sleeping are wasted lives, as Ben Franklin said, "There will be enough sleep in the grave!"

Boring people have no hobbies or interests and spend their time sleeping on the couch

Popular sentiment seems to be that adult modelers are old men playing with kids toys.

as fighting begins

Month after month there are model car shows across the country, but NNL East was last month on Saturday April 27th in Wayne, NJ and that never stopped people from calling me the morning of the show from Parsippany, NJ asking "where is everyone?" even though we haven't been at that hall in over 15 years, nor do the idjits who call me on Sunday with the same question and then argue with me that NNL East is always on a Sunday, um... Nope never!

Don't buy anything advertised on Facebook! I saw a shelving system that held shoes. From the video on the ad, and the company's website this was the perfect size for the shoe boxes I use for my stamp store. I ordered, and got bogus tracking information that showed the item delivered to Washington State. I live in Pennsylvania. Then the ads stopped, the website is down and the customer service email comes back bad. Then suddenly the ads are back with a completely new company name. Same video! I complained to Facebook and got back a message that they reviewed my request and the ad doesn't violate their community standards! Same with all the ads for Forever Stamps at $20 a roll of 100! Those are counterfeit stamps produced in China. Facebook allows the ads.

Um no... the Danbury Mint cars were designed by Rick Hanmore and Doug Whyte, both very knowledgeable car guys, and esteemed members of the model car community. I saw both of them at NNL East this past weekend.

Back when my family owned the service station, I was working there one morning and my brother-in-law asked me to move an RX-7 into the service bay. He was so big he couldn't get into it! I used to bust his chops that if he won a new car it would be an RX-7

Wow! So sad. I haven't been on the board as of late as I was busy with preparations for NNL East. So sorry to hear he is gone! RIF Snake!

New Jardiance commercial

I started this for the 24 Hour build In January, but engaged in overcomplicatous and it hasn’t been completed yet. I decided to go the six cylinder route and got hung up on fit and details to make it all fit. I also chose the wrong paint. I thought I had Tamiya yellow but found I had a near empty can. So I found another brand that never dried during the 24 hours. It is dry now and plenty shiny!

Concept cars are either very cool or way off the mark

Now that’s cool. Super unforgettable model!

Forum posts can be both entertaining and frustrating.

Nicely done! I don't believe I've seen one done as the van before!

Happiness is highly overrated.

From the seller side-- I have built in 20% into my prices to allow me to make offers. I don't have the "Make Offer" on my listings because that is just guaranteeing you won't get full price. I do the "Send Offers" every morning, with all eBay allows. I discount it about 12% and I get a lot of purchases. eBay just started Immediate offers, which can be set by sellers to automatically send the offer to everyone who looks at the listing, the moment they do so. That one is unnerving, it felt like the seller was stalking me! Until I learned it was just a bot. On the buyer side-- If someone has the "Make Offer", I'd never just "Buy It Now". I always make an offer and save a few bucks. My offers aren't outrageous so many of them get accepted. And if a seller doesn't have that, I will click the heart to watch the item... then I wait for an offer.