Tom Geiger

Wearing a mask?

Tastes like thinner?

I do too have one!

I was home for Covid lockdown until August when I went to work. I considered that time kinda like a free preview of retirement and found that indeed I would find myself a routine and spend time doing things I enjoy, like model building, researching local historic buildings and writing. My wife was amazed at how much I found to do. I know too many people with zero interests who were climbing the walls and zoning out to the boob tube!

They’re both dead

I’ve bought those sets in the slider box at Hobby Lobby. I have a battery power drill and regularly break the popular sizes. I’m also looking for a source where I can buy those sizes in bulk.

Photo courtesy of Facebook model groups! I haven’t open my new Pace booth yet. Need to buy a new metal hose, clear out my old crummy booth and clean up the model room this weekend!

My new spray booth arrived! Somehow it’s simpler than I thought! ??

Try em both!

My magazine came today and I read Rick’s piece! Entertaining memories!

You can get by manipulating non vector graphics and with an ink jet if you plan out your projects... All ink jet on clear decal paper. Black is easy. I generally use fonts in Word to do my lettering. Again Ink jet but on white decal paper. I made these in PowerPoint, yellow is printed. Flamingo and palm tree are just clip art from the web. The benches are upholstered with plain copy paper, printed on inkjet Here’s where planning comes into play. I designed the paint schemes so that ink jet decals would all be on white paint. On the Falcon it’s all ink jet except for numeral 3. That’s a kit decal and even then I had to double them up to cover the blue paint at the bottom. All ink jet on Valiant except for some NNL East 30s. When I do print, I set up my sheet with many of each decal because some may run or not print nice. I wait 24 hrs prior to the Testors fixative, then another day before wetting them. Yes, I ruin some but that’s why I print extras. Its nice for some guys to have lasers or Alps, and yes you can have someone print your decals, but don’t let them tell you you can’t use your ink jet. You just have to be crafty.

On my PT Cruiser convertible they are on the dashboard.

I like it! De Soto looks good in that blue!

I’m enjoying reading the variety of opinions here on this subject. It does come down to how much money you want to spend to print an occasional decal sheet. For those of us building a few models a year, what’s that come out to per car? For me, I’m fine with my Canon inkjet for the few needs I have. I’m a decent graphics and computer guy, So I’ve been able to get results acceptable to me.

From planet Travolta

I like their Mercedes Sprinter van in Deutsch Post livery.. I’ll need that for my postal vehicle collection

That was the issue. That was the song US market allowed to define the band. But there was so much more!

Cool! Good colors!

Or launch rockets

I do a lot of rust and weathering and Dullcote is my friend. That said I never spray it over everything. Even on the rustiest cars stainless can shine like new. The contrast of tones is what can make models look real.

Pull her string!

About ten years ago my wife got hit in front left corner in my 2000 Jaguar S. We had it about a year and had paid $11,000 for it. It was mint and had less than 30,000 miles on it. The damage was estimated at $4500. The offending party’s insurance company offered $5000 cash and wanted the car. They wouldn’t talk settlement where I’d keep the damaged car. I declined, and was too busy with life challenges at the time to sue them so they got away with nopayment. I kept the car which still drove fine. Drove it with the dent all this time, never got repaired. Sold it this year for $3000. Here in US certain insurance companies have made a new industry out of flipping salvage vehicles. They can eliminate their outlay by reselling cars. One company has a yard not far from here that fills up weekly with barely dented cars they’ve screwed people out of.

Black paint has some kind of pigment in it where it just doesn’t budge!

Or Little Debbies

I was an army brat and spent time in Europe early 1970s. There were American bands popular there that never hit big in USA. For instance Bloodrock was a band out of Texas that was known stateside for one song. They did better in Europe and I had all their albums, Euro releases. I came back to states the end of 1972 and was surprised nobody hardly had heard of them.