Tom Geiger

Congrats on the new house! And old furniture is restorable and much better built than the press board garbage they sell today! I have a bunch of ancient pieces in my home!

Very nice model! Back in the day I had a 1970 Dodge Coronet base model. Those rusted like crazy around the rear windows!

YEA for Anthony! Two long dead project drug over the finish line! Great work! (You didn't explain the photos of furniture in the earlier post though! ? )

I work from home so I commuted upstairs to the model room for my lunch hour today... above- fender unit glued to chassis, with completed cab in background. Below- roof glued to jitney body. We are at that point of "glue one item, walk away until it dries". Hoping to finish it up by tomorrow evening to bring to the Diversified Cruiserz show on Saturday.

Hey, as I said in the opening post, that was the title of the thread on the stamp collecting board! It does get people's attention and has resulted in an interesting and thoughtful thread! And nobody is wrong here. Times change, things evolve. A few weeks ago I sold my 1995 Celica Convertible. It had been sitting in the garage for the past eight years. Toyota quality, it started right up and ran on that old gas! I sold it to a guy about 30 who was as passionate about Celicas as some of us are about '57 Chevys or 1960s muscle cars. He drove up in a 1985 era Celica and was over the moon excited to acquire the '95 Convertible. Different set of experiences, different expectations. A few years ago my cousin put me behind the wheel of his new Tesla. The moment I floored it, I thought "this changes everything". An electric car faster off the line than any muscle car. Frickin amazing! And it will be interesting to watch how things change in the next decade. A lot of the old guard in our hobby are calling it quits. NNL Nationals and GSL are ending, the original aftermarket guys are retiring. New ones are diving in with 3D printers and new model companies are emerging from places we never imagined. As other shows are ending, NNL East is here to stay and hopes to evolve with the times. Notice our involvement with younger guys on our management board and embracing newer vehicles and trends that younger people are interested in. Come on out to our Diversified Scalerz show on Saturday. Theme is Low Riders... but all the traditional categories are there to include everyone! Rock on!

Answering a question I've received a few times... Admission is only $10 and there is no charge to display models! And there will be 23 vendor tables! Some of your favorite kit sellers!

I always thought the Mustang IIs were the first retro car. It mimicked the original Mustang in an interesting but yet modern for the times way. When I met my wife she owned a '74 coupe with vinyl top and V6. It was a comfortable car to drive, I drove on a few long trips without any issues. She traded it in on a new Fox body '79 Capri RS with a V8... now that was a real piece of junk! Had problems with it from the beginning, traded it with 35,000 miles on it just to rid ourselves of evil spirits! And to add insult to injury, someone a few blocks away from us bought the '74 from the Mercury dealer lot so we had to see it every time we passed!

I'm hoping folks who are driving long distances to Hobby Lobby stores know where to look for the clearance items. Yes, sometimes there will be reduced prices right on the model car shelves. Most stores have a designated "Clearance" area which is usually a hodge podge of craft supplies. At my local store it's in the left rear corner of the store. The last times I went there and actually found a kit or two, I had to lift junk to find the kits under it. In another store I went to the Clearance area was against the left wall, mid-store. So figure it out. Also, I have found clearance kits on a mid-aisle display and at a display next to a cash register. So in short, check the whole store.

Ha! I was standing outside DMV office waiting for them to open on my birthday! Counter clerk even remarked, "You didn't waste any time.." I had already passed the written exam in my high school drivers ed class, so I was given my permit that day. I spent the rest of the day driving around with my grandfather teaching me how to drive. By dark, I was a driver!

One tip is to paint the sides of your #11 blade black so you have a contrast between the foil and knife.

Definitely a visor! That '50 Chevy pickup kit comes with one. Engines? Early Mopar Hemi in the AMT '53 Ford Pickup Caddy engine from either the AMT '59 El Camino or Monogram '59 Caddy Olds engine from 1950 Oldsmobile kit Rear fenders can be made from pill bottles. Note the running boards are just flat metal... these elements make that truck! Front fender lights can be made from big rig top of cab lights. Looks like a fun project! Let's see it happen!

Thank you! My '50 Ford Jitney bus is soooo close too! I am targeting having it done for a show on Saturday!

Thanks Ed! The diorama will be there, this time around you need to have a European car to display in it. I am bringing my Fiat 500! The show does have a young theme but all the traditional categories are there for everyone to participate. And yes! We do need to support the younger folks. The show is this Saturday, hope to see you there!

My wife did that once... years later I was changing the baseboard and found laundry detergent behind it!

of your life

That is soooo beyond cool! I'm happy it will be preserved. Maybe bring it to a car show or two? Bring it to a model show and win the "Large Scale" category? ?

That's the title of a thread on a stamp collecting site I frequent. Same thing in all hobbies, it seems they are all populated by older folks and youngsters are too busy with modern pursuits to take interest in the traditional hobbies. The stamp hobby is much larger than the model car hobby, so they certainly aren't going away. There is even a big upswing in collecting in China and India as those people become more affluent and have money for such pursuits. But an interesting thing came up.... This is a group photo taken at an American Philatelic Society (APS) event in 1968. Notice that everyone is, um... old? So while most of these folks are probably dead now, they have been replaced by more collectors who are also old. So the analysis is that hobbies are populated mainly by people who have raised their families and have time to do things like collecting and model building. In fact the APS has changed their growth strategy from youth programs to focusing on attracting people over 50. Not much different here! I thought you all may have found this interesting. Let the comments fly!

I am wondering if they are still in operation. Yes, the Fotki site is there, but they aren't communicating. I sent inquiries to all the addresses without any response. I had sent them instructions, box art and decal sheets for three early Valiant kits. Looking at the site, it doesn't appear to have been maintained in the last 7 years or so. That's the newest entry I could find. It would be a shame if this goes away, it's an excellent resource.

Good to see you back! Let's get crackin' on some model building!

Didn't pay bill!

I said Barracudas earlier but let me add Valiants! That includes the Aussie and South American variations. Funny thing is that these got no respect in collector car circles. People saw the first generation Barracuda as nothing more than a Valiant. I remember taking mine, and later my '73 Scamp to car shows in the 1980s and getting lambasted by idiots that I had wasted my time restoring a Valiant and if I had put that same effort into a Mustang or Camaro I'd really have something. My reply was always that I could have a red '66 Mustang and park it in the line of 10 of the same car, but I had the only '65 Barracuda at the show. I stored the Barracuda for many years. When I put it back on the road in the late 1990s, I was amazed at how the attitudes had changed. I got thumbs up everywhere!

The Mustang II was the first retro car. It really evoked the original Mustang into modern times. That's why it was so popular back then. My wife had one when I met her.

The Pyrite's Paddler was actually a real truck. I saw it in the parking lot at a car show. Later after I had the model out in circulation, I met the owner.. who knew he'd be a model car guy! I met him at a show and he was very enthusiastic. The Paddler was built in the early 1990s and appeared in Car Modeler Magazine around 1995. It's weathered the years well! Everything behind the cab is scratch built. Back then I had Joe Cavorley coaching me and he said to envision everything as a series of shapes, and to concentrate on creating each shape and gluing them together. Most of what you see here is Evergreen sheet. It didn't come easy, that's the third work box! I recently had someone looking at a photo of the camper and this truck ask if that was the work box from the new Moebius '66 Ford. Actually I've known Dave Burket, the Model King forever and he admits that he got the inspiration for that model from this one! And here's the Paddler guest starring at The CanAm Garage. If you have been on the old Hobby Heaven board, you'll know about this diorama created by John Dezan of Canada. He brought it to NNL East one year. And that's Jackson along with it.

Thank you everyone for the nice comments! I really enjoyed building this and building something from nothing. Yea, I have those high dollar kits but I create models from broken bodies and discarded parts! I had a one legged man that came in a big bag of parts I had bought at a show. I actually winced as I cut the foot off the figure! One of the things that kept me from finishing this was access to the interior. I didn't want to permanently sandwich the interior inside. I finally realized there was no other way and the dog house coming off is one consolation. I am now experimenting with small magnets, and the roof will completely come off a camper I'm working on and will be held securely in place with magnets.

They were right in the model aisle, part of the carded merchandise over the paint display. Squadron may buy and repackage them, that would make sense. I break them before they go dull! ? I'm more likely to wind up with melted plastic stuck in the drill grooves, I just burn that off with a match. For the smaller bits, I glue them into a length of rubber wire casing, these were actually lengths of Detail Master heater hose.