Tom Geiger

This old Buick hearse was parked in the parking lot of the funeral home across the road from the NNL East host hotel. It looked to be in running condition. Even had a car show trophy on the front seat!

And we've all had our model room disasters! Exhibit A -- My model room BEFORE Exhibit B -- My Model Room AFTER the shelves came tumbling down . And a survivor! 1950 Ford pickup was shielded by the bottom shelf sitting on top of eXacto knife boxes! Just got the front bumper torn off!

Very nice truck! And I'm a sucker for good life stories! I saw it at NNL East and enjoyed looking at it.

Just checked with Bob... Steve's order was filled over the weekend and will go in the mail in the morning. FYI - Model Car Garage gave us license plate frames for NNL East this past weekend!

Less than a month and you are publicly calling someone out on the board? Model Car Garage is indeed in business and you will get your order. Bob is dealing with being the sole caregiver to his incapacitated elderly mother and other family matters that have been consuming his time. He is a bit slow right now, understandingly due to his current circumstances.

You are correct, there is no Purple Pond in Australia! An Aussie friend of mine inquired of Castrol locally and was told that they couldn't sell the chemical make up of it in your market!

The NNL East shirt for this year... artwork by Jimmy Flintstone.... the post office is also issuing a stamp!

High end audio guys in 1969 were all about reel to reel. My father was one of those guys. I still have a couple of his high end units. Neat van! You should bring it to that little show in Jersey this weekend!

And this stuff isn’t cheap! When guys complain that kids aren’t building model cars because of the $30 price tag, that’s not it! They’re just into different subject matter. I was talking with a hobby shop owner a while back and he said even when young guys build cars they think nothing of the price tag on Japanese kits, and load up on supplies and Pegasus accessories for the kit!

Back when the Mustang was new, the news was so far reaching that even us first graders knew! That year for the Christmas gift exchange, I drew a kid named Salvatore. As six year olds will, I purchased a gift for him that I really wanted for myself. A plastic Mustang! I remember playing with it a bit before my mother wrapped it. I was very excited to give it to him, as I figured he'd be very pleased and we'd then play with it together. He opened it without much emotion or reaction and put it aside. I guess he wasn't into cars. I was very disappointed, like "Hey Salvatore that's a Mustang!" The stuff you remember!

It's interesting that the rules state "no headlights" and the car shown in the header of these rules has them! I have a car built for this class, and it has headlights.

I have two daughters who are now in their thirties. As kids they each built a model or two to spend time with Dad. My eldest really got into detail painting small parts. They both like to work with their hands, creating crafts, scrap books and painting furniture today. Go into Hobby Lobby and you’ll find lots of people with carts full of craft items, the stores do very well. So people are creating with their hands today, just not Model Cars.

I am from the New Jersey suburbs. We moved to the suburbs west of Philadelphia ten years ago to pursue a job. More land, lower taxes, open space and low congestion. Life was good. Once here, and we went back to visit our old New Jersey town, we then saw how built up and congested it really was. Something you don't notice as it changes day by day, but now seeing it in comparison to Pennsylvania, we'd no longer want to live there. The past year there has been a construction boom in our Pennsylvania town. They are building apartments and town houses everywhere! I pass four active construction sites just on my way to the store, representing hundreds of units. The town even approved parking garages to up the densities. At one site, the parking garage is bigger than the building! It's awful. I can feel the congestion coming. And I doubt the local market can absorb all these housing units, so new renters will choose the newest modern apartments. I see the existing apartment complexes having vacancies, lowering rents and you know where that leads! So we are looking at exiting this area. We really have no ties here since I no longer have the job we moved here for. Our family and friends are back in New Jersey. I work from home so location isn't an issue. So we don't feel like we belong here, nor to we feel we belong in the NJ town we left. So we are now looking for an NJ town that's affordable, close to family and friends and where we'd feel comfortable. We hope to make a final move so we can stay once we retire.

I'm a Duplicolor primer kinda guy. Just bought three more cans of primer gray at Pep Boys the other day... $6.50 each tall can. Lays down nice and flat. Never had an issue with it sticking to plastic. Perfect barrier for automotive paints to protect the plastic.

Here's the Dodge D-50 that I recently built. MPC did some nicely detailed kits in the 1980s that are seriously overlooked. Cars like the Chevy Cavalier and Ford EXP are very well detailed and go together fairly well. Their list of small pickups, the Dodge D-50, Ford Courier, Subaru Brat and the recently reissued Datsun (which I have open right now) have nicely done chassis that are just begging to be fit under street rods. As I worked on the D-50, I snuck the finished chassis under a 40 Ford sedan delivery and it looked like it was made for that kit! The problem is that these kits have been overlooked because the subject matter isn't all that mainstream. As such, they are available at swap meets in the $5-10 price range. I have several D-50s, two original issue era kits and two of the last reissue, all bought for $5 each. I understand that the new kit market is to hobby shops and people who aren't as connected to swap meets, message boards and club meetings as we all are. I'd love to know how well Round 2 has done with the Datsun pickup. We do know that the Brat is coming, and how they do with a reissue of the D-50 again. That will tell us the market viability of these kits.

You should recognize the wheels on this mocked up MPC Datsun pickup! Yes, I've stuffed the Foose pickup chassis under it!

Cool! I want one! One of the custom car shows built on of these in the last season or two. The show with Joe Martin

I already inspected the contents and will build it just for fun. There’s enough cool parts in that box that I will grab another just for parts. The tractor hood will make a cool rat rod part, and the wheels and tires are very nice, bound to wind up on my stalled Doodle Bug project!

Pretty much so! Go into any mall department store. All the clothing is 25 percent, 50 percent off! I don’t believe it was ever full price. Heck at HL the faux antique furniture is always 30 percent off. And anyone who frequents HL knows about the coupon. The lady in front of me had two young daughters with her who each made a sizable purchase with the coupon. And when there is a long checkout line, I make sure everyone on that line knows!

Went to Hobby Lobby because I was in danger of running out of Testors Dullcote. Look what we’ve got in a Revell USA box! And priced at $22.99 too! Of course I used my magic coupon. Now some interesting stuff.. molded in Poland, box made in China, decals from Italy AND.. packaged in USA. No shrink wrap, just a clear round seal at either end. Gotta be the first time for that in eons!

In the rear the axle is right against the frame, so you’d have to take plastic out of the frame equal to the drop desired. The frame is plenty thick in this spot. Up front you could move the axle position by drilling new holes higher on the suspension pieces that receive them. Caution on working here, those parts are attached to the frame with fragile little rods!

We've discussed this before on the board. They also move around paint in the Testors rack to make it appear full. Retail idiocy. With the size of this chain and the volume they are doing in the hobby aisle you'd think they would've hired a knowledgeable person to lead that strategy! There's a hobby shop I once frequented that had a standing order with their distributor for two of each new model kit. When they were gone that was it! They had no way to gauge what would be a hot seller, nor did they really care. I tried to explain to the owners that there were new kits that they could move several cases of, if they properly stocked them. Their attitude was that if someone came in looking for a specific kit, and it wasn't there, they'd buy another one that they had on the shelf! I corrected them that if modelers came in for a specific kit and it wasn't there, they'd go elsewhere. And when that happened a few times, they'd never come back. Over the years their model shelves have shrunk and shrunk, now just a few linear feet. If you ask them why, they'll tell you that people just don't build models anymore!

agreeing with Bill, this is the time that they should and will replace all the structural elements with modern materials to last another 800 years. They will also install modern fire detection and suppression systems. Note that there will be the necessary funds available to do it first class, and the best engineering companies in the world competing for the honor of doing this work! Forget the rhetoric from idiots making this a political or religious issue in the media. Notre Dame should be rebuilt for it's architectural significance AND because it's the most visited tourist attraction in France. If you think it's beautiful from photos, it is absolutely amazing in person as it surrounds you. I was in Paris for several vacations as a kid, since we lived in Germany right over the French border. I still have a replica gargoyle I bought from a vendor outside the cathedral. Exhibit A- The eighteenth century manor house at Thompson Park in Middletown, NJ. The original land now is the park and Brookdale Community College. A dozen years ago this house literally burned to the ground during a renovation. Failed fire watch after hot work. Insurance money replaced it exactly. You'd never know this was a 12 year old building!

Who ever casts it, I want one!

Ya know guys, give Revell a break! We went from no Revell a few months ago to the possibility of a new Revell US division coming back. So ya'll went from whining about no Revell to whining about the new emerging Revell! Amazing! It's a brand new start up, it's not the old company. This will take time and money. The venture capital company that bought Revell is a white knight that buys and grows companies in different markets in Europe. Diverse as a paper company in Spain and electronics parts manufacturers. The fact that Ed Sexton, one of the most talented and passionate guys in the business is involved, is a really positive thing. Now don't go ticking him off!