Tom Geiger

There are guys who want to find it at Ollies for $10

I’ll agree with the camp that likes the two part mirrors. As said, less parting lines and better details. Plus you can angle them on each side of the car like real mirrors. Also I pin everything! I wouldn’t pin the two part mirror together, but certainly the base to the vehicle body. It’s sturdy and less chance to mess since I glue the pin on the inside of the body. In fact some of mine are held tight in the drilled hole and don’t even require glue!

Very nice work... in metal no less!

Browsing eBay (which is a dangerous thing!) I found a lot of 28 different old cards and envelopes with my favorite Ben Franklin stamp on them.

Here's a good story... My daughter's birthday was Friday and my wife's was on Saturday. We were supposed to get together with my daughters to celebrate. But birthday daughter came down ill, so we postponed that celebration until next weekend. Still my wife wanted to go out to dinner and not to our usual watering hole... We picked out a new place that opened in September. Someone we spoke to recently recommended it. Casual restaurant, reasonable prices, comfort foods... so we go! We are greeted by a little snip at the hostess desk... "Reservations?" Um, no. I look around and the restaurant is half full. She then gives us a look of disgust and tells us all of those tables are reserved for people coming in the next 15 minutes. She walks off into the dining room with a tablet to count her empty tables. The best she can do is sit us at the worst table in the place right next to the front door. We are standing near the front door and were getting a blast of arctic air every time someone opened the door, so no we aren't sitting there. She tells us she has already assigned all these empty tables to each reservation. I ask what kind of lunacy is it to pre-assign spaces for people who may never show up... or for people who may want to sit in a different part of the room? I'm very ticked at this chick's attitude about now, and my wife knows I'm about to give it to her. She squeezes my hand. I was ready to leave when I saw there was a bar and the seats were mostly empty. I ask if we can sit at the bar, and the girl says yes we can... so we do. We go to order beers to find that they have some abbreviated "exhibition beer license" and only have 4 choices of on tap beer from some brewery we've never heard of. The guy who explains this to us introduces himself as the owner and he gives us a shot glass of each of these 4 choices and they all taste like ear wax or worse. So we choose the least awful and are brought two little brandy glasses for $7 each. We are not having fun. We order meals and I will say their fish and chips was very good and they gave way too much food! So we are eating and trying to nurse these mini beers. It's an hour later and the restaurant is still half empty! The owner comes over to chat and I lay into him! I let him know that his hostess is turning people away... I'm sitting at the bar where I can see the front door and people leaving! I tell him that his hostess staff should be astute enough to know that a percentage of reservations are no-show and if the place is half empty she can squeeze one couple in. I let him know we were nearly out the door when I asked about the bar... how come she didn't suggest that? He was a bit flabbergasted and went into the tail spin of defending his place. I let him know that he may be full for the first six months or so while new, but that newness will die down and he'll be looking for all those customers his hostess sent away. I add that the last two places in town that ticked me off are no longer in business! As we finish my wife says she wants cheesecake and Irish coffee for her birthday. I remind her that this place doesn't have liquor. She looks at me and says, "Let's go to Ron's for desert". So we head off to our favorite local watering hole. We got two seats right at the bar with the bartenders who know our names and what we drink! And we washed away that awful experience with our favorite beers. My wife got her desert and Irish coffee and desert was free because it was her birthday! Catastrophe averted! (I'm no longer irked, just thought I'd share a good story)

Can I have your pickup? Looks nice and rust free!

Duane Drew in Minnesota was posting photos on Facebook of 5 foot snow drifts up against his house, nearly covering the windows. He said the snow was hard surfaced and you could walk on top of it. Glad I'm not there. Here in the Philly burbs, it snowed on Wednesday like gangbusters. We got 3-4" that covered everything. And then it turned to rain, and the temperatures soared into the 50s. All the snow was gone within 24 hours! The past 24 hours it's been very windy, although sunny and in the mid 30s, with a wicked windchill. You could hear the wind overnight, the news said gusts to 50 mph and showed a lot of local chaos with wires down, power outages and a few trees through house roofs. We get a very strange effect here. We live on the high point of our area, on Watch Hill. Supposedly this is where Colonial forces sat and watched for British movement down in Great Valley. We are on the down slope side, so the wind must hit the other side of our mountain, then fly right over us! We hear horrendous winds, but nothing on the ground moves! Last night my wife was looking out the window and she said she could hear the wind but the trees weren't moving. It's spooky! A summer ago we were sitting out by our pool and we saw a quick storm coming in. We went into the house and the skies opened up, thunder and lightning, wind and a downpour that lasted maybe 15 minutes. Once that was over we went back to the pool and one of the huge trees at the back of our property had come down. The tree next to it lost the entire top and all that wood was sitting on the ground! That wind off the mountain had no doubt swooped down in that exact spot and nailed those two trees! Now the spooky part... nothing else was touched. Empty beer cans we left on the edge of the pool were still sitting there!

I live on the island of misplaced toys! I have lost and found several items in the model room recently... I could've sworn I had a fairly new can of Tamiya Black. Searched everywhere. Nope. I needed it for the 24 Hour Build since it dries quickly. I went to Hobby Lobby and looked for Model Masters Lacquer Black. Nope. Best they had was Wet Look Metallic Black. So that's what the chassis on my Model A Woody Pickup became. It doesn't look half bad. Then I squirted my last of my Walmart 99 cent flat black. I like this paint because it's a different tone than the hobby flat blacks. More of a satin. I hit Walmart and they are out of it, only having their gloss black. I figure I need it so I bought the Rustoleum $4 flat black. My current build needs a ball shifter. I know I bought a pack of pins at Walmart some time ago. Or did I just imagine it? I look everywhere. No pins. So while at Walmart, I buy a pack. Within a day... I see I have two cans of Tamiya Red. I pull them out and find one is my Tamiya Black with a wrong cap on it. Yup, I had dated the can 11-18 and it's near full. I move a tall can of spray paint aside to place the new can of Rustoleum.... what's right behind it? Brand new can of Walmart flat black! I pull down a small plastic basket of my weathering paints off the shelf above the work bench. What's tucked in there? A brand new box of pins for shifters! Okay.. next trip to Walmart the Rustoleum paint and a box of shifters... um pins go back! And just yesterday.... I decided the engine needed to sit a bit higher on my current project. I made a couple of spacers that sit between the engine mounts to raise it. I glue one in place, then the other. I look and the first one is missing. I look around the bench... no. I actually clean up the bench... no. Then I get down on my hands and knees with my little flashlight and a business card to sweep the hardwood floor in the immediate proximity. I find a photo etch seat belt buckle and two tiny ship building nails. No spacer! My alarm went off that it was time to go fetch my pizza. So I left the model room. Later that evening I start working again. I am putting shocks on the chassis and I notice one of the suspension parts looks odd... what's stuck to it? The friggin engine spacer!

Very cool! Very nice work under that hood! I've had the '60 Desoto kit out recently and was fiddling a bit myself!

snorting Dorito dust!

Cool! I have a story... Many years ago I'd stop at my grandparents house after my model club meeting. I was there one Saturday evening and showed them my latest project. My grandfather said that there was a model car in the basement. My grandparents were known to buy us grandkids gifts all year for Christmas and hide them in the basement. They forgot some over the years! So he goes downstairs and comes back up holding a perfect, sealed original issue Racers Wedge kit! It was very rare at the time, long before the reissue Dave Burket had done. Immediately people started offering me money for the kit. I believe the high offer was $200. Nope, never sold it. It was the kit my grandfather gave to me! Still have it, still unbuilt in the box.

Greetings from the Philly 'burbs!

Yes! That was a lot of money to us kids back then! We mowed a lot of lawns and washed a lot of cars to earn those AutoWorld orders! Back in those days I was a US military dependent in Germany. AutoWorld was my connection to the USA and model cars! It took a lot longer for me to get my orders, as they went SAM ... Space Available Mail, via ship! I never could figure when the orders would arrive.

New seller on eBay shipped me a kit.... just kidding! A friend used the box to send me something small.

We got the same 4" you did, then it turned to rain over night. We have a neighbor who loves to run his massive snow blower so he runs down the entire street clearing the sidewalk. Our driveway melted over night so I had no work to do at all.

Nice little project. Those mini pickups from that era are actually not bad kits! I have one, still seeking an idea. Finish yours up for NNL East. Our Diversified colleagues will have the big diorama up full of Datsuns this time!

Thank you Dave. It's nice to have my voice heard!

My point exactly.....

Nice work Yordan! It was fun watching your truck take shape over the two pages of this thread! Rust is also a regional thing. Northern cars rust from the bottom up due to salt on the roads, while Southern cars rust from the top down due to intense heat and sun wearing the finishes thin. You may find a Northern car with paint in good shape on the roof, and a Southern car with clean fender bottoms! When I'm working on a project, I decide where my vehicle will reside... as in what license plate etc. Then I rust accordingly. As others mentioned, photos of real rusty vehicles are your best friend. Every vehicle has it's own rust patterns... for instance Tri-Five Chevys always rust above the headlight. I cringe when I see a rusty Tri-Five with perfect fender tops over the lights... but a big rust hole in the center of the hood (where no car has ever rusted!) The Internet is a good source for photos. I like eBay Motors since people will post a whole series of photos around the vehicle for sale. I save those photo sets for future projects. You are on the right track using Dullcote over your rust. I do a lot of that. Take a look at the tool chest above. That was scratch built from Evergreen sheet. It is gloss green, then rusted with powdered chalks and Dullcote slurry. Then Dullcoted again. The final step that gives it depth is that I took Testors clear gloss and aimed the can up in the air. I placed the chest at the back of my spray booth and let some gloss paint drops just rain down on it. I like the way it came out!

I am a little surprised that only 16 percent of the builders that logged in decided to share their info.though. A very small percentage of the overall board population is currently active. Some took out names and never posted years ago. I once sent Gregg and Harry the suggestion that they clear out old names, say over 5 years abandoned, since a lot of the long inactive ones were rather clever and could have been reused.

Low 30s here in the Philly suburbs... about 2-4 inches of snow and it's stopped for now. Forecast is that it will be getting warmer and turn to rain. It should mostly melt by tomorrow.

Walmart has retailing down to a science. They have calculated the turnover of every linear foot of shelf space. And they put a lot of pressure on their suppliers. Goods must sell through in 30-45 days, or supplier must credit them for the units. And they pay their vendors net 90, which means that everything in the store hasn't been paid for yet!

Except for me! My father was US Army and we lived outside the USA from 1966-68 (Izmir, Turkey) and 1969-72 (Pirmasens, Germany). I was a car guy since I was born, so I was very aware of the cars around me. That has given me more of a passion for European cars than the average American.

I bought that same set of powders that Steve has illustrated here on eBay. I still haven't given it a try. Maybe I should on one of my current projects!

I'd love to have one here in the USA. Just to take it to car shows and have people scratching their heads trying to figure out what it is!