Tom Geiger

I wonder what happened since the show was today!

That's what happens when people put the photos on this site. They fill out the small amount of space given, then have to delete the photos to put on new photos. So all of their threads look like this!

There was an interview with Elan Musk where they asked him what he thought of the $15 McDonalds job. His response was priceless!

Ollies is just a junky close out store. Bargains on paint are far apart.

I wouldn't put the obesity of Americans as the reason for the amount of baggage allowed... airlines have redesigned passenger compartments to fit the maximum amount of people in there. Seats are narrow and closer together. On one flight recently from Puerto Rico, when the person in front of my put their seat back, I didn't have enough room to hold a magazine in front of me! So weight wise, they've added many bodies to each plane load. Airlines are now charging per bag. They aren't restricting how much you can carry. They are just charging you for it and that's just a money grab.

Continuing with the customer service theme... stores just aren't training people these days. Back in the 7th decade of the last century when I worked in stores, the first rule was that we were not allowed to small talk with another employee if a customer was in the store. We pretty much stood at our stations, ready to help that customer! And if there was no customer, we didn't stand there and goof off... there was always something to do. You walked the aisles and straightened product on the shelves, swept the floor or peeled potatoes to make potato salad. You always were doing something to benefit the business! I was in the supermarket the other evening. Union store, so there are older people who have been there forever. I get some cold cuts, serviced by a guy older than me. Now, when I worked in a deli, the very first thing they did was train me the proper way to cut cold cuts. Proper thicknesses for different meats, how to lay them on the wax paper... I felt professional. I get these cold cuts, cut by some old veteran of the deli department and it's a mess. The turkey breast was sliced so thin, then wadded together to the point that I couldn't get it apart in slices to make sandwiches. Liverwurst same thing, big wad instead of the layered proper way with wax interleaves. I mean IF you are making a career out of the deli department... at least do it right! I get up to the cash register and there's a young guy. He's cashing me out and trying to help me bag. Again, my first job when I was 14 was bagging groceries. Up front we were taught how to fill a bag, and how to keep different things together. I follow that to this day as I bag my own.... dry goods in one bag, freezer in another, all my cold cuts in a bag, and meats in another. You get the idea, cold together so it stays cold on the way home, and bags filled as you would put them away... This young kid is just stuffing things in bags. He's got ice cream and a pack of pork chops in a bag. I stop him. He seems confused. I start to explain the way it needs to be and he acts like he's never heard this before! He's actually interested in what I'm saying. So I ask him if he was ever trained in bagging and he says no. He's worked there two years. Frickin amazing! I believe he's doing it right now because I told him, and he seemed to get it. And that's why we are going to hell in a hand basket!

True. I believe that folks who will have the patience to learn this trade, and it is a trade, will be in numbers, like the guys who own a lathe today. A percentage of the guys we know. And a lot of guys bought lathes and after making a barrel full of aluminum shavings, gave up. They just didn't have the patience to spend the time to learn it. And this could be the saving of the hobby. We need younger guys to get involved with model cars. If they get lured in via their computer skills, that's fine with me. The technology exists today. Only it's expensive and can only be justified for high end things like creating medical devices like printing out artificial hearts, replacement teeth, bones, joints and the like. It's all being done today. The question is price. And once that's answered it will be down to the people who wish to acquire the skills to create 3D models and use the printers.

My wife had a '74 Mustang II V6 auto coupe when I met her. She bought it from a friend who married a military guy and moved away. It was a year old when she got it. I met her in 1978 and it had around 60,000 miles on it. Trouble free and drove nice. I drove it distances like from NJ to VA and back and thought it as a great little car. She got this bug that she needed a new car, so poor little Mustang got traded in on a '79 Capri RS V8, which turned out to be the car from hell. Someone who lived a few blocks away from my wife's family bought the Mustang from the dealer so we had to see it all the time... as the Capri was being nothing but trouble from the day it got home.

I've dry brushed the wires in the past and have also used Sharpie pens. I've recently come to the conclusion that it may almost be easier, and certainly will look better to sand them off and replace with thin wire. See above photo of a Trabant engine bay. Some of the wires were molded in and I painted them, but look at the real wires that run front to back on either inner fender. Those are on reference photos I have of real cars, but weren't on the kit so I added them. Next one of these I build I will sand off the molded in wires and add real wire as well. It's not a challenging thing to do. Anyone who can cut, twist and glue a wire can do this!

I understand first hand! I had a bright red new Challenger for three days as a rental in Canada. I must've gotten complemented on the car a dozen times. It was embarrassing since it wasn't really mine!

Agreed, it is a ways off and lets say that's a catalog that would allow me to print a model in 1/25 scale at home for $200 in an hour. I would have already have printed one! Of course 20 years from now we'll be sitting around our printer reminiscing, "$200! I can remember back when kits were only $25!" But as technology has gotten better in our age, would this 3D printing being an easy thing, would we get complacent and lose interest? For instance, I used to carefully piece together variations of kit decals to achieve a result. Sometimes I had to combine some color decal stock with bits of a kit decal, and some rub on lettering to get what I wanted. I saved bits of printed pictures and such that just happened to be the right size to work on a model. It was tedious and a real hunt. Today I hit Google Images and call up any image. If I want to do a model of a telephone truck, I can get 100s of jpgs of phone company logos with no effort. I did the same with a gas meter readers car. I found a 1950s PSE&G Co color logo and had it printed out on decal stock within an hour. Once it was done, it was like ehhh. It was perfect, but it wasn't hard won. That's pretty much what eBay has done to the collectibles hobbies. It made the search for them so efficient that you can find nearly anything with a few clicks, and multiples of that previously unique item to choose from. That drove down prices significantly, and the market took a nose dive because people lost interest. The thrill was in the hunt! And suddenly there was no hunt, and you could fill your house with the stuff with little effort. So will that happen once 3D parts are commonplace and as easy to make as my decals?

Dan, that's the case in suburban PA and NJ where I've lived. In fact when I lived in NJ I passed a building which had cars and SUVs parked on both sides... one side was all surplus police vehicles, the other side had bright shiny yellow cabs. A common sight to see Crown Vic taxis with spotlights, molding cut where a police shield once was and the "Enforcer" badge on the trunk lid. NYC and possibly other big cities have a Taxi & Limo Commission and they dictate which vehicles are allowed to be used as Taxis. Early on it was full size US cars like Vics, Caprices and Dodges and no doubt involved some big city politics and greasing of palms. In more recent times there have been pushes to use all hybrids in NY and other big cities. When I was up in Boston I noticed all the cabs were Camry hybrids. In Philly the mix is aging Crown Vics and one company that has all Altima hybrids. I believe all these cars are purchased new by law. A few weeks ago I was on the Pennsylvania Turnpike and saw a trailer load of bright yellow Prius cars complete with NYC taxi markings headed that direction. I just found it interesting that they were pushing hybrids over 300,000 miles. There was one Prius there with 360,000.

I was fudding around the Internet and came across this site. It's a company that resells old New York City taxi cabs. These cars lead very hard lives, stop and go traffic, idling for hours and roads full of potholes and other challenges. Probably the toughest job a car can have! Of course there's a bunch of fairly new Crown Vics, probably the last year's worth. What I found very interesting is the miles some of these cars have traveled. Especially the hybrids. Very cool to see Prius taxis with over 300,000 miles on them. http://www.taxiforsale.nyc/

When ever I've worked in CAD we always drew everything full size and it got scaled down at printing, or when you set it into a drawing in "Paper space". I don't know if they 'set up' the 3D file into some sort of print file where they have already defined the print scale. A few things I noticed. First, they have an interesting array of Ford cars there. I am probably the only one pining after a first gen Transit Connect, and I liked the Aussie cars like the Falcon Ute. So that part is cool. Details I saw... this looks more like a collection of files that are coming from multiple sources. Note that the same cars appear over and over at different prices for the files. Next, some of them aren't right, like there is a Falcon that is almost cartoonish with huge A pillars and a funky flat grill. So I wouldn't expect anything to be consistent with the files. I think this would be a great model magazine article if someone has the equipment and talent to grab one of these files and print them.

I'm surprised they didn't want you... you come across as an entertaining intellectual! Reminds me of a story... I think it was on Jeopardy... there was this very smart guy who was cleaning the board on all kinds of questions about planets, mythology and other academic subjects... what sunk him? He had never heard of Fonzie!

Note that this isn't any criticism towards you or your friend. People are just cautious on resin since there have been tons of poor conversions and/or awful castings offered over the years! I once ordered a '67 Mustang coupe resin body. Not only was it slush cast and awful, but the guy who did the conversion didn't even get the trunk lid on straight... and he had this one job!

Kwap! Now I don't know which car my grandfather actually had, and he's no longer around to answer questions. He called it a roadster, and he did trade it in on a Graham sedan when my father was born.

That's my civilian 1989 Crown Vic along with a friend's Caprice. My grandfather bought it new and I'd be up for the kit to build a replica of it.

There were a lot of that 1998 version floating around swap meets in the $5-10 range. I bought a bunch of them to restore 61-63 Buicks I own... but I just had another thought. Would the chassis under the newer Revell '62 and '63 Chevys be right and fit under my '62 Buick convertible? I'd still use the tub interior but it would be nice to make the car full detail with a nice chassis.

I have two hot tubs. Both came with our house. Hot tub one is built into the master bath. Hot tub two is part of our in ground pool. My experience? The thrill wears off rather quickly. The one in the master bath has been used maybe half a dozen times in the five years we've been here. It relies on the water heater and it takes more than 50 gallons to fill it. Just too much of a task to fill it etc. The hot tub in the pool is only good during the pool season and gets winterized. At first we used it all the time, but we ran out of folks who wanted to sit there and drink. It gets used very little. When we move from here I wouldn't be owning another hot tub, or pool for that matter! I'd put a hot tub in the same category as that barely used exercise equipment you can buy at any garage sale!

I just have the box on this one but I think I remember it was surfing music.

Now that the tooling is owned by Round 2, and knowledgeable hobbyists, they are doing the right thing! First, they show a silhouette of the contents, so anyone now buying that same Buick would see how simple a kit it was. No doubt they got a bunch of grief over the different eras of kit technology all being sold side by side. So they went the full disclosure route! Also, being geniuses of marketing, with the retro box art, new tires and other extras, they indeed are breathing life into that old tooling and getting us to buy another copy of kits we already own!

Very important! When guys see finished models done nicely they assume the builder just gets it right every time. Talk to that builder and you'll find that the model is on it's second scratch built chassis and third paint job. The builder just didn't give up and got better with every attempt!

I have to agree with Steve... I built models as a kid and got kid-like results. I attempted to build models in my 20s and got the very same results. Why? Because I was applying the same (lack of) skill set to the issue. Each time I'd get to the point of major fail on a project, put it away and give up again. I felt that I just didn't possess those talents! Then I found a model club. I showed up at my first meeting with my "hardware store white paint over black plastic poor attempt", and guys in the club immediately took me under their wing. I soon found that most of my previous failures were because I didn't know some fairly easy to master techniques, rather than some insurmountable talent I lacked. My models took a major leap ahead in a very short time. And as Steve said, there are things I have mastered and there are things I have no interest in learning. As I've found things I wanted to learn and incorporate in my models, people in my clubs and on these boards have been very happy to help me learn a technique or recommend some material I just hadn't discovered on my own. And still 28 years into building models as an adult, I still am reaching out and learning a little something with every build.

I'd rather see a model described as a "Great idea, marginal execution" than no model at all. If you have an idea, why not just give it a shot? It's certainly worth the $20-50 in plastic to have that model, and you'll gain skills in the process. And with the miracle of the Internet, you can get advise through the entire process. There will be those times when we do bite off more than we can chew. I've packed those back in their boxes for another day. There's a few models that I later found I had since gained that skill, and finished it. And for those really grandiose ideas, I've found procrastination to work well. If I wait long enough someone will come out with a kit or resin.