Tom Geiger

Remembering my father US Army Major Arthur H Geiger, career officer with a tour in Viet Nam in 1962 as an adviser, and 3 years in Turkey working for NATO. He later ran a communications unit in Germany. I never joined the military, but was immersed in the culture as an army brat for 16 years!

Glad to have you back Rich! Now get started on build threads on those new resins! I guess Tom V is a saint... I don't know if I could take six weeks of anyone! Funny thing.. that Model A has New Jersey plates and inspection sticker.

Jeff, glad you found the papers. My father was in Viet Nam in 1962, as a military advisor before the official start date.

http://www.ebay.com/sch/Automotive-/2580/i.html?_sop=1 Here's the search I have bookmarked. It sets the results to show the auctions that are closest to ending first, and then in time order past that. I find that the auctions close to ending are the ones I want to bid on first, mainly because I will know the results sooner. eBay model sellers are not consistent so it's tough to do a search for anything specific. For instance, few call a model "Glue bomb", or any other concise term, so you are on your own to sift through the pages looking for things that would fit the bill. Even car makes... some would list a car as Chevy, others would say Chevrolet. And some might just say Camaro and not mention the make at all. I can say that you want to use the least amount of words you can to search for something. For instance in the above example of AMT 1964 Pontiac Grand Prix I might just search for 1964 Prix since a seller may not mention Pontiac. The search agent wouldn't understand that Grand Prix is one term and would search for each one by itself. There are a few things you can do in searches. For instance when you put several words in quotes like "Grand Prix" it will only search for them together. If you want to search for two different words that mean the same thing putting them in quotes (Chevrolet,Chevy) will give you results where a seller said either word. Then if you want to exclude a word you can list it minus, like -Nomad and it won't bring up any results of Nomads. When you get good you can put searches in like (1957,57) (Chevy, Chevrolet) -12 -18 -nomad This will bring up any '57 Chevy except Nomads, and I added the -12 -18 to eliminate any 1/12 or 1/18 scale kits, again putting in just the number since I'm not sure if a seller would list 1-12, 1:12 or 1/12. Hope this helps!

Cheap is good... you were going to build it anyway... who needs a box?

Got my new grill today. Would have to be an adventure of course! But all ends well. I let the wife choose what I cooked, so we had boneless chicken breasts that I put a nice rub on. I made a cold pasta salad.... Tri-Macaroni (that's three different shapes!), in an Italian dressing with black olive slices, pinto beans, little corn ears and artichoke hearts! Yum! Tomorrow will bring the ribs and wings I bought today!

Okay, how many lefties have a couch in their front yard?

I was hoping to get a RHD Harley someday! I kid a friend of mine in the UK about his Harley all the time!

Oh what the hey... 1966 Charger memories. Back in 1966 I was in second grade and I was a car guy even then. Mostly a Matchbox car guy, but those were my resources and I had to go with it! My father bought a new car in 1966. Of course I went to the dealers to check them out all the way. My first recommendation was that he buy a new Mustang. Ford had done so good a job saturating the country with propaganda, that even a small boy in Dayton, Ohio knew that everyone should buy one. Only issue was that my dad was an army officer and we were subject to moving a lot and only had one family car. So any car he bought would have to serve in that duty, as well as carrying a family of four and all our luggage places at the drop of a hat. So a small car like a Mustang was out of the question. He did tell me his first choice of car was an Avanti, discounted for the same reasons. Anyway, the reason for this post.... we went to the Dodge dealer and looked at the new Charger. I was very sold on this fastback design since the rear seat folded down and I could lay in the back. I thought that was just dandy, and would work well with our cross country trips. I liked that Charger a whole lot. But of course my 7 year old voting power was limited, and my father bought a 1966 Pontiac Lemans 2 door hardtop with a 326 and a 4 speed. It was midnight blue, with a white bucket interior and it was a very cool car. That was the only time my dad actually bought a cool car for himself. And it was short lived. He got orders for Izmir, Turkey and after 2.5 years there, we left the Lemans in Izmir. And that's a different story!

I've been a Fotki user forever. I have paid accounts. I manage two accounts, my own personal site, as well as the TSSMCC / NNL East site. I like their format and ease of use. There was a rocky road a while back, when they had some issues but that seems to be solved once they moved their servers from New York to off shore. I haven't had any issues in more than a year since that occurred. I don't like Photo Bucket at all. I've never been an account holder, but when someone posts a link to their albums, if it's Photo Bucket I won't even look. I don't like their interface at all. When I am looking at thumbnails and decide to click on a photo to see it closer, when I click back, it takes me to the beginning of the album, not where I left off. That alone makes me dislike it. See our albums: http://public.fotki.com/tssmcc/nnl-east-photo-albums/

Here's a few chassis that I did over the years. Beat them up as you may...

and like anything else in this world... try it first on a scrap body. Don't try this on a precious '59 Plymouth that you've just painted perfectly!

Wow! Suddenly when I wasn't looking it became 2008! Since I build a lot of weathered stuff, I'll weigh in. Yes, there are a lot of beaters / weathered cars that are way over done. Guys who think that everything must be tetanus like rusty. Cars rusted where cars don't rust, and cars that are very rusty but not rusted at all in the classic spots of rust on that car. It's all a matter of who has done their research. Research wise, Google and eBay Motors are your friends. I will sometimes spend an early Sunday morning on eBay Motors for the express reason of finding reference photos. The good thing here is that people sell every type of vehicle in every condition. And some sellers include 25-100 photos, many of the car on a lift. And cars weather / rust at a progression from new to the junk yard. I've worked with models where I've told myself that this one will be a 10 year old car in good serviceable condition. And I've done cars that have been sitting on the ground in a ditch for the past 10 years. In doing chassis weathering, and rusty cars in general, I've found that you do have to take a bit of artistic license. First, most of the rust on a car is very dark in color and that doesn't translate well onto a model, so I've found I've had to add a top wash of a lighter rust color to make sure the viewer sees the entire area as rust. Hope that makes sense.

Another way to look at it is that on the low end of 50 is more practical / engineering. On the upper end is more artistic and the idea folks. The guys in the 50 range have a good balance of both. So guys scoring low are more likely to finish projects. The kind of guys with the self discipline to never have two unfinished models. And guys on the upper end like me don't, once we can see how the model would look finished, we're off to the next grand idea!

Details, details needed. We hope you got a model room and garage! And maybe a room where the family can live.

Glad to hear that Rich is okay. I too was worried about him, so I contacted Tom Valenta and he pointed me here. Looking forward to Rich's daily reports as he builds these great old classics!

at this point of your project, dry brushing with silver is the way to go. You can try the BMF process on another project since you should do that before paint. Dry brushing is pretty easy. Dip your brush in silver paint, then paint a surface like paper until 90% of the paint is gone. Then take the brush and lightly, as in breezing by without actually touching it, brush the lettering on a sideways angle. A few things... You may want to put some blue tape / Tamiya tape around it so you don't accidentally hit the body with your brush. Second thing, once you have one emblem done. Wait long enough for it to dry before you flip the model over to do the one on the other side. You don't want to smear!

Congrats Daniel! Home ownership does give your life more of a sense of permanency! It will take a bit from your hobby time, hopefully from the Netflix end of it! Oh, and remember the phrase "Working on the 1:1 diorama"!

Welcome, we like Aussies on the board. You have an interesting perspective on American cars.... and some very cool home grown versions!

Welcome Sonny! Your English is better than some of the guys here who have English as their first language! Love your Porsche!

Now don't you be cluttering up his rant with facts and logic!

That's the latest Best Resins piece! I have his 50 Olds wagon... absolutely beautiful resin work. I cannot find a flaw anywhere. You'd swear it's plastic.

71 You're intuitive and spontaneous, preferring to take a much more "hands-on" approach to life. There are times when you may be a little scatter-brained and disorganized, but it's not like you do it on purpose - with so much out there to explore and so many things to do, it can sometimes be hard to keep track of everything! That works. I'm more the idea guy who likes to change processes, but I'm not the one to actually do all the detail work to do so! We are the folks who have great model ideas, but once we can envision how they will be finished, we're off to the next great idea!

That was a nagging question with me for a long time. After spending way too much time on each project, I wondered how quickly I could get a shelf worthy model built. So I tried the "24 Hour Build" that Gary Kulchock and his friends sponsor every year in February. There is the original group that meets in person at Gary's house, but there are now groups and individuals all over who participate and communicate on their FaceBook page and by posting progress photos on Fotki. It runs noon on Saturday until noon on Sunday, following the 24 Hour Daytona race. And it's a lot of fun. The whole premise is to take a new kit that's expendable and go at it. It's okay to build like a fifth grader! Twist the parts from the trees, spray some black parts without primer. Just have fun. And at the same time, it makes you think and work systematically and quickly. And in the end I actually have had decent looking models! It has benefited my normal building as well since I can build more systematically and accomplish some tasks faster than I did before. It's great to make the challenge of finishing within the 24 hour time frame but if you don't nobody really cares. And did I mention it's fun?

Gotta love the sellers with the over enthusiastic descriptions on the 'bay... My favorite one is "looks complete to me -- no guarantee" means that they know it's not all there. I saw that on a kit that I was interested in and it was obvious from the photos that the kit had no body! I once got a kit that was described as "open box -- all bagged inside", well there were bags inside, but no chrome tree. I can say the guy with the missing chrome tree did make good. He refunded everything and told me to keep the kit. I always say... you remember the creepy, hygiene challenged, little shyster you'd see at model shows? He's now on eBay! Buyer beware!