Tom Geiger

I found this little guy on a heavily traffic foot path at work the other day. He got stuck on the pavement since the grass was to high for him to climb back on either side. We took this photo and returned him to the lake. No doubt born this year, literally coin size.

For that very reason I haven't bought a Testors bottle in maybe 20 years. I remember my favorite colors were: Gloppy Black Lumpy Yellow and Never Dry Silver

There are a few different scenarios here.... First there is "this model is going so well, I just know I'll screw it up on the next step!" then there's "I'm having so much fun with this build, if I finish it then it will be over!" and finally... "If I finish this model, the Earth may spin off it's axis and the entire human race will be in peril!" I don't get anything done first quarter of every year... I've got another little project I work on!

Reminds me of a story... there once was a sad soul who fancied himself a model dealer. Picture Squiggy with bad hygiene.. he'd come to club meetings and enter models in the monthly contest. We all knew that we had never seen any in progress models from him, but he'd show up with nicely built models we knew he bought in collections, but was passing off as his own work. So we started a thing where the three winners would stand up in front of the room and tell us about their model, how it was built etc. This guy stumbled... pretty darn clear he had no clue how it was built, what chassis, paint etc... so he soon stopped entering our contests!

Don't dig in at all! No pressure! Just glide that knife along the edge like you are tracing it lightly with a pencil. Practice how light you can make a pass where the BMF will pull apart. You will be surprised at how little pressure it takes, no more than the weight of the knife.

Thanks for the heads up on the lunch box. It was the last one I need for my collection so I grabbed it! It's not about right mind / out of your mind... it's about your cost of money. For some folks four grand is insurmountable, for others it's pocket change, that they'll gladly spend to get something they want... without a second thought... Says the guy who was just admiring a set of US Zeppelin stamps for a grand! Note I said admiring. I didn't hit the button.

I've got a can of Testors orange with a K-Mart 65 cent tag on it that's still okay. I keep it as a relic and wouldn't dream of trying it on a good model. Then again, I've got Testors bought last year that's bubbled out at a can seam... hit or miss... More important to me, I have a sealed pack of Johnsonville Bratwurst that says on it "Best if used before 02/01/15".... anyone wanna have some with me?

Go for it Frank! Now remember to press very light with the exacto when cutting it to size on the body!

It's a goob mobile! Yea Team! We suck! Actually I bought it that way, only added the wheels. It had a lot of paint on it, many brush coats. I got curious and decided to use it as a Chameleon Paint Stripper test car.... One overnight in a sealed container and it all came off. Tough part was that the paint was holding it together. The whole roof broke off in several pieces. Now a funny story.... the photo above started to appear in other people's stories about paint strippers. In one story the guy said he was stripping it in brake fluid and in another story it was CSC. I wrote to each guy and they swore it was their own photo... um, that is my back yard and Dodge Caravan in the background! Last time I played, it looked something like this!

I like the light blue and white. It's very typical. I'm planning on building my cousin's green and white one someday. I will use the '58 Fury chassis, cut open the hood and put the six from the '41 Plymouth in it... just like I remember his!

Let's all go to Gregg's house! We're having BEANS! Yum! Honest.. I dump a can of those into all kinds of dishes!

It's called fishin' the waters of the 'bay or trolling for suckers! As others said, they're looking for someone who hasn't done their homework. For instance I notice when I'm looking for parts for my 1:1 cars, things like models, manuals and dealer brochures pop up in the search. So that guy who owns that vehicle and didn't know there was an easily available kit hits that "Buy It Now" button! And it's been going on long before eBay. I once got kicked out of an antique shop when I disclosed to the seller that their "Genuine 1966 kits $100 each" had bar codes on them! And I remember back a bit when I guy I worked with brought in a 1970s Camaro brochure he bought in an antique shop for $100. He owned Camaros and would go to the dealer every year to get the new brochure. He forgot to do it one year. He was convinced he was the only person in the country who did that and the ones he had were absolutely unique. He saw that missing holy grail and seized the opportunity! He was very happy with himself so I didn't point out that it was a $10 brochure from my sources. and you think the model sellers are crazy?? The stamp collectors are amazingly worse. I see the very same items in the $100s to $1000 price that have been renewed regularly for the past 5 years.

Frank, I have never left a knife mark in my paint jobs. If you are pressing enough to leave a mark then you are pressing too hard! Once you have put the BMF onto your model body and have it pressed down well enough to remove the excess, just trace along the trim line as if you are tracing with a pencil. Tracing like you want to leave a very light pencil mark you are going to erase later. Very, very light. The foil is so thin, that's all you need. Try that! Getting the foil off the backing sheet... I always start at the side edge. The very edge of the foil doesn't have glue on it. I will use my exacto blade and try to get under it just enough to get it to stick up a tiny bit. Then I grab it with tweezers and pull.

My cousin George had a '59 Belvedere 2 door hardtop in a bright green with the white top. His interior was redone courtesy of Rayco before he got it, so that body style will always be that color scheme to me!

BMF is hands down the very best way to get chrome onto a model car. I will say that those who criticize BMF either are afraid to try it, to cheap to use it correctly or won't invest the small amount of time it takes to learn how to use it. There is no excuse for wrinkled BMF on a model, that's usually someone who has placed and lifted the same piece a couple of times before settling it down. That's one way to wrinkle it. And then they don't care enough to lift it off, throw it away and use another piece. BMF is very forgiving in the way that you can have infinite do overs... that's right. If you don't like the way it looks, take it off and try again with a fresh piece.

My first car was a beige 1966 Valiant 100 2 door sedan with a 225 slant six and auto trans. You aren't seeing things, the photo was taken in Switzerland. This was our family car, and we took it to Europe in 1969 and back home in 1973. It became mine in the fall of 1975 when I got my license. I immediately had it painted that same silver all the Ford Granadas were that year because it had a red interior!

Never thought I'd be nostalgic over 5.25 disks! Back in the day, we'd buy 10 boxes of 10 at a time in my office. We used them in our Apollo unix mini computers to back up CAD drawings. Inside each box of 10 you got a free credit card size calculator! We loved those! Now my first computer had an 8" floppy drive... I know I have a few of those around here somewhere!

agreed! I've said many times that it's almost a shame to cover up superb scratch building with paint! Once it's all finished it can look like a Danbury Mint diecast sitting on the table. At that point people cannot even imagine the scratch building that went into the project. That's why I love the primer table at shows, watching builds on the boards and reading those build books!

Miles, you mentioned you needed a hood and grill... looks like you found the grill. I do have a parts kit of the Scout and have a hood for you. Also for your trailer, I have parts boxes of the '50, '53 and '55 Ford pickups, and '50, '55-57 Chevy pickups. PM me with what you need and I'd be happy to mail it to ya! Also, per your top... I've made those from wide masking tape. Testors Dullcote will take away the stick-um completely. Then you have a nice scale piece to work with...

Harry, you are smarter than that. Anyone who has been to NNL East or heard of our reputation knows my commitment to quality and continuous improvement. Bingo! Someone here gets it. Before I pass judgement on anything, my engineer's curiosity wants to learn the process. Bringing a new model car kit to market is a project. As Bob said, the very basics are time and money. It all starts with the MSRP of the new kit. They have done their research as to the maximum the public will pay for a model car kit. Then they work backwards from there. They forecast how many units they think they will sell of the new subject. Then they estimate out the costs of every activity from project kickoff to having the models on the store shelves. They plan out deadlines for each activity. This is called the Project Plan. The Project Plan will have the design development of the kit as a line item. It may state that there will be a kickoff meeting, a team will research and measure off the subject vehicle, and transmit that information to the Chinese partners. There also will be milestones for each phase of that development.. just for this discussion let's say that they will have four design revisions with a design review for each. End goal? To approve the design to cut tooling. And at a deadline of say, July 30th. The model kit development is actually several projects. You not only have the kit design above, but there's also box design, decal sheet and instruction sheet. These are all projects whose deadline must come together. There are no doubt more pieces, but that's what we're using for this example. Bill Engel loves to rant that "it doesn't cost more to measure correctly". No it doesn't and the guys who do that work do it to the best of their abilities. It's not the measuring, it's translating those 2D measurements and photographs into a CAD 3D model where the tricky stuff comes in. I used to do architectural design on CAD. You can take a thousand correct measurements and when you start inputting it you find discrepancies. Sometimes you go back out to the field and find that CAD doesn't lie... you throw a tape on it, and find your issue. One time I had a building that was two feet shorter on one end than the other. Over several hundred feet, you'd never see it, but input correct measurements into CAD and you will find it. Same with kit development. I was lucky enough to have dinner with Dave Metzner last year. He described the process of working with the Chinese designers in Skype meetings. They'd tell him where the measurements didn't add up, and he'd run and remeasure the subject. He said they'd ask about the design of the starter, alternator or other small part. He'd do the research and transmit the data to them. There are issues of communicating with a team who has English as a second language, through cultural boundaries, and through electronic means rather than in person. That does add to the challenges. I work weekly with my company’s Shanghai site and can tell you it’s sometimes not easy! The Chinese team is very educated and talented. Most important they want to get it right. Now note that board folks references to Johan 'getting it right' back in the 1960s. A totally different business model. First, remember for the most part they were working for the auto companies. So that initial design was already paid for. Second, they were handed car manufacturers blue prints to work from. And third, they were located right in Detroit. If they had questions, they could take a short ride to that car company's design center and measure it off in person. And Art’s recent post explains that they weren’t all that accurate anyway! So the model kit progresses through the budgeted design milestones. The design and eventual test shots are evaluated by a lot of people, some of them being folks we know in the hobby. They pick up things, comment and the revisions are incorporated into the design. We get to the end of design revision four and the kit should be ready to commit to production… small problem. Someone discovers that there are a few little issues, like those small problems this board showed on the Revell ’57 Ford. Now we are at a decision point. The design budget is finished. It will cost $1 a kit to do another revision pass and cost the project 60 days. That $1 a kit translates to $4-6 at retail. The team does an ROI (return on investment) analysis on investing that extra $1 a kit. They determine that within their target market, 99% of the buyers wouldn’t notice the improvement. They determine that they ‘may’ see a few more sales by the outstanding 1% (that’s us extremely fanatic guys), but now with the kit at a $34.00 MSRP, they’ve reached a price point that 25% of their target audience will not pay. So the ROI on that investment is a negative number. So they simply cannot make that revision. They move onward to production. Now I’m not saying they don’t care, or that they are happy with mediocrity, they are business folks and these are the realities of a commercial project. People have already seen the improvement on the 57 Ford wagon version, so Revell incorporated it into the next project, which is a whole new budget and process. Note that I’m not saying it wouldn’t be nice if these issues we spot weren’t there, I’m saying that knowing the business environment, the process and the budgets today, that I understand how these things happen. If indeed our budget would allow us to ship a '57 Ford to China and sit it in our partner's building, I'm sure the resulting kit would be absolutely splendid! But that's not today's reality. Years ago we had serious worries about the future of the model business as the companies went through the hands of the cereal company, the card company and various toy companies, all led by people who really didn’t understand this market. Today all three leading companies are owned and managed by top notch folks who live and breathe this hobby. Knowing what they are up against, I’m amazed that they can produce the overall splendid products we see today against the tiny numbers of kits that can be sold. With kit companies being as small as they are today, there is no big fluff budget to pick up cost over runs and losses. These companies truly live and die by the numbers. So give them a break!

Here we are again. I'm not even gonna comment. I've never seen so many uninformed opinions in one place. You say you are looking for answers, but when Dave Metzner came on the board, the one guy who is doing it absolutely right in this business in today's environment, the board goobs argued with him. When people who have experience in the business and do understand the industry offer insights, the board goobs argue with and belittle them. Overall, you've all done a fine job of chasing away any industry savvy people from the board. So you won't get any relevant insights. Not that you'd realize they were relevant. There is a certain faction on this board who have no professional background or understanding of the development of a model kit to today's standards and budgets. They continue to post their narrow view of the world. But they pretty much tell us "I have no idea..." with every post! Here's a few facts... + What Johan or any other manufacturer did in the 1960s has no relation to today's business model + What Tamiya or any other Japanese manufacturer does today, has zero relevance to the USA kit market. Totally different business model. + The designs of the 1980s that are used for reference.... AMT '55 Chevy pickup, '66 Nova and '58 Plymouth cannot be used as an example of Round 2 today... the AMT of that era is long gone, ownership changed, entire personnel change over. Kinda like comparing a 1985 Chevy to the 2015 model. + Forget the blue collar whine, "that big multi international company is conspiring to take advantage of little ole me" The model companies of today are tiny little entities just trying to produce product to today's conditions. Those of us who understand project management, budgets, return on investment and other business realities are totally amazed that today's model companies pull off what they do. It's truly amazing. If any of you actually listen.

I'm not big on contests, I got all of that out of my system many years ago. I do love to display my work, and share it with others. And in the same way, I love to see models I watched get built on the boards, or those of friends of mine. I'm just an NNL kinda guy! All in all, our model car hobby has no standards for judging, no credentials for judges, there is no rhyme or reason. Back when I did compete in contests, I found that in my light commercial category the very same models competed at shows up and down the East Coast. They'd place differently at each show. Sometimes I'd win the first, sometimes the second... same with the others in the category. I realized it was silly. Might as well have put the models in a paper bag and pulled them out blind for the awards. I have been involved in hobbies where there is a strong national organization and judges must have gone through a rigorous process to be allowed to judge. Back then my collection would win a consistent silver award at every show. As such, I have no interest in competing at a model show. I do put cards under my models when I show them. Those are for the viewers and answer the basic questions about the build. I don't expect everyone to read them, as I don't read every card at every show. But it's there for that one guy who really enjoys that specific model. As far as judges go, I will relate a story from many years ago. I had displayed a certain model and a judge seeked me out to tell me that they disqualified my model from the very start because "I had forgot to put a battery in it".... my reply? "It's a Volkswagen.. the battery is under the rear seat!

Tulio - A question I've had for a while, but haven't gotten an answer. Maybe you know. I've always been interested in the South American cars by US manufacturers that are different or variations of cars sold in the USA. Everything like the early 60s Chevy pickups, your Veraneio, the old Nova and Falcons sold forever, the Dodge Dart based cars, your Galaxie etc. Why don't we see them exported from Brazil and Argentina for instance to the USA, and appearing at car shows? Certainly they'd draw a crowd. Are there export restrictions on your end, import restrictions on our end... It's not that far a trip!

Yup, I have some 2000 kits and great resin pieces and I decide to build what? Yea, the busted up body behind the purple pickup! It's what was left after building the pickup and spent years as a paint stand. Then one day I held it up to the light and thought, "ya know..."

Wow! That's so pretty! But ya know, the roof looks maybe an inch too low?