Tom Geiger

my dilemma was a Dodge Caravan molded in red. Primed and painted with Duplicolor it looked great. I then painted all the trim and added my decals. A friend was crowing about Testors One Shot Clear so I wanted to try it. Disaster! It reacted with the red plastic under all that Duplicolor turning the bright blue darker. Note that the side window area was clear plastic so it didn’t change, nor did any area under decals. Just where the One Shot had direct contact with the red plastic. You can see in this photo that the Testors One Shot Clear melted the black Sharpie I used for detailing (another suggestion from a board!) So I don't use Sharpies anymore! Oh the lessons hard learned! I stripped the whole thing and started over. Someone mentioned sealing in the red plastic with silver, so this time I did the Duplicolor gray primer, then a silver coat. I planned on the blue over it, but the silver looked good so I kept it as the body color. This time I used Tamiya clear!

If you have run international projects you understand. No matter how many photos and dimensions you send off to China, they're all open to interpretation and/or there's one little measurement missing. The issue is simply that those designing the kit are in China and have never seen the real car in person. It makes for a big difference. Back in the day when US kit manufacturers were in the USA, I swore if I took one over the first thing I'd do is install an overhead garage door into the design department, so I could plant an actual car dead center! You wouldn't have needed a pristine example, a decent used car would suffice for measurements, look and feel. It's like the big surprise when you finally see a car in person for the first time. Like an old 1930s Chrysler or Buick. You've seen photos of them for years, but in person you are immediately take by how huge the cars are. Nothing like seeing something in person! Back in the day when I created architectural building models in CADD, I'd do my own field work. I'd take every dimension I could possibly imagine. Then back in the office as I input these dimensions into the system, something would be off. Puzzled I'd walk or drive back to the building, put a tape to the area and man! there was the difference! And back then management would roll their eyes... "There goes Geiger hunting for inches! It's already good enuf!" Well, I made sure it was right because we were doing construction projects off my work, square footage charge backs to departments and even the building taxes. I went back to same company 15 years later, and they're still building off and managing the buildings off models I created back in the late 1980s!

I got lured into selling on eBay late August with their 250 free listings a month. I manage to list slightly less than 200 for August, did the full 250 in September and so far 100 for October. Before anyone here gets giddy, I’m selling items from my stamp collection. Mostly small town post marks. I’ve got a success rating of slightly less than 30%. I’ve learned to hate their listing process, it assumes everyone is an idiot. I despise the button that pops up during every listing “ask an expert seller for help”. And they are so unknowledgeable, many of the fields don’t apply. And their software will auto fill them with nonsense. For instance my eBay user name has “turtle” in it so it was filling in the subject field with turtle. I didn’t even notice it was doing this until someone messaged me asking what the item had to do with turtles. Then I had to go edit it out of a lot of listings I already had completed. And a lot more nonsense like that. And a lot of these attributes are on a three tiered fold down you wouldn’t even know was there. A few more.. I listed a 1908 registered mail signature card from Buffalo NY to Switzerland. Their software filled in Subject as “animal” and Country of Origin as Switzerland. And decided my item was blue and filled in color field as blue. Nobody would ever search in postal history category by color. And of course I had to edit all this out of a slew of auctions since eBay then set them as defaults! I did figure out how to circumvent it all by filling in every useless field with a period. And then never starting a new auction from scratch. I believe someone here asked why there was a “Make offer” on their listings… because eBay hid that option on a fold down menu you’d never access! Even then if you price something at a start price of more than 99 cents it puts it in. You have to go in and delete it! And if you pull the auction back up to edit some text.. it will add the make offer in again! I learned that one by accident. I listed a set of old Coke advertising postcards for $5.99 plus $1 postage. I no sooner listed it and I get a message I have an offer! I had no idea I was open to offers at that point! It was a jerk offering a dollar with free shipping. Basically with eBay charging 45 cents for the transaction and 58 cents postage I’d be paying 3 cents to send it to him! Um no! I eventually got my asking price. Frickin day in the park!

Mine is estimating how many 40 yarders it would take to haul off all my stuff! She calls my stamp and postmark collection “dead people’s mail”

Great builds! Congrats!

Kinda like station wagons when we were teenagers? You'd do anything not to be seen in your parents Chevy wagon! But now we think they're cool!

Hmmm.. I’ve owned three Chrysler minivans. A 1984 Caravan, 1990 Grand Voyager and the 1996 Grand Caravan Mark III high top I still own. Over 206,000 on it and it does utility duty now. The seats have been in the garage for years. Ive pretty much kept it to ferry in all the supplies for NNL East each year. One year someone looked in the open rear hatch, noticed stuff jammed all the way to the inside of the raised top and said, “it’s amazing the whole show fits in there”

Hey Bill! Good luck with the Saturn! Hoping your detailing guy can get the fuzz out of the headlights! I hear ya on not wanting something. Back in the day GM had the most annoying GEO commercials... three people, two girls and a guy dressed up as cheerleaders... "We're the GEO TRIO!" It as soooo annoying I swore I'd never buy one. And of course I've had two! ? Back when I bought my Geo Tracker new, I couldn't find one with a 5 speed. They all were automatics! I finally found mine on a lot, I saw it when the dealer was closed and went back. As we approached the car, the salesman said it was nearly perfect but it ONLY had a 5 speed! I took that as a cue to go nutz! Oh no! Not an automatic? What will we do? Each time I hesitated the price went down. And yes, the prices people pay for cars these days. I live under a rock so I had no idea! A few weeks ago someone had a used Toyota pickup for sale on Facebook Marketplace for $45,000! I was floored. Then I took a look and realized what people are paying for a new Ford pickup! Frickin house payments for eight years! Amazing! Not you or I my friend!

Eat my spinach

I understand there’s some non naughty words on the list because Gregg thought it would be funny!

Then we have the Pillared Hardtop…

I have crashed and burned this round! Blame it on summer! I have not worked on anything for a few weeks. I will roll it over to next round. At least fall into winter will be better weather to hide in the model room!

Ha! We traded a first year Fox Capri V8 on that Nissan. The Capri hatch was useful. I had an entire love seat in it. The car, not so much! Got rid of it at 3 years an 34,000 miles because it was nothing but trouble!

You’re a modeler! Just stretch the chassis!

I read on one of the boards that I need to buy a hair brush for painting!

The Citation was typical poor quality GM of that era. Between us and my wife’s friend we almost had a Motor Trend like comparison test… We had a new Nissan Stanza hatchback and our friend bought a Citation at the same time. Looking at them side by side, the Nissan had much better fit and finish. The interior was nice with Japanese ergonomics, like an adjustable mid back bolster on drivers seat, and all the little bins and such you find in a Japanese car. The Citation had a very stark rental car interior. The Citation was right back at the dealer because within a month of new, the heater core dumped itself on the front carpet! Over the next few years the Citation was unreliable and spent a lot of time in garages. One thing after another. The Stanza was a much better experience. It never broke. It was nicer to drive, better road feel. The only issue we had during our dozen years of ownership was a leaky sunroof. Our friend finally had enough of the Citation and sold it for $500. I got $2500 for a 12 year old Stanza with 120k miles!

A while back I got into the old Monogram Model A series.. the early 1/24 ones. I have built examples of most of them as well as a bunch of unbuilt skits for future inspiration! I also have a dune buggy collection. Probably have them all at this point. And of course Valiants! Mostly bought cheap way back! I have them all including the crummy companies. And yes I have a 66 promo. The crown jewel of the collection

Or major interruption

As I’ve gotten older I’ve learned to not take the hobby too serious. I won a bunch of trophies and plaques back in the day, and the thrill has long worn off. In those days I was completing one or two a year. Now a days I build for myself. I still put out an interesting model, I wire engines, pin everything together, make and add little detail bits. All that after market stuff I bought for “someday”, well it’s someday! And quite frankly I just have to please me! That gives me license to try things, take risks and just have fun. And I play with glue bombs because it’s pretty much like restoring old cars. I’ll have an old junker and it will speak to me. So I do something with it. Exhibit A - I bought this 53 Ford in a bag of junk to get another car. I dumped it in my big tub of 53-6 Ford pickup parts. Note I probably have a dozen of this kit. One day I was searching for something in that tub and I moved it out of the way, it wound up sitting on top of my TV. I kept looking at it and thought it might be FUN to play with it a bit. After all I couldn’t hurt it! And this is where we landed. I kept the essence of the old build but improved it greatly. I built another Desoto engine, wired and detailed it. And in the end it doesn’t look half bad. And I had fun.

There’s a helicopter museum in the next town so we get a lot of low and loud chopper flights over the neighborhood. When Biden is home in Delaware, fighter jets patrol our airspace. The ladies on our NextDoor app are always complaining about the noise!

That is cool! I like the second steering wheel for a copilot!

Let’s face it.. you are either a glue bomber or not! For me, when I see an old classic in poor condition, I respect that it’s survived some 40-60 years and it’s time it shines! A guy at a club meeting had a bunch of old built ups in boxes for $5 each. He was hawking that he needed money, so I bought four to help him out. I kept coming back to this one.. there was something about that flat green that grabbed me.. I needed a quick project so I turned it into this! And this is the one that got me into the old Monogram Model A’s! Then I got this one in a bag of parts. Again, it had personality.. that top chop done by a kid back in the early 1960s. It didn’t appear to have ever been completed. And it became this blue bomber! A local dealer friend just handed me this in a plastic bag.. can ya fix it? It was an original Blue Beetle so why not? Restored and sitting on the shelf! Again a freebie. A guy knew I was into Valiants. I guess giving it to me was a better option than throwing it away! I felt challenged to do something with it… Everything came from the parts box. My favorite save! And I’ve got more!

Since someone mentioned building a Packard Hawk from the 53 kit… Right after the rerealise of the 53 kit some 25 years ago, the late Todd Konsol built this one. He was very talented and could even hand paint scripts!

They’ll also try to shove a model kit into that same envelope! ?

Collar for girlfriend