Tom Geiger

I've done curbsiders with just the essentials of an engine glued into the chassis. Just assemble what you'd see from under it. I'm doing that right now with my Dodge A100 van. The Little Red Wagon kit has a removable engine cover in the cab, and the doors open so you can access it. I'm doing a Jimmy Flintstone resin van and the doors don't open. Thus, I will glue the engine cover in place in the interior. So the slant six I'm putting in the engine bay will only be detailed enough of what you will see from down under. May not even get a valve cover.

In the early days of eBay you could start bidding off at a penny and the bidding would take the price to where it should be.... today, starting bids at a penny is just giving stuff away. eBay has just gotten so saturated with like product that there isn't much lively bidding anymore.

License plate is cool, I add them to all my builds since they make the car look real. I'm not into that club plate up front since it covers up part of that spectacular tractor nose you made! Many club plates were hung on chains below the rear license plate. It may look good there as long as it doesn't interfere (either functionally or visually) with the duel exhaust.

I use chalks. There is a set called "Earth Tones" that costs less than $10 and will last you a decade. I sand the chalk sticks to make dust. Then I have a two brush method... With brush one, I paint a bit of Testors Dullcote (I spray it into a small bathroom cup) on the intended area. Then with brush two, I dip into the chalks and depending on the effect I desire, I either paint with it, or press it into the dullcote. For instance, on a chassis, I will paint, then press the final details. See pix at links below... somehow this board wouldn't let me post these (gifs) http://www.flickr.com/photos/jpl3k/2992103464/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/jpl3k/2991253595/in/photostream/

I found these roaming through a hobby shop. For approx. $5 each, I figured I'd give them a try. All I want to do for now is to create a surface to photograph models on. Here's the black pavement one. Decently convincing as pavement. The background is too sunny, I usually shoot past the sunny part of the day. And the Gravel one also works for me. Adding some vegetation to blur the edge and add some realism. And some scale characters to make it look real. Okay, maybe not. And how I did it. I found a sturdy box the right size and just sprayed the finish on it. The paint took over night to dry. Then I flipped it over and sprayed the other side. And a carrying case for my photographic sessions. A bit of improvement over my old method of placing the models on the bench.

I didn't know it was warm out until I looked out the model room window and saw two kids outside wearing shorts! Oh, I use my lawn mower to shred leaves. Might have been mine you heard!

Um no... it had a minimum bid of $449.99 plus postage. Maybe if he offered Free Shipping?

Same here in Eastern PA. And I celebrated by getting all the leaves off my pool cover!

I haven't had a major hobby injury (yet!) but all this reminds me of the time I went up the carpeted stairs in my old house, barefoot. I felt a sharp pain and looked at the bottom of my foot. There I saw a pierced ear earing with the full post embedded in my heel! The worse part? Having to pull it out! All three of the females in the house caught hell for leaving earings on the stairs. And of course none of them admitted the offending one was theirs!

wow! that is spectacular!

As said above, it's not a spoof, but a real promotional item from a movie I love. It has value as a collectible to model car collectors as well as movie memorabilia collectors. I'd like to have one for my collection. If it was there for $100, Buy It Now, I would have hit the button. The only question is "what is it worth?" Apparently not the $450 this seller is asking, but it's his to sell at whatever price he decides to ask. If the kit did sell, this thread would be taking a different turn!

I'm gonna need one of those. Here's a little Suzuki Carry that I'd been playing with. It originally came with a cargo box.

Palmers seemed to be sold in smaller stores, like drug stores and luncheonettes. When I was 10 my grandmother used to drag me along to Bingo. Right across the street from her church as a small luncheonette, and she'd give me enough money to get a Palmer kit, glue and a Yoohoo drink to keep me busy. I knew the model sucked, but it was what was there in that moment, and since it was Nana's money, free to me. So you'd get one mainly due to circumstances (or as a present from a clueless relative). Now I wonder if the folks who worked at Palmer knew their models sucked? And how did they drag themselves into work every day, knowing that? Imagine a resume that included "Head of Tooling At Palmer Plastics".

The move to off shore kit production has no doubt kept the costs in line. Can you imagine what kits would cost today if manufactured in the USA? The change when they sent production to China didn't reduce the cost of kits to us end consumer but the quality went way up. We also got nice things like parts protected in small bags even convertible windshield frames wrapped in cardboard and hand taped.

Back in NJ we used to belong to a town pool club where people would just leave their mess... cans, sandwich wrappers etc. all over the lawn and picnic areas. One day after watching a pretty obnoxious family next to us eat sub sandwiches and pizza that they brought from outside, the father just dumped his blanket on the ground as they prepared to leave. I'd had enough so I confronted him. His response? The pool club pays people to clean it up! And he was really incensed that I challenged him at that. I left it alone past that because he looked like he was going to hit me. Friggin slobs.

Today? People who clog up the highways on holidays driving 50 mph in the center lane of a 65 mph interstate!

I found the key to the 24 Hour build was to abandon the OCD stuff we do when building. Find a fairly simple kit, build it fairly box stock, and make sure it's a kit that you have extras of so you can sacrifice one. Don't expect to build a trophy winner. Remember, this is just for fun. Sometimes we forget that in our quest for the perfect model. This past build, I chose the Revell Miss Deal Funny Car. I always wanted to build one, and I had several in my stash. My plan was to build it right out of the box, maybe wire the engine (which I did with a prewired distributor) and distinguish it with decals and final finish. The process is interesting because you learn a bit about yourself and building. The challenge runs Noon on Saturday to Noon on Sunday. I did it here in PA by myself, others get groups together in their homes. First I took all the parts off the trees and sanded the imperfections like sprue seams and ejector pin marks. Then I assembled things that would get painted once together like the roll cage and engine block. I was dismayed that by 6pm all I had were piles of primed parts. So I took a dinner break. The evening got things into color. I used all Duplicolor sprays since they dry very quickly. I started assembling things as soon as they were ready. That led me into detailing assemblies and getting things glued together. By 3am I was very tired and seeing double. I fumbled my Studebaker body and caught it, trapping it against my chest... breaking both A pillars! I did recover by gluing them back around straight pin lengths for strength. I was lucky that these were parts that were brush painted silver so it didn't destroy my overall build. Things went slowly after that, but magically a car appeared on my bench. I had it up on wheels and the body on it by 5am. There was still some stuff to do... the kit blower top was sunken in and needed replacing, and someone had prewarned me about the fiddly headers so I left those parts off. I also had some weathering and such to finish up later on. So I called it "done", took a bunch of pictures and posted it all on the build website by 6am and went to bed. I got up at 9am to see how others were doing, and then slept right through the noontime finish. So what did we learn? First, I learned to build a bit more systematically. Instead of working on one thing at a time (along with multiple clean up and painting sessions for each set of parts), I did things all at once, like the clean up and priming, and everything that would be the same colors all got painted at the same time. I also learned not to sweat the small stuff. Too often we over prep things and worry about perfection in areas that won't be visible in the final build. I also learned that some of what I do on my builds is essential for me. I tried assembling parts like the roll cage with glue alone. I've customarily pinned these kind of things together. As things fell apart, I stepped back and pinned them! I've carried a lot of this over to my every day building today. I've sped up my process (and the fun factor!) quite a bit. My production this year is my best on record. And here's the result of 24 crazy hours! Note that the blower, exhaust and some of the rust work was done later. The decals all came in the kit, and the Miss LED name is a jumble from the Miss DEAL decals. I had originally thought about doing custom decals. This was good enough for the quick build. I didn't go crazy adding things, just the kit as Revell intended it to be. I thought about slowing down to add seat belts, but no, I kept on going. Truth be told, the decals on the firewall cover up imperfections, but add a lot to the overall look. I also learned that I can crank out an acceptable model in a much shorter period of time. Note that we aren't entering this one in the GSL, but we have created a model that I'm not ashamed to show off on the boards, and at club meetings and NNLs. I found that the guys who couldn't finish in 24 hours stuck too hard to the way they always built. Too much time doing the steps, and being too much of a perfectionist. Also, some chose complicated kits and wanted to add a bunch of after market parts and modifications. You can't do that here. This is just for fun, so go ahead and build like a sixth grader! The rules are that it has to be a full detail kit, so no snappers or curbsiders. But there are a lot of kits that aren't too complicated that would be great candidates. And what am I doing this coming February? I don't know. I have so many options that I keep changing my mind. I probably won't decide until right before I have to start! The Official Rules: Start at noon on Sat and end at noon on Sun New or unstarted kit. No quick build snap kits. Allowed to glue up to 4 pieces to body ahead of time Must paint build Post pics as you go along Most important thing is to have fun. The Official Site: https://www.facebook.com/groups/455951714469809/

I wouldn't chance it. Back when I tried regular Gorilla Glue to remount a soap dish in my tub tile. I didn't know the stuff expanded as it dried and I later had to chisel off this ceramic soap dish that had bulged out and twisted. It was glued there real good though! If you're looking for cheap CA, try Michaels. They sell Zap-A-Gap, which I prefer as a CA since it has some substance to it. Using a 40 or 50% off coupon it's like $2-3.00 and that's cheap enuf for me!

Nice trucks. I had replied to your Class of 13 cars thread that 13 was a great year's production.. and that was before I saw the trucks. That makes for 19 and if you finish one more that would be a total of 20 for the year. I'm going to count mine up, and post by years end. I have a few that I may be able to push off the bench by year's end, but I'm still nowhere near your numbers!

It appears the Class of 13 also has 13 members. That's great production, and surely beats mine for the year! Kudos to you for some super builds there too.

Being a military brat living in foreign countries, we lived our lives through the Sears Wish Book. The PX even had a Sears desk where you could place orders to be picked up there. It was probably 1969 or 1970 and I requested that Santa bring me the Renwal Visible V8 and Visible Chassis, as shown in the mentioned catalog. In my young reasoning, they said the engine actually ran, so I figured if I had the chassis too, I could drive it around! I did get the V8 but someone neglected to get me the chassis! As has been said by others, it was expensive and I guess my father didn't want me driving around. I was somewhat disappointed. My father and I assembled the V8 together, pretty much like all our projects together... he did the fun work and I cleaned up and handed him parts.

This year I did the 24 Hour build. I wasn't seeing straight by 3am and I was doing goofy things. I dropped the car body and quickly grabbed for it, trapping it against my chest... breaking both A pillars! Painted and finished body too! I did manage to piece them back in place around straight pins.

I like it! I especially like the idea of building a vehicle you'd like to own in 1:1. That was the same premise that I built my recent Model A Roadster pickup. And when I hit that lottery I'm taking that model down to a rod shop! And I like the grill. It makes the roadster unique and I think it's very cool!

Hi Bill- So sorry to hear about your dad. I have lost both of my parents, and am now going through the process again with my in-laws. It's emotionally draining, so I certainly understand how you feel. One of the best things you can do for yourself is to immerse yourself back into life and things you like to do. It can make things seem normal again. Glad to see you back on the board and building. I hope to see you at events this spring! Best holidays to you!