Tom Geiger

This was my '73 Plymouth Valiant Scamp. Nicely done and I liked it. I too got tired of people at car shows taking me aside to tell me I was wasting my time and money when I could have had a nice Mustang or Camaro instead.

There was a strike at AMT, mainly the packaging people, but the designers were from the same union and had to honor the strike. When they went out the wood buck for the Garwood was on the workbench. When they came back, it had warped beyond use. With AMT recovering financially from the strike, it was decided not to pursue recreating all that lost work. I read that recently on Bonediggers.

Great work and a really cool idea to build that into a display case.

Very nice work, especially for your second kit this century!

the best masks are Tamiya Tape and Bare Metal Foil depending on what you are masking. Tamiya Tape is good for body separations where you have a long line to match. Bare Metal Foil is good in small tight spots, like around a door handle. One trick is that once you have your tape down, give it a shot of clear before you do your color. If there will be any bleed through, the clear will fill it in harmlessly. The Tamiya Tape is expensive but worth it due to the fine edge. Only use that for the edge, mask up the rest of the body with 3M Blue painters tape, available at any home store.

Superb job Wayne! I'd be pleased to have that one on my shelf... or in my driveway!

Very true. The kids you see at formal model shows tend to be the sons of modelers. And they have Dad's influence, and access to a major collection and workshop for their builds. In fact their builds rival that of many adult builders. In walks some poor kid who has coaxed his mother to bring him to a show. He has a box stock build, built with as much care and know how he has figured out on his own. It's brush painted from Testors bottles and assembled with Testors glue, with it showing on glass and a few other areas. Just how does that kid feel seeing the other models on the junior table? Enough to give up modeling all together! I never did get to a model show when I was a kid. I saw them in Model Car Science Magazine and would have killed to attend one, but we lived in Europe at the time. My father did take me to coin and stamp shows and even participated in the hobby with me. I was collecting Lincoln pennies, and Roosevelt dimes, and he was collecting Jefferson nickels. I finally got to a model car show as an adult. I went to NNL East Three and was instantly hooked on the hobby once again. And by NNL East Four I was on the show committee.

Very nice story Roger, with a happy ending. Everyone won. There are those of us who come across as kindly father / grandfather types. And there are the few who resemble Aqualung!

Cool! I had to go back and read the entire thread it was so neat. I love saving things nobody else would try to save. Especially since that poor body somehow survived 50 plus years in it's broken state, it deserves to shine again!

I don't wanna know and I don't keep track or even add it all up. The truth is that the longer we build the cheaper the models become since we already have a good arsenal of parts, parts kits and supplies. I will go to the hobby shop and stock up on $60 worth of Evergreen, and never think about the cost again as I dig into it on my builds. And general supplies are stretched across several to many builds. I have packs of small items like radio diodes for fuel filters, engine wire etc that are 20 years old. The irony is that for all the high dollar kits and resin pieces I own, I tend to build my better models from current releases, kits bought dirt cheap and junk box parts.

Very nice job on a classic kit! I remember getting that kit when I was 13. I spent an evening painting it, mine wound up Christmas tree green since that was the spray paint we had. The second evening was spent assembling it. I remember being very pleased with the results. Monogram did a good job producing these Tom Daniel designs as easy builds for us youngsters back then. And of course we all have fond memories of them and need to have them again today!

Set up a search on eBay for that kit. They'll email you whenever one is listed. You can bid on it, until you get one at a cheap price. You will eventually get one in the $20s. That's not a big money kit.

In 1:1 demo derbies, if you could get your rear end to fold up like this, the car was invincible. There was no more damage you could do to it! Guys would put strategic cuts in the tops of the quarter panels to encourage it to bend this way. The only problem was that you couldn't see out the back at all to see what you were aiming at!

I'm very happy with your report Terry! You should be up and back to yourself in no time at all!

The Omni and Horizon have both been recently done as 1/25 or 1/24 diecast. Easily available in the $10 range on that auction place.

In case you didn't see these, I've been working on a pair of Caravans. Top is both vehicles and the bottom photo is the CV commercial van version right after I added my home made decals. (post edited to replace photos that Fotki is currently hiding!)

Art is correct, the manufacturers can only make what the rest of the delivery chain will purchase. Note that AMT announced several new kits that didn't happen because they didn't generate the enough presale orders to justify production. That is the wholesalers didn't agree that these would be successful.

Honestly, I wouldn't be building it. Those old Revell kits were over ambitious tooling for the 1968 or so era they were released. As others have said, there are fit issues with the opening panels, and it's not a pleasant experience. If you want to build a '57 Chevy there are much better kits, including the newer Revell 2 door sedans. I'd take the kit you have, advertise it on eBay as "Low Rider" and someone will buy it just for that!

Considering that we've seen period Ford and Chevy vans released recently, I can bet that we'll see this Dodge once again. The current owners, Round 2, no doubt understand that the last release used a joke of a grill, so no doubt they would have to do some work on the tool to give us a suitable stock grill once again. I'll bet we see it soon enough.

I'm amazed that I didn't see this model before since I spend more than a healthy share of my time here on the board. It's absolutely fantastic. A great rendition of a '53 that we'd all love to drive in 1:1. I think I inherited my Studebaker gene, my father was a big fan. He was completely in love with the '53 coupe, but the best he could do was to acquire a '54 4 door sedan in 1956 as our first family car. I was brought home in that car in 1958, and he painted it green when I was 3 and as family lore says, I was so excited that I exclaimed "Daddy's new car!" and put a hand print on the door of the fresh paint job!

It's a tough world we live in today. You never know when you've overstepped your bounds, or how people will take your interaction with a child. Sad it is. I don't think the world has gotten much worse, it's just 'out there'. Back in our day there were 'funny uncles' and other bad things that just got swept under the rug. I remember my parents telling me not to talk to strangers or accept car rides from anyone. And that was 50 years ago. Today things have gotten pretty complex. My club gave up trying to host a kids day show when we couldn't get any response from the school system or the boy scouts. Seems the formality of making sure that none of us were registered offenders overshadowed giving kids the opportunity to learn about model building. Still, I smiled and waved back at a baby in the doctors office this week. Her mother smiled back. Today I said, "Excuse me honey" to a little girl who wandered in the path of my shopping cart in the supermarket. Her father and I exchanged pleasantries. So there is hope for our world!

A rarer one! The AMT Plymouth Horizon TC-3. There's like ten of the Omni out there for every one of these. Hard to find but still cheap once found.

I used to listen to Aussie radio stations. It was fun listening to their summer at the beach specials while we were under snow!

Ken, in case you are not aware, there is a guy making the sheets for the old Mattel Vacuform. Right size with all the correct holes around the perimeter. They're available in both clear and white. Callari Modelworks modelwks@rochester.rr.com

Just hoping it's nice and warm here in the suburbs of Philadelphia for this holiday weekend. Preparing today for company coming on Sunday and staying over until Monday. Just got done shopping, bought plenty of beer and meats for the grill. Gonna make ribs and my own special wings, marinating up the chicken breasts and pork chops next! And we'll spend the days in our pool.