Tom Geiger

I'll start out with an easy one that isn't finished just yet. This is the dashboard out of my 50 Ford pickup rat rod. Nothing special other than I am not a smoker so I didn't want an ashtray. But I'd like to have a large glovebox.. so I modified the dash the way I wanted my 1:1 to be. Most folks will never even notice! An easy dash created for the Beverly HIllbillies truck cab. A flat piece of plastic wood grained with paints, then a photo etched gauge bezel and knobs made from ship building nails were added. 8 ball shifter is a large shirt pin with a dab of white paint and the small "8" was a decal number on a kit decal sheet. A narrowed '53 Studebaker dashboard was fit into this '34 Ford sedan interior. another '34 Ford got this shortened '57 Chevy dashboard Just some ideas... lets see yours

Back in the last decade of the last century.. 1992 to be exact, my daughter built the Ghostbuster car and we went to the Staten Island Model Car Show, which was then held in conjunction with an AACA car show. It was a good day out since there was a full size car show, kids rides and a lot of different food and things to keep a young daughter busy. I was very careful to explain to sportsmanship to her. We built models for the fun of it, and that we shouldn't expect to win a trophy, so if we didn't we shouldn't be disappointed because we came to have fun. I hadn't won much at that point, so I really didn't expect to win. Well, that lesson went right out the window. My '55 Chevy pickup took First Place Light Commercial, the Ghostbuster took Second Place Junior and the car that never won anything, my '32 Ford took Third Place Street Rod.

thanks Tom that's what I try to achieve with these models. Those little slices of life we all find familiar, sometimes of a past era, that could be forgotten. Someone once called the builds "Rockwell-esqe".

A good place to start is a pack Evergreen calls 9002 Odds & Ends. It's an 8 oz pack of misc samples of different sheets, strips, rounds and even square tubes. It's a really good selection for around $7-8. I bought two of them and it's great when you need a little piece when scratch building, and you didn't have to buy a whole pack to get that one piece. Stuff I find valuable for making stuff is the white plastic sheets in several different thicknesses, round strips and half circle strips for making things like drip rails and body trim. For chassis, the square tube or C channels in the larger sizes would be the way to go. The packs of strips are usually around $3 at hobby shops, so whenever I'm shopping I'll try to pick up a couple different bits that I don't have. Like if I'm buying some glue and putty, I'll round up my purchase to $20 by adding two packs of strips. That way I'll eventually have them all. The packs do last forever, I have some that have $1.75 price tags on them. Oh, and note that with Plastruct, it comes two ways. The white is styrene and the dark gray is ABS. I prefer to work with styrene, it's just easier to work with. The ABS needs it's own special glue. Hope this helps.

and a little story... let's just say in a far away land a long time ago there was a first year event with peoples choice voting. One of the guys running the event took me aside to ask for advise on a dilemma. There was a participant who entered models in many categories. They weren't very well built models. He brought two boys, maybe 9-13 years old with him to the show. Neither kid had any models to display. He had the two kids walking around and asking people for ballots. Then the show team realized that a stack of ballots disappeared off the registration table when they weren't looking. So the show team knew this guy had stuffed the ballot box. I asked just how bad.. they said they'd have to give him every award at the show! So obviously all of his ballots were tossed out, and the contest results went from there. At the end of the awards ceremony this guy was livid. In his mind the contest was about who 'collected the most coupons'. He kept calling the ballots 'coupons'. He thought he was crafty and had won the contest. Every so often you get someone who has ideas from friggin Mars, and no moral fiber at all. He had no concept that a contest was about building the best model, only how to pull one over on the crowd. Never mind what he was teaching those kids!

When running a people's choice balloting, the host needs to be careful. At NNL East we have a team of over 30 people running the show. We all keep an eye out for things that just aren't right. For instance, one year a guy had his young daughter walking around asking people for their ballots. People who weren't going to vote and thought she was cute gave them to her. In the end, we watched the count and pulled out the votes for that mediocre model. Our vote counting team has a lot of experience and knows how to spot anything out of the norm. For instance when you get a wad of 10 ballots all in the same hand writing, all folded in one wad.. And that's why the same team does this job every year. One year we had a very nice Munsters house diorama win in the Junior category. Upon investigating, we found out it was an adult model, that the guy placed on the junior table because there was an electric outlet there to plug in his lights! So we went to the next highest vote. We do go out and get a visual on the winners prior to awards announcement. As said earlier, 99% of the time the crowd gets it right. The best in show is always a hands down winner.

You can see it has the design and essence of the Corvette, but the actual proportions may be way off. For instance, everything from the rear window backward looks to be widened and elongated. It may be tough to build from kit parts.

If you want the time to set up and adjust parts, try Zap-a-Gap CA glue. It's a bit thicker than normal CA and it's supposed to fill in small gaps between parts. I use it as my every day glue because I like the fact that it doesn't grab immediately. I don't use two parts because I don't think it's warranted and would be wasteful since I tend to use a little dab of glue at a time. The Zap is plenty strong enough, and I do pin a lot of my parts together anyway. I also use the Microscale Crystal clear on glass, but lately I've been using a very narrow clear two sided tape.

I agree. The only thing I would suggest would be to give the grill a black wash to add to the detail. Kudos! I love the color.

Here's what I have in vans... the purple pickup above started out as a cube van project. Then I decided to create the pickup cab with the front and back of the van body. What was left of the body is in this last shot. It banged around the model room for at least 10 years as you see it. It was even used as a paint stand in my spray booth. Then one day I picked it up and started carving.... And wound up with this camper. Got two models out of one old Dodge van kit.

Body looks good. Since you're in Georgia, the car may not have had rust out like up north. The GM cars of that era always rusted out around the back window trim, and the usual lower end rust around the rear wheel wells, front and rear fenders behind the wheel wells. Passenger side was more often more rusted than the drivers side since cars sat at the curb and the passenger side sat lower. Interior wise, a buddy-o-mine had a Monte Carlo that he got with a white cloth interior that looked a heck of a lot like that until we replaced the seats! To be totally accurate as well as to give some contrast to the interior, they usually had black carpet or rubber mats and I believe the dashboard was black on all of them. The rear parcel shelf was cardboard and that usually was warped from dampness and direct sunlight. That could be replicated with very thin cardboard, wetted then dry to warp it and then glued down with white glue. Just thought I'd make a few suggestions since you are off to a pretty good start!

I'll have to look for one of those. I didn't realize there was a version with fenders. I have a couple of the older fenderless issue. Looks great!

Richard, if you are using the kit seats, a lot of other seats will fit on those pedestals! I used the custom pleated buckets out of the '57 Ford kit in one of mine...

I paint the inside of the body flat black. I also do that to the outside of an interior tub and the top side of the chassis. I see a lot of guys leave this all in bare plastic in their build progress photos. I just feel that I don't want to get finished and be able to see plastic up in a spot I can't reach easily. I don't know Corvettes well at all. Maybe you'd see the unfinished fiberglass from underneath? I know I have a dune buggy that I replicated by spraying the body color on the bottom but not clear coating it so it looked unfinished but molded in color.

John got this one right. I'm involved in NNL East and can tell you that out of that room of 1500-2000 models, the public always finds the top model. And there is no definitive formula other than quality. In the past 5 years, the award has been won by a VW, a Ferarri, a Mack, a Toyota, and a diorama. The common denominator has been the quality of the build. Check out this link, you can see the results page for NNL East for 2003-2013 http://www.nnleast.com/

Mine too! It's time I had one of those "hold everything!" moments and clean it all up. I'm at the point where I can't find parts to projects I'm working on, and I have about 5 things going on the bench. Nothing has kept my interest lately.

I know I wouldn't want to drive in that! At Wall Stadium in New Jersey, the cars are all in an area the size of maybe a football field outlined by telephone poles (laying on their sides) to define the space. Once down in the rink, everyone goes nose to the edge of the rink (against the poles) and tail facing inward. At the horn, everyone backs out into one big collision. From there everyone can drive anywhere in the rink. Cars get hung up on the poles. So you have a few ways to get cars out. Hit them in the nose, taking out the radiator, hit them directly into a wheel, either breaking their front suspension, or getting the drive wheels stuck inside the fender so their tire shreds, or you smack them up onto the poles. You never, ever hit a drivers side door. In this derby, nobody really gets over 20 mph so it's good clean fun. The only time I ever saw anyone hurt was when a guy fell off his trunk lid while exiting the car through the rear window! He broke his wrist.

Sorry for your luck! But remember it's not how you screw up, it's how you recover! And as long as you keep your cool and try again, you'll get it lookin' fine! I'm working on a 2010 Mustang convertible right now. I painted it candy metallic green and I didn't put white or silver under it, just Duplicolor primer gray. It came out flat, so I tried some Duplicolor clear on the hood. Nope, It might as well as been Testors Dullcote! So I got some Tamiya clear, hit the hood again and it looks good. So I might just save mine yet!

Jason, I don't know where that was, but I've never heard of a show where judges would treat someone like that. Sounds like that show isn't around anymore because nobody would ever go back. The judges must have had a very high opinion of themselves to be so crass.

Great Display! You must know a couple of my mates? Alan B and Richard B?? Both have been to my house in New Jersey.

I always got a kick out of the old show "The FBI". Everyone in the show drove a new Ford, except the bad guys. They always had some old heap that got wrecked in the show. Every time you'd see an old heap, you'd wait for the crash.

That can also be said for how many modelers there are out there that don't belong to a club. Looking at the NNL East mailing list, an extremely small percentage of these guys do! Some folks just aren't joiners, just as some don't feel comfortable enough on the Internet to participate on the boards.

I wasn't going to show this one here, but what the heck. I finished it in the early 1980s and it was my very first car that I built all out for contests. Back then, being new to the hobby, winning in a model contest had been on my Bucket List from when I was a kid. So I was very enthusiastic! The early 1980s wasn't a time to be different. I'd bring the car to contest after contest and never won anything, even in smaller shows. There would be 4 cars in the category and they'd give out 3 awards and skunk me, giving 3rd to a snap kit one of their wives snapped together. I wanted to do better so I'd ask judges why my car wasn't winning and I'd get some really out there reasons... I was told it would never place because the color scheme was ugly. There was another more traditional street rod in the very same colors winning at the time. I was told my car was 'unrealistic' because nobody would ever build a car like that... same contest gave an award to a '39 Chevy with a Ferarri drive train. Talk about something nobody would do in real life! One show even told me they 'disqualified' my car because 'it was sacrilege to do that to a Ford! My favorite was a judge who told me my car would've placed but got discounted because I had no battery... you should have seen his face when I told him it was a VW, the battery was under the back seat! So my club mates and I would go to show after show and it was a running joke that this car would never win.. then one day it took 2nd place in Street Rod at Masscar. We didn't know what to do! It did win a few awards after that. Anyway, looking at this car now with more learned eyes, I can see things that are wrong with the build that I didn't see then, so it's not the greatest model in the world. More important, people do comment on it. So I enjoy talking to them. That's better than winning awards. It had been broken in a box for about 10 years and I fixed it last year. So maybe I'll bring it out again!

Great work John, I really enjoyed the ride of watching the progress on your last two builds day by day. Heck, the two of them sitting side by side look like a Circus side show! Really waaay out there cars. I can't wait to see what you start next!

Some of the narrow horizontal blinds look like they'd make good snow plows!