Tom Geiger

I saw this on Facebook and other boards yesterday. The good news is that Lyle, his wife and pet are all okay. The house suffered some damage and it will take a few months to have rebuilt. Lyle said that insurance will cover it all. I believe his model collection is okay. In a post he said the insurance company agreed to pack and store them all but he is choosing to do so himself (wise choice). We all wish Lyle well. He is one of the good guys.

I'd like to see a resin body with correct stock wheel wells.

Since Mike showed his rusty Cameo, I thought I'd drag out my rusty Corvette. I do my rust out a little different. I don't thin material from behind, I find that a bit unpredictable. I drill a few small holes in the shape I want my rust. Then I take an eXacto blade and turn it around in the holes to connect them in a jagged pattern. The rust on this one is chalk dust. I use the Earthtone set and Testors Dullcote and two brushes. These are going to get misshaped, so use old ones, or I have dedicated ones. Take some Dullcote and spray it into a small cup. Then brush it onto your model where you want rust. Take the second brush and dip it into the chalk dust (you will need to sand the chalk stick to get dust). Then press the dust into the Dullcote. Try to keep this brush relatively dry. You can add Dullcote and keep pressing in chalk dust of varying colors until you get what you want. Note that you won't see the final result until it all dries completely.

Once upon a time, before the Internet, I had someone mail me an old Valiant kit in response to an ad I had placed in the other magazine. It was sent UPS and never arrived. UPS had this habit of trying to get a neighbor to sign for it, so upon tracking it, they said it had been delivered to a house down the street from me. I went there and asked, nobody had seen a package. About 5 years later the people at that address were moving. A small child delivered the package to me. Turns out it was indeed delivered there and wound up being put in their hall closet.

Agreed. Leaving the screws honors the kit's heritage. If that's the builders choice, who are we to disagree?

The tooling for the '59 is AMT and the parts to build this one are Revell.. just like they took the '56 Chevy and spawned off a Nomad, I wouldn't be surprised to see a '60 Elkie. Just like we're hoping for a '57 Ranchero.

Love the way you shaped the back of the bed to allow it to tilt back. Weather it a bit, but not crusty. Can't wait to see it finished!

LOL When my oldest was 4 and my younger daughter was born, my neighbor across the street (who had 2 teen age daughters) he just shook his head and said "Heaven help ya'". We had the silliness of kids growing up, and some ups and downs but they both grew up to be college educated productive members of society! You do get through it!

Also, check out how many ink cartridges it uses and how much they cost prior to buying any unit. The printer usually comes with short shot cartridges and replacing them often costs more than the printer!

I haven't put one away for that reason, but oh I know the feeling! You get to a certain point on a build where everything is going right and that image in your head is slowly coming to shape in 3D in front of you. Every step, everything you touch makes that image clearer. You are obsessed at that point and there's no return! Those are the nights you can't sleep, that you go into the model room to look at the model again before you go to work and you day dream about while in boring meetings during the day. And once it's done, you just can't stop looking at it! I have a place of honor near the TV in my family room where those finished builds sit until I can stop looking at them!

and a standard GM door handle covers a lot of applications. In 1:1 my 1960 Buick and 1970 Chevy Impala had the very same units!

Okay... Stalled builds from ANY time frame (just not six months! LOL) I was thinking ten years wasn't that long because I'm old. Tim Boyd finished up some of his builds from the 1970s recently. Even the Testors silver paint had dried!

Okay, I'm hopefully starting something... Add a post of a long stalled model project here. Let us know a bit about it. What was your original intent, why did it stall? Projects over 10 years old please! Here's my VW drag car. Back when I was a kid I lived on the US Army Post at Pirmasens, Germany from 1969-72. A couple of times a year the Pirmasens German American Timing Association held drag races on the post air strip. I believe this was an 1/8 mile bracket race. US servicemen would race their daily drivers, an interesting array of US muscle cars showed up here, shipping courtesy of Uncle Sam. But there were a few purpose built cars built by groups of GI motorheads in the motor pools after hours... You'll have to bear with me, these photos were taken by me as a junior high schooler with my trusty Poloroid Swinger camera. One of my favorite cars was this VW drag car. It was American V8 powered. As a kid, I never asked what engine! It looks down right dangerous, on it's original VW frame with stock steering gear and only a small loop roll bar. The driver sat centered in the rear, with the roll bar sticking out the oval window. The driver got in and out through this little cut out door. I remember with the real doors open you could see the engine from either side. It did have some sheet metal work, like you can see the enclosure over the top of the engine. Bad ass view from the front. Stock VW suspension and wheels up front, probably a small block Chevy with Chevy rear in the back. All the parts had to have come from our American car junk yard on post. The car was quickly sprayed silver with no shine to it at all. It's no doubt been crushed a long time! So back around 20 years ago I started to build this car. That is the Gunze VW oval coupe and you can see some Revell VW green parts under it. The project got stalled by over complication, way beyond my skill level at the time. The gaps between the doors and body were way too wide and the hinges didn't work well. I couldn't figure out how to hinge the little drivers door either. It looks like it had a piano hinge in real life. So she's been sitting dormant for a very long time. I think about it every so often and maybe one of these days I'll pull it out and see what can be done.... Yours?

Cool idea. I could use one of those in my driveway. It's over 200 feet long and I have no place to turn a car around at the top of it, so people constantly drive off onto the lawn on either side trying to back out. Why can't people back up straight? LOL

Looks dandy to me. My father had a red one like that back when I was a kid.

Be careful. The red and green fillings are usually Playdoh!

The Mustang is only a $15-50 kit on eBay (just looked) and you will spend much more than that to buy the supplies to cast a body. Never mind the time and money you will spend learning how to make the mold, and learn how to work the resin before you get an acceptable body out of it.

Prayers coming your way from PA. These procedures are so common and safe today, that I have full confidence that you'll be home and back on the board in no time!

Superb build! If you had that sitting on the ground, you could pass it off for a real truck. Great detailing!

For gauges and license plates, you don't need to print those on decal paper. I print license plates on 60 lb bond paper to give them some thickness. I then use a white glue to affix them to my model. I print gauges on everyday 20 lb bond paper. Again I cut them out and glue them in place with white glue. I use the stuff made for model clear windows. A blob of it over each gauge makes them look like they are under glass once it totally dries. For those of us without Photo Shop, I do most of my decal sizing in Microsoft Word. I will import the image and scale it within Word. Sometimes when I'm working with images that are coming from a source that isn't scaled, or I have to approximate a fit onto the model, I'll scale it to a bunch of close sizes, (like scaling the image to 30%, 28%, 26%, 24%), then printing the page on paper. I can then cut out the images and place them over my model until I find the size that I want. Once I know that, I will copy a bunch of that same image on my page and print another test shot on paper. Now to save decal paper, I will see how big the printed image area now is and cut a piece of the decal paper to cover that. I tape the leading edge down and put the sheet back in my printer. Now when I print again, I'm printing on the decal paper! Note that word as a whole slew of lettering fonts and color choices. So if you need to print some lettering along with your photo decals, you can do that at the same time.

Very nice work! I like the whole concept.

Congrats on an excellent father / daughter activity. Time well spent that she will remember the rest of her life. Remember, it's only partly about the model, the rest of it is about having dad's full attention and sharing a project! I built a few models with my daughter when she was young. The key was to allow her to do what she wants, and not to push building on her. I'd wait until she asked if we could work on the model tonight. I never said no. When it was time for our family to sponsor a girl scout activity, we had her whole troop come to a model club meeting and build snap kits. One of her friends mentioned this to me recently, so you know they remember it. And that all seems like yesterday, my daughter is now 29! So enjoy it while you can! Yes, she's 29. She recently spotted the old Ghostbuster still proudly sitting in my prize display case!

Yes, having a car stolen sucks! Back in the day, I parked my '56 Chevy outside a pizza place. Came back outside and it was gone! It was later spotted parked on a street in the next town. I got a call that the cops had it. The next call was that the cop got an emergency call and when he got back, my Chevy was gone! You think he would have done something to disable it. The car was found the next day in a vacant lot in a nearby town. Glass busted, seats slashed, stereo and mag wheels gone. The tow yard was very good, towed it on a dolly and sat it up on blocks in their yard. I got some junk yard rims and tires to get it back home. A few days later someone gave me the names of two high school kids who were bragging about having stolen it. Do you think the local cops even investigated when handed that gift? Nope!

I came across these photos today while I was looking for something else. It's a resin 4 door sedan of the '41 Plymouth. The best part is that the caster did the work on the nose prior to casting. One less mess to deal with!

Hey Darin.. Nice work. I look forward to watching the progress! Here's the one I've had going for quite some time. I used the '59 Chevy chassis and interior. I stretched the chassis in the front wheel well. I was doing great until someone told me I had the wrong chassis. That took the interest out of the project for some time. Now I'm thinking of finishing it was Cuban license plates. Heck, they pieced it together from what they had! Note that once you've used the '59 Chevy rear valance, the connie kit works really well!