Tom Geiger

Okay.. two maybe three items. In the top photo is my eXacto brand battery power drill. I bought it at a hobby shop because my inlaws gave me a gift certificate. I've never seen another one since. I dread the day it dies! I use it every day. Next would be my cushion handle eXacto knife. It's much nicer than the hard handle. The bottom photo is the Chopper 2. I do a lot of scratch building with basswood and Evergreen plastic and it makes easy work of getting perfect cuts.

You did a good job on that nose! You are right, it doesn't fit together well at all. Makes you wonder why they just didn't mold it all as one piece.

Here's to my father, Major Arthur H Geiger, a US Army career man. He served in Viet Nam in 1962 before we admitted there was a war there. From 1966 to 1972 he had all foreign assignments. We lived in Izmir Turkey, Pirmasens Germany and then he went to Korea for a year. He retired in 1975 right after the Viet Nam war ended. He died in 1999. This photo was when he was promoted from Captain to Major while in Turkey. Yea, I'm the little guy with the slick suit! Thanks Dad!

Somebody here probably emailed him just to stir the pot.

Guys, for all the hoopla in this thread, I decided to look a bit closer and see if there is a business model there... He has over 5840 items listed in his eBay Store. Of that 2372 are model related. And he's sold 256 items since February. That includes those $14.99 tail lights as well as kits like the Monogram Dodge Ramcharger for $119.99 and the Matilda Ford van for $149.99. He has a store, so his listings go for 30 days and can be on an automatic 'relist until sold'. With a store you can get anywhere from 150-2500 free listings per month, depending on the store type. So I'm not going to try to figure out his sell through or eBay costs. HIs feedback is only 5 negs in the past year with 806 positives. None of the negs are related to the pricing of his items. So people seemed okay with what they purchased. The negs and the one neutral weren't even model related. The only one was from some guy who thought he was getting a full size roll bar for his truck, although PJ states over and over in his ads that the parts are for model cars not real cars. Two were related to the packages smelling like smoke, although he states in his ads that his items come from a "smoker friendly household". So in the end he really didn't deserve those negs. Whether we agree with his pricing or not, he seems to have found a business model that works. Something to be learned there boys...

Things get misconstrued on the Internet. Sometimes someone can read a post and get a totally different vibe than you intend, or think it was directed at them. Once on another board, I had a guy accuse me of stalking him on the board. He said that I posted in every thread he did right after him. Heck, I had never even noticed this guy before! So things can get out of hand.

Al travels on business a lot. And Ma's Resin isn't a 'business' in the same sense as Modelhaus or other large resin casters. Al pretty much got into casting for the engineering curiosity of seeing how he could perfect the process. He's done some interesting things with the molds, such as lathe produced metal sleeves to get better quality. He sells the tires pretty much at cost, and his equipment is only set up to do 3-4 tires at a time. And with the material he uses, it goes into the pressure pot overnight. So when someone orders 20 sets, it can set production back a bit. So if you're ordering stuff from Al, don't complain that he didn't ship it in a week. It's more like a friend who is doing you a favor casting some stuff for you. He's currently working on those neat complete kits, all cut on a 3D printer. I've seen the masters in person and it's totally awesome stuff. It's light years ahead of what anyone else is doing, and again it's because of the engineering curiosity that he's working on these. Heck, I'd rather see him suspend tire production and put his limited free time into these!

I don't know where this was, but I'm amazed that the IROC is in that condition if indeed it's sat inside a trailer all those years. In my personal experience, trailers aren't great environments. Extreme cold, extreme heat, damp and humid, reflecting whatever the outside weather conditions are, magnified by being an enclosed space. I had issues with office furniture sitting in trailers over a single winter. Laminates started to warp, fabric got musty. Not good at all.

I have one of the 4 door T-birds. Al from NJ posted pictures of a finished one recently too. eBay doesn't have everything all the time. For instance I've have search agents for a '72 Chevy Impala and an early Chevette. Neither are currently available, well there is one Chevette for $90 but that's not gonna happen. So when a '72 appears, there will be some spirited bidding on it.

Ron pretty much covered it. I have used the freezer method. I've also scored parting lines with an eXacto blade to give the parts a starting point to break apart. And those posts that hold in glass and interiors? I've found it easier and more productive just to drill them out rather than trying to pry the pieces apart. The decision to clean up / restore vs a complete rebuild? I've been collecting nice old customs for a while now. If a piece is exceptionally well done or a wild custom showing a lot of imagination, I try to keep them as original as possible since I see them as the folk art of our youth. While these three aren't earth shattering designs, they are cleanly built in a pleasing style. Knowing they have survived from the early 1960s, I chose to preserve the original builder's work. And here's the "wild custom showing a lot of imagination" type build. Yes, I own this one too.

Okay, many of you guys know I collect old customs, those crazy builds that we did as kids. I often find them in the bottom of parts boxes at shows, and people have started donating them to my collection. At the recent MidAtlantic NNL, a friend, Max Wolfthal, asked me to follow him out to his car. There he presented me with a bag with three old customs from the original release kits, no doubt built by a kid way back when. He said he knew most folks would just see them as $5 parts cars since both the Ford and Merc have been reissued eternally, but he knew I'd appreciate them and give them a good home. He got that right. Here's the trio Max gave me. Very nicely built '49 Fords, both red and blue customs and a green '49 Merc. For some odd reason we'll never know, the original builder didn't put any glass in these. All three needed some clean up, minor assembly and missing accessories. Focusing on the red Ford, you can see it's missing a spotlight and maybe not apparent, two of the wheel centers on the drivers side. And here we are all cleaned up! I added the spotlight from my parts bin. A model friend, Steve Linngrin, donated the wheel centers which he identified as from the 1960 Edsel kit. A close up of the '60 Edsel wheel. All the tires had shrunk off the rims (no melting!) so I had to hone them out a bit to get them back on the wheels. It's a clean custom build using parts that came with the kit, except for the Edsel wheels. I polished some scuffs out of it but other wise left the brush paint job alone. You can see the shine off the glass. The car couldn't be taken apart, so I managed to fish a windshield through the side window and into place. It took a bit of time, but it finally just snapped into place without any glue! Rear view is also cool with custom tail lights. I added the rear glass too, this one from sheet plastic and held in place with two sided scrap book tape. I added an old period AutoWorld license plate. Our original builder did some detail painting under the hood, but no wiring. This was the only one of the three that had engine detail. The other two have the hoods glued shut. The chassis was half painted flat black so I finished it up. So the red Ford is off to the Old Kustom Kollection showcase. The others still need minor work. Both need glass and the blue Ford was missing a skirt, so I need to figure out what paint was used on it to paint the replacement I have to match. I do enjoy finding and cleaning up these old customs. They are time capsules of our youth and somehow have survived 50 or more years, so they deserve to be preserved for the next 50!

Very nice build Al! Hope to see it in person in the near future! I do need to get one of these!

Wow Dan! Your MP Jeep is really cool. You could even take it to IPMS shows!

I came close to being Arthur the third.. my grandfather was actually Alfred Arthur, but went by Art. My father was Arthur Hubert and was called Arthur. My mother refused to let me be Little Artie. My mothers father was Luke Raymond and both he and my mother thought that would be a good name for me. Then my father's side complained, so I became Thomas, basically because I was named after no one to settle the squabble.

4 Metal Chassis SCREWS ONLY $14.95 Wow! I'm rich, I have a bunch of these in my parts box!

It's called 'trolling for suckers'. With eBay not charging for auctions unless you sell, it's good sport for some guys. Take a look at the sellers completed auctions and see how much of it actually sells. It might just be worth trying yourself! I also see people with eBay Stores that have complete kits listed at astronomical prices. When you have a store, you only have the "Buy It Now" option, but can have 100s of listings up indefinitely. I see the same thing in my stamp collecting category. Some of the items have been for sale there for years!

Welcome to the board! You will see that we are a bit International so you will fit right in!

1) Was your introduction to modeling at home? NO 2) From whom? My father's cousin / neighborhood kids 3) What kind of models (cars, planes, trains, etc)? Cars of course 4) What did the person who introduced you to modeling do for a living ? maybe a newspaper route 5) How old were you? 8 / 10 6) About what year was your introduction? 1965 / 1968 Note - My first memory of models was at my father's youngest cousin's house. Dickey and Donnie were teens and they shared a large bedroom with a shelf that ran around all four walls up near ceiling height. The shelf was just wide enough for a model car sideways, and to me at 8 it looked like the model cars were all driving around the room. That was the coolest thing I had ever seen. The best part was that they GAVE ME a built model to take home with me. I don't remember what it was but remember this event like it was yesterday. Since my father was a US Army officer, we then moved to Izmir, Turkey from 1966-1968. I had my Matchbox cars, but there was no opportunities to buy new toys there, so models were forgotten until we returned to the US in the summer of 1968. The kid across the street took me into his basement where he and his brother were building model cars. That was it! I was building with them from that point forward. Some guys are lucky that their fathers were into cars or built models. Mine never did. Whenever I built a nice one I got the "If you put that effort into your school work you'd have straight As".

Yes. I lived with a '73 Barracuda as my daily driver for a few years. The trunk was non-existent and the back seat wasn't fit for humans. I still remember getting my daughter in and out of the baby car seat in the back! Argh!

I think your truck, figures and assorted junk all look just dandy! Very nice work! The alarming thing is seeing that truck in a suburban neighborhood! Is that thing aimed at your house?

I think it looks great. Plus it's a piece of your personal modeling history that should always have a place of honor on your shelf!

Very true. Show cars haven't been great sellers. I imagine that those of us who remember them from our youth bought a copy but beyond that they've been poor sellers. For instance I have a Moonscope that a vendor donated to NNL East to use as a door prize last year. It's been on the door prize table for TWO shows and hasn't been given away! The other one I took home was a Barris T Buggy. Still, if you look past the kit, and can pick them up cheap, there are a bunch of parts that can be useful. I have a few of that Barris T Buggy and am thinking of modding one of them into a front engine street rod. The Barris Surf Woody actually has a neat frame that I'm hoping to use under a street rod or two. And I like the frame under the Lil Stogie and want to do something neat with one of those as well.

How about these guys? This is at the garage where I get my cars repaired. Dan says the pair of them get in his car every afternoon when they think it's time to go home! And here's my dog TJ sitting in the truck I built for the Model King box art. Note that this is the 'raw' picture prior to the final doctoring that you see on the box side. Yes, my dog is famous! (photo by Doug Whyte)

I understand his all black theme, I remember seeing a sports car collection on Cape Cod that had all red cars. Still, I'd want to have the variety of colors offered over the years. Some of those cars are breathtaking in other colors!

I remember those from my drafting days.. Mars is a German drafting supply company, "Radier" means to rub out, and "Gumi" actually "Gummi" is rubber. You know those Gummy Bears? Americans renamed the product here, they are actually called "Gummi Baren" in Germany... Rubber Bears.