Tom Geiger

I agree with Johnny. The posts where people repeat the photos just drive me nuts! It's fairly easy to edit the quote down to what you are commenting on. I stand by my observation that people start at the top of the board and don't get all the way to the bottom. In fact, I'll bet that there are people who have never scrolled down to the bottom. The big issue I'm having right now is with a moderator, where upon my civilly stated an opinion, goes off on a tirade "that if I don't like it, I should start my own board". Paid or volunteer, that's not a good way to represent the board owner.

Yes! We seriously need a split window in 1/24 or 1/25 scale! The Revell Beetles tooling is pretty worn out at this point, and Lunajammer's post is accurate. I do like the Polar Lights kit. They were really onto a good model kit formula before they stopped doing new tools. They had found a happy medium between a detailed kit and something that would be easy to assemble for the novice. Part of Tom Lowe's formula was TV and movie licensing, so the Herbie version was a good piece for movie memorabilia collectors, which is a much bigger market than us poor model car builders. I gave my first one to my 13 year old nephew and within an hour he had a nice shelf piece he was proud of. And for us guys, we can go to town on it detail wise. I'm hoping that Round 2 eventually issues the Cal Custom version which was to be the next release off the tool. The only thing that looks wrong on the kit is the way the soft top attaches to the body. Note you can see the push pin right above that B pillar. To do it right, you'd need to fill in the hole in the roof, cut the pin off the soft top and just glue it in place. The above photo is one I own but bought built as you see it. Overall a very nice Beetle that was built by the late Mike Havranek of NJ. Also note that the soft top is the first time that has appeared in 1/24 or 1/25 scale. I intend to use one on an oval window I need to build.

Very nice work! Did that Morris start as the Grommet and Wallace 1/18 scale vehicle? I saw a resin one in 1/24 from R&R on eBay.

Squadron Green Putty has no smell at all. Not the best of stuff but you'd be surprised how many guys here use it (not that they will admit!)

With the dirt, rust and brush paint theme, it looks like it could be a demo derby car!

I think most of us are too much of insiders for the box art to affect us! We know what's going on from the rumor stage of a new kit, so we know what we will and won't buy before it ever hits the market. Box art is a big seller to the general public, those that see kits for the first time on the hobby shop shelf. We seldom see stuff we don't already know about. Remember the excitement as a kid when you went store to store to look at the model selection. You'd find new kits you never knew existed and that was very exciting. And there was box art that absolutely sold kits! For me it was the Revell '57 Nomad kit. That beach scene got me time and time again. I really wanted to have the car on the box top! Here's the box. Note the Bob Paeth autograph in the sand!

No, people stay at the top of the board and forget about the categories down lower. For instance, participation is low in the "community" section at the bottom of the page. Newer posters haven't figured out the full functionality and get frustrated. I'm pretty well versed in the Internet and boards, but it took me a while to figure all the ins and outs. I found myself reading things over again before I figured out I could click the little star or dot instead of the thread name. Now I found the "View New Content" button so I hit that first when I come onto the board. Other folks get frustrated and don't return. Although it's good that everything from Day One onward is here as history, it's time consuming to read 20 page plus threads, and a lot of the pictures are gone from older posts. When I've found something I like, I will read the entire thread though. I also think the categories keep people from posting. I have a build I'd like to post, but don't know which category to post it within. The other board has no categories, the latest posts about anything is at the top. People are free to post any thoughts they may have without worry.

One of my best tool investments, a well spent $50. I use it on all my basswood and Evergreen cuts. Great straight cut every time. The Chopper allowed me to build this in 1/25 scale from old Popular Science Magazine plans. I built this to get good at working with basswood and my 1/25 scale ruler.

Depends on who owns them... the larger bus companies rent out the more comfortable air conditioned buses. A school bus is darn uncomfortable so not too popular as a rental. Back when I lived in NJ, school buses were used for non-highway, short hops. I had a bus driver who lived across the street and he had one gig that was driving the bus the length of the pier at Earl Naval Depot. Taking personnel back and forth, yea it is a looong pier. He also drove the buses at the Garden State Arts Center during concerts, driving people in and out to the remote parking lots. A lot of school buses are actually owned by school districts. They aren't set up to rent out buses so most of those sit when not being used for their intended purpose. Here in PA, this company appears to own nearly every bus in the area! You see their name on all the school buses to luxury tour buses. A good example when it's not good to use your name on your business. I don't think the significance was lost on any school child!

I'm very happy to be getting a new tool Beetle of any age. Hopefully the kit will be reasonable enough in price to use as a parts car for other VW bodies we currently own. Hoping it won't be too far off in size from the tired old Revell cars. Still, I'm wondering out loud why nobody has done a split window in 1/24 scale!

Edsel-Dan is correct. I've seen Open Road on Chevy, Ford and Dodge chassis. Sold only as a finished motor home. I really never liked the Open Road's picture window on the back. It just seems to be a stress point that would move around as the truck was driven. So.... what I'd do if I wanted to create something generic, use the camper but put a fixed back on it with a window in it or something. Alter it somewhat so it no longer is an Open Road. As Jaeron posted above, there were car based campers. There was one company that was producing these in limited quantities by buying late model cars that had been totaled out at the rear. The camper on this would be much more narrow than the Open Road kit. I've always wanted to build one of these, but figure I'd scratch build the camper. An interesting thing is that when I was working on my Dodge Van based camper, I measured off all the interior components on the Open Road and found they were quite a bit out of scale. That's why I scratch built everything in my camper.

Timing of delivery is on the final post office. For magazine class mail they have a certain time frame in which to deliver them. If you go in the back of the post office you will see carts full of magazines and flyers. The carriers sort those into their day's delivery as time allows. If they have a lot of mail that day, they may not get to it so all the 3rd class stuff sits another day. So it means that either your brother's carrier has less mail to sort, or actually gives a darn about getting all his mail out. There is usually less mail on Saturday so that's why you see a lot more magazines and flyers in the Saturday mail.

I need that Fiat 500. My daughter has the convertible!

Wow! You have the eye for piecing these together. I don't have that vision. And now a moment of silence for the Chrysler that gave it's life for this project!

I'm not a big fan of categories. I believe that guys only go to some of them and if you post in others, your post is overlooked.

You can make your own gas tank pretty easy... A short length of Evergreen plastic tube and the ends are the punch outs on a plastic collectibles sheet for a 3 ring binder. Glue it together, Add a gas cap from any kit source and Alclad it. and installed. The advantage is that I could decide the length to fit my model rather than settle for what was available as a kit part. And no kit part seams to deal with!

I lost a Renault Dalphene body somewhere in my model room. It's been missing for something like ten years now. Somebody lost a model at NNL East many years ago! Usually we get a call within a day or two, once someone notices it's missing. Not this time. We even checked through all the filled out registration forms and checked everyone's posted photos for clues, no help. I sent notes to clubs in attendance, nobody! So it's been sitting in my display case for years, just hoping someone will say something. I'm not going to say what it is but if someone emails me and describes it, it can go home! It's running up quite a storage fee here!

100% I was sweating those Mercs! Everything else was easy.

Here's another one in that same series. This was displayed at the Staten Island NY show in 2004

Great work! I love the rear seat delete option. I was just thinking that we'll see a lot of those in scale, but I've only seen one in 1:1 in real life. Back probably 20 years ago someone had restored a absolute bare bones car and had it at the Englishtown, NJ show. It had a six, manual trans, no power anything, radio delete and the business coupe rear seat delete. I was happy that they restored it that way to show what actually existed in the day, rather than hot rodding it and distorting history!

Cool! That's something we don't have. Be sure that you cast it in a way that it can be built stock too! And I'd be in for the panel truck. That would keep the light commercial faction happy!

Jim, as you are doing, I kept moving the junk around in my trailer kitchen. I'd move it, photograph it to see what it looked like in pictures and create more detail or move things around again. I like the open cabinet, I was wishing I had done a drawer ajar in my kitchen! Keep going, it's coming out well.

Good build so far! I built the Monogram Ramcharger and found that the floorboard was only the interior tub so the model didn't look good from the underside, you could see up in to the doors etc around the tub, and the wheel wells weren't complete. I solved it by building the missing areas off the bottom of the interior tub with Evergreen sheet.

Rich, I don't remember if I was there!

Hi Clay, I generally use cheap hardware store spray paint for the chassis. Krylon flat or satin black looks good and the can will last forever. For the Tamiya paints, get their thinner and add a little to the aging paint to perk it up. I saw the new release of the Avanti today. It comes with some neat materials including a color booklet and another one from the Studebaker Drivers Club Museum. Nice stuff to include with the kit!