Tom Geiger

I think the fire story was just a story. As I heard it, Lindberg over produced a bunch of kits that would be slow sellers and had a huge warehouse full of stuff they couldn't sell. So they wholesaled it out. Ollies makes it sound damaged or distressed to protect the original owners salability in regular retail markets. That big sale at Ollies was over a year ago, I was there last weekend and they still had product in the store!

Who wouldn't want scale meat? LOL Original Ace brand '49 Ford kit. Balsa of course! And it builds up like this... oh, how you guys would scream if you opened that box today!

Hmmm. Interesting van project. That's why we have made Vans a theme for NNL East 2013. And cutting up vans is how I wound up with my Dodge van camper project.

Any updates? I've been crazy busy the past few weeks. I've been out of work and my job search has progressed. I went on two interviews last week so I'm hoping to get some positive news soon. And of course that comes before hobbies! I am going to get some quality time at the bench tomorrow. Maybe I'll have something to post.

That is very very cool. Some great original ideas on this rod!

As was said on this thread back in 2008, a Holy Grail is the one and only kit that would make your life complete. In my case it's the 1966 Plymouth Valiant Signet promo, one of the rarest Mopar promos. I had never seen one in person and had an eBay search active for one. Wouldn't ya know, the only times one was for sale was when I couldn't afford (or at least in good concious) invest in something expensive. The last time I saw one on eBay was when I was in the middle of moving from NJ to PA. I was carrying two houses and finance were pretty tight. And of course there it was for $400 Buy It Now. So I closed my eyes and hit that button. It was mine! Feeling a bit guilty but I had my holy grail. At the same time I was parting out my '63 Studebaker project that suffered from terminal cancer. It just wasn't worth trying to fix. I had offered it for sale on both eBay and Craig's List for prices starting at $2500 and all the way down to $900 without a buyer. I had $1500 in NOS and repro parts alone! So I had sold over $3000 worth of parts off this car. In the end I had a carcass with no body parts, but a 70k drivetrain still in it. I didn't want to send it to the crusher so I did one last ditch ad onto eBay offering the drivetrain for $500. Imagine my surprise the next day when my email read "You've Made A Sale". Someone in North NJ had bought it to put in his 1940s pickup. So by the time it came to pay for the Valiant, I had the money in Paypal to pay for it. Nearly free! This is a photo of the one I own. My modeling life is complete. I don't want for anything more!

Well it's nearly Saturday night. My two daughters are here from NJ and we'll order some pizza. My wife and I just assembled the tree and we'll decorate it tonight. Since this was a Friday night thread.. last night we hit our usual local place for Happy Hour specials. Dollar off Yuengling Lager drafts, and half price for wings, boneless wings, personal pizzas and mussels to die for! The mussels are done in a Belgian beer broth with bacon. The broth is soooo good that you sop up every bit with the small loaf of bread they give you with the order. So of course I had the mussels, my wife ordered boneless wings. Regular boned wings came instead, so I agreed to keep those and reorder the boneless for her. So I had both the mussels and buffalo wings. Happy Hour specials run from 5-7pm so we were home by 8pm and watched the Friday night lineup. Undercover Boss, Dateline and 20/20. And that's life in PA for us!

I resolve to spend more time working on models! I've gotten more done in this past quarter than in the previous few years. All because I resolved to spend an hour or two a day in the model room. I've found that spending a little time each day moves things along and does wonders for my psyche too!

I had an unusual upbringing. My father was a US Army officer, often attached to NATO, so I grew up around the world. We were in Izmir, Turkey from 1966-68 and the only model I remember from that era was a Studebaker Avanti kit that my dad had bought before we moved from the USA since he really liked the car. It never got built, but we used it as a template to build a Cub Scouts Pinewood Derby car as an Avanti. I still have the 2nd place trophy, but not the car. Turkey was like midevil times back then so there was nothing to buy locally. My grandparents would mail me Matchbox cars. We moved back to the states for 1968-9 and my mother, sister and I lived in Jersey City, NJ near my grandparents because my father went to Korea. My grandfather would pick me up every Friday after dinner and I'd go stay at my grandparents house to watch color TV with them. We'd watch the Friday evening line up and then I'd get to watch my morning cartoons. Then my grandfather and I'd go out for the afternoon. We'd walk up the boulevard to the Two Guys department store, which had a pretty good hobby department. There we'd have a hot dog for lunch, then I'd get to pick out something for me and something to bring home to my sister. I could get a model kit, or two Hot Wheels cars. The model I remember most was the '69 Chevy Impala kit, which I loved because there was a Chevy dealer near my house. In 1969 we moved to Pirmasens, Germany where we stayed through 1973. In the time we were there the conversion rate between the US dollar and the German Mark took an unfavorable turn, from 4 marks to a dollar to less than 2. Our money was suddenly worth less than half on the local market! We relied on the US Army Post Exchange for most of our purchases. They never had model kits and the few times they did in our stay, they were military models or off brand like Lindberg or Aurora. We'd also get the Airfix 1/32 scale car kits so I became quite fond of those and a few survive in my collection today. There was one hobby shop in town, but with the exchange rate the Revell of Germany kits they had were the equivalent of $10 when US kits were selling for $2. So I only bought them on rare occasion. I remember buying the Herbie Love Bug kit and the Porsche 911. The PX book store did get Model Car Science Magazine so I'd make sure I got every copy. That introduced me to the big AutoWorld catalog that became my lifeline to the USA and my hobby. Every time I scraped together $6-10 I'd place an order for a kit or two, some brush paints (you couldn't ship spray cans internationally) and often a decal sheet or other goodies. I bought the AutoWorld hot knife and the license plate set. It took something like three months to get the order through the US APO mail system. So I'd often have several orders in transit and on my way home from school I'd stop in my dad's office to see if anything came in the mail that day. The soldiers there got so used to me buzzing the door and seeing me in the camera, they'd not open the door, just say over the intercom "No Thomas, you didn't get a package today." On the days they did have a package for me, the young GIs were as interested as I was in seeing what I got. Those were the good days. In 1973 we relocated back stateside. My father got assigned to Fort Monmouth in NJ where he finished out his career. This was the first time we ever owned a house. I was in my freshman year of high school and just revelled in going to all kinds of stores and seeing models for sale everywhere. I remember that the first model I bought was the Revell Porsche 914 for $2, probably because I had only seen it before in Germany for $10. I also remember buying Skippers Critter Anglia and a bunch of other kits throughout high school. Both the Anglia and 914 still exist in my collection. The funny thing was that I didn't have any friends back in the US that built models so I lost interest as my stamp collection grew and I found girls and real cars. As a young adult I still would cruise the model aisle in stores and would buy an occasional kit. When I bought my 1:1 '56 Chevy I grabbed up the Revell version and a '51 Chevy kit for the six. I still have both of those too. Over the years I did amass a few movers boxes full of kits I intended to build someday. I bought a bunch of Mopar muscle cars and tucked them away until the day I would be a good enough builder to do them justice. Once married and with children, I found Scale Auto magazine in a bookstore in Boston. I immediately subscribed and replied to a classified ad for the Tri-State Scale Model Car Club. That turned out to be my fatal mistake! It got me hooked for life and I've been in the club 24 years! Now the ironic part. My goal of joining the club was to gain the skills to build those Mopar kits I had stashed. I've long since gained the skills to do them justice, but I've never touched one of them!

What most the Scouts in New Jersey look like!

I need to send Airtrax some money ! I lived in Germany from 1969-73 and those 60s Opels were everywhere.

Ollies first advertized the Lindberg kits as "surplus from a warehouse fire" but we all know Lindberg just dumped overstock that they ambitiously produced. I was at Ollies in Pottstown PA last week and they still had inventory! Must've been a big load of stuff!

Scratchbuilt basswood playhouse in 1/25 scale. I built it from Popular Science Magazine plans but did it in scale instead of 1:1

people say that you can't do anything with show rod parts! Nicely done. Now here's the funny part. I'm using the pieces from the Paddy Wagon that you would have left over. I saved the cab pieces for a future project! Do you see the sides?

I love your concept of the cut off coupe. Very well executed. My only suggestion is that the popsicle sticks jump out and say popsicle sticks! For about a dollars worth of basswood (don't use balsa) you could make it very cool with about an hours work.

I love it! Great light commercial billboard car. You'd see that up on the highway in front of the business. It may not even run. I think the cow looks just fine, the tones on it make it look fiberglass, which it would be in real life.

I like it! Good work under the hood. There was really nothing there in the kit!

I only recently decided to paint the exterior a medium blue. I hadn't thought about it but that's odd for me!

In the town I grew up in NJ, there was a SHOE TOWN store that went out of business. Another shoe store took the same space and just shuffled the letters around to name their store "SHOE NOW". It's been gone for 20 years and it's still a running joke on the Facebook group dedicated to the town.

Thanks Rich! Hope all is well with you, fellow Pennsylvanian!

Thanks for commenting Mike. There won't be a propane tank because there is no stove or refrig to run. It's just a sleeping camper. The only cooking will be a microwave on the counter. There will be an electrical reel on the front to plug it in. There will be two gas cans on the front just for gasoline or kerosene.

The aftermath in NJ.... I moved from the NJ Shore to Exton, PA two years ago. I still own a house there that my two daughter live in. My daughters were evacuated and came to my house and thankfully my house was spared without any damage. Our house is on 9th Street. 1st Street is the water. Here's the parallel street in the next town over, Keansburg, NJ Here's what Keyport, NJ looks like. Union Beach, NJ. My favorite waterfront house, stood there over 100 years, gone! The first two blocks are completely gone. Keansburg, NJ. One of the shore's oldest boardwalks. Wiped out. This one was special because they still had all the 1930s rides in operation. All destroyed.

I took a few days off from the project to live life. Actually I raked a ton of leaves! I find that I can go like gangbusters a while on a project, then a need some time away. So today was the day I got back... I was kinda stuck on what to do with the front of the trailer. It was a blank wall except for the air conditioner and I sat down to do the storage box a few times, shook my head and walked away. Today was the day I got over that hurdle. One scratch built storage box. (Note that everything is just pieced there with masking tape for photos) I added some rigid plates to the roof to support the rack. I spent about an hour searching for the envelope I had all the tiny bolts in.. only to find that I replaced the envelope with a box some time ago and, as Steve Martin would say, "I FORGOT!" The brackets are supposed to be random as if our fictional traveler made them from scrap metal. I'm still in love with my air conditioner! I added a vent which I imagine would be an exhaust for water heater etc in the closet. It was made from a early Ford hood side from my parts box. Hey, I only had one of them. And I know the lid will only open so far before he hits the a/c unit. I will be adding two gas cans to the lower right and a electric wire reel to the lower left. That should finish it off. The box is nothing more than a shape made from Evergreen sheet. The hinge across the top is a piece of metal rod, and I made the clasp for a lock which I'll add. This was a day of little final details before primer. So I sanded off the lower chrome strips on both sides and decided a missing one would work into my plan on the right side. Still have to get rid of those mags! So I got in maybe two hours and got a lot done today. It really clears my mind, so I feel good!

I like it! I have two 50 Fords in progress. Dirty and rusty, is there any other way to build?

Since I got good response from my last Olde Kustom rebuild, here's a '61 Ranchero custom that a friend gave me. Note that both a pillars are shattered as was the body as you can see over the rear wheel. Someone stripped the paint down and made a mess of it, scraping the body in places, leaving a lot of clean up work. Again, the goal of the Old Kustom Kollection is to bring 'em back to their glory, and make them look like they were in the day. So we don't use any modern parts or techniques. I hand sanded the body because there was no way I was going to chance destroying the putty in this body. There is enough and it weighs a ton! This one may have lived several lives since it had several colors on it. Bottom was light blue paint and the gold underlay for the candy purple. I did change the color of the car because I feared the dark purple would hide the body lines. The original interior was complete and in good enough condition to simply dust and put back in the body. Gotta love the fur! And here she is complete. The custom nose was off either the Ranchero customizing kit or a Falcon of the era. It's just priceless. All the original parts, including the tires and wheels were cleaned up and reused. Top view - I cut down a bed cover from a new kit since I imagined that it had one back in the day. A new kit body was sacrificed to replace the A pillars. The two concessions I made on this one were cleaning up the putty on the nose to flow better and I scribed the front hood edge. Rear view- The original builder shortened the bed and added on one of the customizing rear ends. The back flow is compromised as it suddenly tilts backward, but it is what it is. I wasn't going to fix it. Side view - Imagine this one on a contest table in 1962. This one was fun and it was rewarding to bring her back from the dead. Now she's ready for the next 50 years on my shelf.