Harry P.

Another beauty from you. Your foil work is just about perfect. What kit is this?

Finally, I gave the boot several thick coats of acrylic craft paint. When dry, I added contrasting piping (leftover rigging line from a wooden ship model). I attached the piping with tiny dabs of CA, then when all of the piping was attached I "locked" it all down with a coat of Future. Here is my scratchbuilt top boot. Notice the wrinkles and ripples that happen when you paint the newspaper with the acrylic paint. It gives a pretty convincing approximation of a soft fabric boot:

Once I had the skeleton built and was satisfied with the fit on the body, I covered it with pieces of newspaper, using dabs of CA to glue the paper to the frame. Again, I'm purposely not trying for perfection here... I actually want slight ripples and waves in the surface:

Ok, gang... here's a little bit of scratchbuilding trickery... The kit supplied top boot/tonneau is molded perfectly flat and straight, there are no ripples or wrinkles or anything molded in to suggest that the boot is made of fabric. All the edges are perfectly straight, and it's much too shallow top to bottom to actually be able to cover the folded top. I don't like the looks of it, so I'll scratchbuild my own, First step is to build the frame, or "skeleton." For this I used silver beading wire (found in the jewelry making aisle at HL). This wire comes in different diameters and is very useful for all sorts of modeling applications. It's soft enough to easily bend to shape with your fingers, but stiff enough to hold its shape. It's somewhere between aluminum rod and solder as far as flexibility. I used CA to glue the pieces together, but as you can imagine this results in a very fragile assembly due to the very limited gluing area. So I reinforced the glue joints with 5-minute epoxy. The trick here is to not get everything perfectly straight... I want slight ripples and imperfections in the skeleton because I want the boot to ultimately look like it's soft and flexible (not like the kit piece!). Here is the kit piece and my scratchbuilt replacement... And testing for fit... Looks good. On to the next step...

The hood folds open like the real thing. There are metal hinges supplied in the kit. The first step is to use a Dremel with a grinding bit to rough up the surfaces of the hood panels and the hinges where they will be glued together: Then I used CA to glue the hinges and panels together:

"I remember holding you while you sleep. Every day I feel the tears that you weep"...

A great note for note cover of Badfinger's "Baby Blue"...

The grille shell support rods were made of piano wire, to replace the kit pieces. Piano wire is perfectly smooth and has no mold seam lines like the kit pieces do...

The "glass" for the smaller windscreens was cut from Lexan sheet. Here is the completed folding windshield with secondary windscreens installed:

The small auxiliary windscreens mount to the lower part of the windshield (the part that attaches to the cowl and doesn't fold down). The exact configuration of the way the small screens are mounted to the windshield base varied... I looked at my photo references and created a "generic" arrangement. First thing I had to do was create the frames that the "glass" would sit in, I used Plastruct U channel, "chromed" with Spaz Stix:

Microsoft's Internet Explorer web browser is garbage. And it has big time problems with this website (and many others). Download a different web browser (like Firefox or Chrome) and all your problems will go away.

The real car has a folding windshield, and small secondary "wind wings" behind the main windshield. My guess is that when the windshield was folded down, the top speed was increased due to reduced wind resistance. Here is the kit piece, the top part that folds down molded as one piece with the lower piece that attaches to the cowl. Notice the lame "windshield wipers"... I want to build this car with the main windshield in the folded down position, so step one is to carefully cut the upper and lower windshield parts apart with a razor saw: All of the clear parts were missing from this kit (a small detail the ebay seller conveniently "forgot" to mention... )... so I had to make a windshield. I used an old business card to cut out a paper template, then transferred that to a sheet of Lexan to create my new windshield: More to come...

It just amazes me how good looking cars were back then, True works of art, if you ask me. That Audi (Auto Union), too. Spectacular.

This week's car is a 1938 Pierce-Arrow Model 1801. 1938 was the last year for Pierce-Arrow, and only a handful of cars were produced that year. http://www.conceptcarz.com/view/photo/589120,18769/1938-Pierce-Arrow-Model-1801-8_photo.aspx Who got it right: sjordan2 Badluck 13 mr chips dw1603 Ace-Garageguy jaymcminn blunc bbsbase dimaxion peter31a otherunicorn

"Oh, inside angel, Always upset... Keeps on forgetting That we ever met"...

I love it! Beautiful work...

I added the details to the firewall and added cables to the battery... The battery tray and battery are on the passenger side of the firewall:

Who would have thunk it? Taylor Swift doing a pretty solid cover of Tom Petty's "American Girl"...

Yep!

I've tried spraying it and found it hard to work with. It is very thin, basically like water, and tends to run and sag when sprayed (at least when sprayed by me! ). I much prefer brushing it on with a big, soft, squirrel hair brush. I have better control that way. I actually do only a part of the car at a time... maybe one fender, let it dry, another fender, let it dry, then the body. I like the "slow but sure" brushing technique, because it makes it easier to watch for runs or sags when only dealing with one section of the body at a time instead of the whole body. I just use the tip of a paper towel to soak up the excess if there are any runs or sags. With practice, you learn how much Future to apply to avoid any sags and runs. And Future is self-leveling... you will not see any brush strokes.

I know. Haven't gotten that far yet.

Looks like you forgot to connect the engine to the radiator (no coolant hoses)...

I'm no expert on planes, but that looks pretty darn good to me!