Harry P.

I think you're right! One think I've learned so far... after this one, I'm not going to try another WWI plane kit this detailed any time soon! This model makes putting together a Pocher car seem like child's play...

After watching your progress videos of this model on the Cranky Show, I decided I have to get one of these babies! I'm spending my grocery money on model kits... and I blame you!

Assuming the cap is on airtight, forever. But what usually happens is the cap isn't on tight enough and some of the solvents escape, and the paint gets too thick to use.

"Ugly" is such a strong word... let's say it has "personality!"

Remember... do NOT post hints or answers here! PM me with year, make and model. The answer: 1954-58 Gordon by Vernon

Right, but you have to remember that when you change your screen resolution, you're changing the size of everything you see on your screen, not just the type size on this website.

Not sure what the key combo on a PC is, but on a Mac you press the Apple key (Command) plus the "+" to make the text larger, the "-" key to make the text smaller. There's no need to type your posts in large type.

I painted the fuselage to look close to what photo references show... a mixture of Future and some yellow, red and brown acrylic paint. A also added all the screw heads by drawing them on with the tip of a regular pencil. They're pretty faint and hard to see, but that's the way they look on the real plane, too. Then I started doing the fabric coverings. I have never done this before, so I know I'm probably doing it "wrong," but I'm doing it in a way that makes sense to me. First I cut out a piece of cloth and glued the straight edge that runs parallel to the tail fin. Then I stretched the fabric tight and super-glued it all down and around the edges...then painted the fabric with Future to seal it. Then I flipped the fuselage upside down and trimmed off the excess fabric. The bottom side gets fabric, too... but this time the fabric has to be cut to exact size first... I don't want the lower side fabric to extend up and past the edges of the stabilizer fins. I made a template out of clear acetate and cut that out. To keep edges of cut piece of fabric from unraveling while I work with it, I laid the acetate template on the fabric and traced around it with a pencil. Then I painted over the outline with Future so that the edges will be sealed when I cut out the fabric panel: More to come...

This one. Pocher Mercedes. This is bare plastic: The Pocher Porsche 911 is the same. Glass-smooth body; needs no paint.

Covering the fuselage with the birch veneer was a huge pain. It's like creating a jigsaw puzzle by cutting out each piece by hand and getting all the pieces to fit. I tried my best to keep the panel gaps as tight as I possibly could, but they are definitely not perfect... not even close! I'm hoping that once the fuselage is stained and all the markings are in place, you won't notice the seams so much. Here's the front part of the fuselage... the "easy" part. Those square holes in the fuselage are where the landing gear mounting brackets will go... The further back you go, the tighter the radiuses become, so I had to wet the panels to soften them, then form them around the fuselage. The hardest part, by far, was getting the compound curves on the pieces that cover the tail fin and around the rear stabilizer. That hole directly behind the tail fin is where the shaft of the rudder will go: And below, a shot of the fuselage upside-down, looking at the bottom side. That triangular piece is where the tail skid will attach to, and that little white tubular thing is where the stabilizer control lines will feed through. Getting the wooden panels to conform to the complex shapes here was a major headache... The part of the tail that's still open and not covered with veneer will be covered in fabric, like the real plane... along with the rudder and the wings. More to come...

I used pieces of clear acetate, taped to the fuselage, then drew my cut lines with a fine-point sharpie, then laid my acetate template on the veneer and cut through both at once. Still, though, I had to finesse each veneer panel to some extent. And yes... the further back on the fuselage, the harder it got!

I'd guess that such a big response to your topic is having you feeingl stronger every day!

They're very thin. Don't even have to soak them, just wet them and they become very flexible. They straighten out a little as they dry, but by wetting them I get that initial bend... so even if they straighten out a bit as they dry, they still dry with a bend in them. Once that bend is in there, I can always bend them a bit more when dry to go around the curves. The hard part isn't wetting and bending them, it's getting each panel cut to the exact shape so it fits in without huge gaps on the joints.

He's on the list!

Yeah, those birch panels have been killing me, especially arount the rear of the fuselage and around the tail... too many very tight radiuses, too many intricately shaped panels. Cutting the panels, wetting and bending them, gluing them in place while trying to keep some sort of even joint line between panels is a major PITA. Paneling the fuselage of a WWI fighter makes building a Pocher wire wheel seem like a walk in the park by comparison! New progress pix tomorrow!

Yeah, baby! A little liquid inspiration is a must-have!

Absolutely beautiful, Sean!

That's a very healthy attitude, IMO. BTW... there's no shame in being a good cover band. A couple of bands that you may have heard of started out doing a lot of covers, and they wound up doing alright for themselves... are you familiar with the Beatles and the Rolling Stones?

I'd go with Chris Rock.

Do you have any information on the state of all their existing tooling? I mean, are they basically starting over from scratch? Have they lost all of their previous tooling forever?

It is absolutely true! Not for all modelers, of course, but for the majority. I mean, how many times have we heard the tired old "but we're modelers... we can fix those mistakes" line when talking about a new (or reissued) kit? If car modelers weren't buying junk kits, the manufacturers wouldn't be making them! If kits with poor detail, bad proportions, wonky parts fit, etc. were rejected by people... if those kits sat on the shelves and nobody bought them... the manufacturers would clean up their act big time, and ASAP. The fact that lousy kits sell tells the manufacturers that their consumers are willing to buy them. Not all car kits are bad. Not even most of them, probably. But a large chunk of them are bad, and they sell. As long as the manufacturers can keep cranking out reissue after reissue after reissue of some lousy old kit tooled up literally a half century ago and sell them, they have little incentive to knock off that practice and produce newly tooled, better kits. Model kit manufacturers have the capability to make better kits. What they don't have is a good business reason to do so, as long as their consumers for the most part (again, not all of them) are less than demanding.

Just like any other product, there will always be sources that sell kits for less than MSRP. There will always be competition between suppliers to attract customers, and price is one of the biggest selling points (no pun intended!) that a business has. The only way that everyone would start selling at MSRP is if every seller/vendor/store joined together in a massive conspiracy to control prices. That is obviously never going to happen.

Nothing wrong with that at all!

The only complaint I have is that the trunklid doesn't open far enough.