Harry P.

It was for a GRAND jury, not regular jury duty. They told us up front that if we're picked we would have to be there Monday through Friday for 3 weeks! They interviewed each person individually. When they asked me what I do for a living, I told them I'm a self-employed graphic artist/designer/illustrator. When I mentioned "self-employed," the Asst. D.A. that was interviewing me said, "oh, I bet it would be hard for you if you had to serve on a grand jury"... and I said YEAH it would! And then she said, don't worry, have a seat. So I guess if you're self-employed they let you off from serving. Thank goodness, cuz I sure didn't need to lose 3 weeks worth of income.

You might try flipping through a magazine for some inspiration...

It was "lost" sometime between when I had it half-finished and in a box, and moving to a new house. That particular box never made the move. I have to assume it was thrown out by mistake, and by the time everything had been unpacked and it was found missing... well, too late. It probably wound up buried in a landfill somewhere...

I think you should go by your street name... C-mos...

Jury duty Monday morning... so ROM starts now! The answer: MODEL!

Right. I forgot to mention "The Detailer." And also, you could use black India ink. Same deal... if you don't like the result you can wash it off and try again. But the theory is the same, no matter if you use thinned black paint, ink, or "The Detailer." The idea is to flow the black into the recessed areas to simulate openings.

Open a window! The fumes are gettin' to ya...

Most model grilles look fake because the "open" areas of the grille aren't open... it's all chrome plated plastic, and looks very toy-like. A black wash is done by applying some thinned down black paint with a brush to the grille. Since the paint is thinned down, it will flow off the high spots and collect in the recesses. The black paint in the recesses makes the grille look like it really has openings in it, and makes for a much more realistic grille.

You should try adding a little more detail to your next model... But seriously folks... this thing is so far over-the-top cool that I can't stand it! And the best part is, most of that incredible detail wasn't bought, it was made from scratch. Now that's model building!

I have three finished, and two (including this one) in the works. And one "lost" years ago. Don't ask...

Cool. Very nice model, BTW. I love seeing things that you don't see every day, and this one sure does qualify as an "oddball!"

Nice work! And I assume you'll be staying with us?

It's just a model kit... a darn expensive one, but still, just a collection of parts–until you build it. Then it becomes something to show off. Parts in a box aren't what it's all about... putting those parts together is the goal! Sure, I could buy up as many Pocher kits as I can, sit on them for several years and then resell 'em and undoubtedly make a profit... but that's not what model kits are for. I have other investments already, I don't invest in "collectible" model kits! I buy 'em to build 'em...

Thanks, Mike. It was a pain. Took me most of a day to upholster one seat (bottom cushion and seatback). Getting the material into all those seam lines while keeping everything stretched tight as you glue each pleat, and also keeping wrinkles out around corners, is one of those jobs where it would have been real helpful if I had an extra set of hands...

This keeps getting better and better!

We'll see...

I smell a lockdown...

So Mark... your "excuse" for not posting photos is that you don't know how to operate a camera, and you don't have a tripod??? Lame! A typical digital camera is "point and shoot"... auto focus, auto flash. You could learn to use it in about 5 minutes... at least well enough to take a few simple snapshots. You don't have to figure out all the bells and whistles. Nobody is expecting you to be Ansel Adams. No tripod? Me neither. I rest the camera on the back of a chair. Pretty simple. I don't have any sort of light setup either, so my photos aren't exactly ready for prime time, but they're good enough to get the point across. That's all you need. Don't know how to download pix out of the camera and onto your computer? Again, in 5 minutes you'd have that figured out. Most cameras you just plug into your computer, and the camera's software pretty much does the rest. Uploading to Photobucket, also easy enough that anyone can do it. There's no computer geek knowledge needed to upload photos to Photobucket... the instructions are simple and user-friendly.

Scratchbuilt shifter boot... in matching leather, of course!

Here's the dash, again with the same birch veneer and "leather" as on the door panels: It was hard to cut the veneer to exact shape, and I missed in a couple of spots. It's not perfect, but after the time I spent trying to get a piece exactly right, I got fed up and just installed what I had come up with. The fit around the tops of the glove boxes is pretty bad, but oh well... The "mother of pearl" gauge panel inlay is made from a piece of scrapbooking paper that looks sort of like mother of pearl, and the glove box handles are pieces of paper clip bent to shape. Gauge "glass" is clear 5-minute epoxy.

Like most Pocher kits, the wire wheels are built up spoke by spoke, and each spoke has its own individual nipple. Needless to say, building a Pocher wire wheel is tedious and time-consuming. The "round" parts of the wheels are stamped steel. How many kits can you think of that come with steel parts trees? Now, I won't bore you with all the gory details "behind the scenes" as far as building the wheels. Let's just say that none of the parts fit correctly, the spokes are too long, etc. Here's an example of one problem: On a real wire wheel, alternate spoke holes around the rim are offset a bit so that the spokes can cross each other without interference. On the Pocher wheels, all the spoke holes are on the same plane, and the spokes are straight... the result being that the spokes can't cross each other and wind up with their other end in the correct position on the hub. What this means in plain English is that every single spoke has to bent a little bit, so that they can cross each other correctly. Talk about tedious! I actually spent more time correcting the parts so that I could build the wheels than I spent actually building the wheels! Here's one of the finished wheels: The seven little cylinders around the rim represent the balancing weights. On the real car the wheels came with these balancing weights already installed. Each one was in reality a stack of smaller weights. The wheel was balanced by adding or subtracting individual weights from whichever weight stack necessary. Kind of clever in a Germanic engineering overkill sort of way... The kit tires are very stiff and won't flex enough to get them to stretch over the finished wheel... so what I did was put the tire in a bowl of water and microwaved it for a minute or two. That made the tire nice and soft, soft enough to stretch over the wheel. Of course, you have to be careful not to heat the tire too much... Eventually I'm going to paint whitewalls on the tires.

Like I said, the kit seats, while impressive as far as detail, don't look correct, so I used aftermarket resin seats. I lose the kit seat's detail features, like foam padded cushions and real springs under the seat and backrest... but what I get instead are seats that actually look like real 500K seats. Here is one of the seats as it comes in resin: And here's what it looks like after I upholstered it with the same "leather" that I used on the door panels: Pretty cool, huh?

Lots of progress. Let's start with the chassis, which is pretty much done. Here it is as of today... you can see that I've installed the floor (it comes already "carpeted"): The grille is an aftermarket PE piece which replaces the black plastic molded grille from the kit (don't even ask what that piece cost!!!). Having that mesh actually be "mesh" with open holes makes a huge difference in the look. BTW... I did't have a big enough surface to shoot this thing on, so I shot it on the floor! Now that the chassis is built, I'm skipping around to various subassemblies, not following the instruction's sequence. I'm going to do a custom interior for several reasons: 1. The kit's seats are very nice... they have foam padding, real springs, "leather" upholstery (actually vinyl that looks like leather)... but they are very inaccurate. In fact they don't look even vaguely like the seats in the real car! 2. The kit supplied "leather" upholstery isn't my cup of tea, color-wise. It's also too thick and would be a pain to try and stretch around curves and edges. 3. I want to do things my way! First step for the custom door panels: cut off the molded- in armrest and door cubbyhole surround: Next, fill in the cubbyhole with scrap sheet styrene and trim about 1/32" off all around the perimeter of the panel to accomodate the thickness of the upholstery and wood trim coming: Finally, do it my way! I used a French curve to lay out the arcs on the door panel and to cut out the pieces. What you see here is 1/64" birch veneer, stained and covered in several layers of clear acrylic. I used CA to glue the large center "swoosh" in place first. Next, the "chrome" trim strips (two different gauges of aluminum beading wire from Michael's) were attached with CA. Then I cut the "leather" pieces (actually vinyl fabric that looks like leather, but much thinner and more flexible than leather would be) and attached them to the panel with contact cement. With contact cement you get literally ONE CHANCE to position things correctly, because once it's down, it's down for good. I got lucky and matched up to the curved trim strips pretty well. The "leather" was cut oversized and wrapped around the door panel edges, than the excess flaps attached to the back side with CA. Finally the top piece of wood trim was made from pieces of the same birch veneer, stained and assembled to look like one big slab of wood trim. The door handle, window crank and armrest/storage bin haven't been installed yet.

There's 13 million people in Ontario... there has to be a few model builders!