Gluhead

Lookin' good, Johann. The washers made all the difference in the world there. Planking looks good, too. Getting a realistic finish on engraved wood is something the eludes me. I have to get rid of it and replace it with the real stuff, or it just ends up looking like I smeared peanut butter on it. With the lighting thing, you'd be surprised at how much light a digital camera can eat up. I snap my pics right on my desk, with the normal room overhead, and two desk lamps with 60w bulbs about a foot off to each side. The trick for me is to diffuse the desk lamps with a sheet of lightweight copier paper taped up in front of the bulbs. Super high tech! Haha! My camera is far from the latest-greatest (coolpix 210), but if I give it enough light, it does pretty okay.

Tons of good ones (heh, see what I did there?), but the Dodge Pilothouse is one of my favorites.

Very cool. I never noticed there was an Offy version. Now I need a couple.

Looks great...nice job.

I've been watching this one since December, Mike. It's great to see someone put so much effort into making a faithful scale depiction of a family ride. Great execution, as well.

Thanks, guys. Johann, the back is pretty simple, really, but the first pic up there is the earliest that I took in that process. Basically, I filled the open cab rear with one piece of sheet stock. Then I make a masking tape template of the entire back which I use to pencil in the new pieces that are layered onto the base wall - the reveal around the outside of the roof area, the reveal around the rear window, the beltline ledge, and the outer cab wall. The window reveal and beltline ledge are easy, just cut them out and a little file work to fine tune, and glue them down. The reveal around the roofline takes more diligent test fitting as you go to make sure there are no gaps, but it's not that bad. The outer cab wall took about 80,000 test fits as I whittled it to fit the side walls with no gaps, but it was worth it to have it be one piece. With it being separate, doing the ribs is pretty straight-forward. You can see my pencil marks on there, and the starter holes. I use those to get my files in there and shape the ends of the valleys, then slice out the bulk of the material with a cutoff wheel on the dremel, and use a flat file to get to the line, even everything out, and finish them all off with a slight bevel. Yep, that would have been a lot easier with pictures. Heheh. Next time I do one of these, I'll make a point of taking them as I go. Nobody has pointed it out yet, but I goobered up one of the short, middle valleys. I guess it isn't every noticeable, but it sticks out like a sore thumb to me. lol.

Marmon-Herrington was the company that provided all wheel drive conversions for Ford. Ford didn't produce their own 4x4's from the factory until 1959. Check this out. M-H is a little over halfway down the page. Lots of good info and pics of other makes as well. http://www.therangerstation.com/resources/history_of_4x4.htm

You're really tempting me to pony up for one of these kits. It looks fantastic. And unlike most of you guys, I love foiling. It's one of my favorite parts of building. (looks around for my unbuilt '58 Chevy)

I've always loved this thing. But then again I'm a huge fan of Robert A. Heinlein.

Oh god...this is great.

Rad.

Wow. That came out great. Nice job!

Looks great to me. I like it. And what door gap? I don't see any big gap above the door. All I see is an outlet for an innovative fresh air recirculation system with optional vacuum operated cigarette butt removal.

I know...humbling, right Mark?! I see this and I think "I have a LOT to learn yet!" The shaping of complex parts thing I get. It's the soldering that throws a monkey wrench in the whole thing for me. Amazing.

Thanks, guys. Yeah, oddly enough, it really doesn't look all that far off until you go to change something on it. Then it smacks you in the face and says "think again!" It's all good, though. It'd be boring if everything just fell together. Challenge keeps life interesting.

Nice project. I'm sure your father would appreciate it. When you go back to work out the cab issues, like these guys have said...just take your time. One thing that will help is making up some sanding blocks that are specific for the task. You can put a profile into a small length of wood that matches the shape you need and use it to get your panels nice and true. Also, try out some needle files for the detail work. I've found that the softer the tool, the harder it is to control the shaping process. A good file or sharp blade with a light touch will make short work of about anything. It just takes some practice to get a feel for it. Keep it up!

x2 on the washers. I want to do one of these as well, but I'll go for more of a Marmon Herrington factory type of setup. I'll be watching to see how yours comes together.

Thanks guys. Glad ya like it. I appreciate the kudos. George - Yeah, no kidding. I'd give about anything to be able to go back in time and be a fly on the wall in their design studios. Jake - I forget exactly what the taillight piece was from. I want to say that either the fronts or the rear came from custom grills found in a 60's Mercury custom kit, but it's been long enough now that I can't be certain. I know I looked through pretty much ALL of my chrome trees to find one long enough for the taillight, and I do remember fudging the surround a little to make up for a minor shortfall. Other than shaping it to fit the opening, though, all I did was mix up a stoplight red wash and flow it down into the fins until it looked right. Terry and Mike - That's what I was after...the car has such great lines from the factory, I just wanted to remove anything that distracted from those lines. The first day of this was almost all mold line removal and block sanding the body. It was a long day. lol. But it was one of those marathon sessions where you sit there working on one thing for 14 hours. But ya gotta keep in mind that it's a curbside...there's no engine and the only "work" that went into the chassis or interior was to paint it all flat black. I think there's a lot to be said for building a curbside. Most of the time these things just sit on the shelf anyway. They're fun, and a great way to break tedium when you spend a lot of time detailing or scratchbuilding. A little instant gratification in the middle of a lot of hard work can be a great thing.

I was just looking at crazyjims' Barracuda and thought I'd show this one I built in 2004 as a curbside for some contrast. I built it in four days. The drip rails, along with pretty much everything else, were shaved and I lowered the roofline visually by blending in a thin strip of styrene at the top of the side windows. I made new front and rear valance panels, prettied them up with a spoiler out front and some aluminum tips out back, and hacked up a few custom grills from the parts box to make new matching grills and a new taillight panel. A little paint, some bmf, and some Viper wheels, and it was done. Hope ya like it. Glu

I've also got the rear cab wall nearly wrapped up.

Thanks for the encouragement, guys. Yeah, Casey, it would be great to have them in there. The problem is this body has some proportion issues and the opening for the whole grill area is actually too tall to simply scratch up a scale Gladiator far and pop it in there. I had to take a lot of creative liberties with the framework around the light "trays" for lack of a better term, to be able to come even remotely close to the correct proportions of that area. Even so, my "trays" are still more square than they should be, and there's just not a lot of room left for a full size inboard grill. If someone does end up casting this, I'd take a shot at them and see if I could get it "close enough." But if not, I'll save myself the frustration. It didn't show in the first pics, so I took a few more. Proportion issues aside, I did manage to get the top to bottom "in and out" shape in there behind the headlight door. It's real easy to see on Casey's first pic how the sheet metal tips in at the top and out at the bottom. Recreating that took some chin scratching. I ended up making a slightly oblong hole and a matching plug. Imagine the plug on an axle at the horizontal centerline and simply tipping it back at the top and gluing it in. A little shaping on the top of the hole and the bottom of the plug to get the bevel, and there it is. To get the same effect for the turn signals, I just need to elongate the hole a little and tip the bucket (it's a motorcycle light with a full bucket, mounted from the backside). I just haven't done it yet.

Thanks, guys. The headlights are a parts box mash-up of unknown lenses and buckets with a trim rim made out of a dog dish hubcap from the AMT '51 Chevy. I didn't have a spare Jeep CJ laying around or they would have been a lot easier. I was tempted to make the grills that are supposed to be where the turn signals are, but I like the amber there better. They're more parts box stuff, with a lense from some big rig kit that I scratched lines onto the backside. I'm not entirely happy with that part, but there are proportion issues that make this conversion a challenge...and these fit without throwing everything else back out of whack.

I've been working on my Jeep Honcho > Gladiator conversion while I wait for this or that to come together on other projects. I've grown seriously fond of these over the last decade or so, but something always ends up taking priority and pushing this back in the box and on the shelf. Lately I've had more itch to make stuff out of nothing than actually finishing anything...heheh...and this one is perfect for scratching that kind of itch. It's still pretty rough at this point, but I'm very happy with it as a starting point. I'm not using the kit wheels and tires, by the way. They're just stand-ins until I get to that point of the build. I'm not one for sky-high lifts and monstrous tires, but it'll definitely be stouter than stock. Anyway, I'll shut up and let the pics do their work. I always welcome comments, suggestions, and constructive criticism. Enjoy, Glu

Wow, what a red. What is it?

That last pic looks pretty rad, Dave!