Bugatti Fan

I received H G Wells ' Invisible Kit !

I thought that the site was down this morning. Turned out that Duck Duck Go was down.

The bigger the cruise liners get and many are now colossal like floating cities, the more problems they create for the places they visit. Especially places of great natural beauty or of historical interest where the local economies suddenly start making loads of money, the lovely places get spoilt by becoming 'touristy' with shops popping up selling tourist tat souvenirs. Bigger places like New York, Boston, Rio and Capetown can cope with it, but much smaller places will become ruined to please the 'one day' tourists from the ships. Venice is a good example that was in great peril due to too many tourists from cruise ships so they did something about it. Those ships get bigger and bigger but the places they visit do not and the local infrastructure has difficulty coping. I shudder to think about one of those colossal ships going down in mid ocean as it would be the Titanic much magnified. There are so many now and the law of averages may dictate it happening.

That's a real shame Les. Generally tourists are respectful to and mindful of the people they come into contact with when visiting another country. Hopefully that was an isolated incident

That's a nice looking car in your photos Skip, and a very interesting build by Brizio being featured. Why can't Photobucket use a small discreet watermark in a corner somewhere. Their huge watermark ruins every picture. You can load pictures directly from your PC into this site incidentally

I have been reading all the stuff about USPS recently! Living in the UK it hasn't affected me, but guess that it must by frustrating for you guys Tony.

John and yourself take modelling to a completely higher level than most of us as you are both very good at 3D programming and printing all those intricate details for your models, even the working internal parts. I thought that you would get on well with John as you both have a similar approach to your builds. I can see more collaboration between you both in the future. Those Rolls engine drawings look very interesting Francois. It is always good to refer to factory originals.

Nothing irked me today as I got a semi scratch built model finished today. Hurrah! I really must find something now to gripe about! Lol.

After a long haul I got a semi scratch built model finished today. Yes!

It is amazing how parts can 'disappear'. My workshop has a laminate floor, so dead easy to sweep and find parts, right? 99 percent of the time I just put a soft broom around and then use a dust pan and brush to sweep the little pile of debris into and sort through for the part. Easy! BUT, the other day I dropped a shaped wire part about 25mm (1 inch) long. I heard it hit the deck but it just managed to disappear completely. You would think a part that long would be easy to find on my floor. But oh no! I gave up after half an hour and made another! What amazes me is that I have often dropped miniscule parts on the floor and retrieved them, but not this bigger one.I I can understand why jewelerry craftspeople have a leather apron they wear that is also attached to the front of their work bench to catch precious metal filings.

More excellent progress on your F40 Thomas. I see that you mentioned the Autograph company for extra detailing parts. There is another company in the USA who makes upgrade parts for the old Pocher kits named Model Motorcars. I thought I would mention them as another upgrade source but possibly you may already know of them as they probably have some F40 upgrade parts too.

Having tried to access it today Scalemotorcars forum appears to be down, and has been for quite a while. Anyone know what is going on with it? A message saying that they are trying to deal with attacks on the site has been up for ages. It was a good site that compliments this one as it mainly dealt with large scale scratch built models. It would be a great pity if it is now down and gone forever. So that will be another auto modelling forum gone like SA.

Interesting to see your improvements. That F40 kit has been around for quite a while. The old Pochers were never the best kits and need quite experienced modellers to get the best from them. Looking good so far. Will be following.

I'm late to the party too! A very interesting model (or should I say models?) beautifully built and detailed.

Very nice!

Incredible engine machining. Reminds me of the late Gerald Wingrove's models. I keep seeing a Novi engine mentioned. Is an Indianapolis Roadster model on the cards as a next project?

I take my hat off to those modellers like Mark who can work wonders on those tiny 1/43rd scale kits. 1/43rd scale I know is the accepted norm for what is a very popular scale, but it does seem a bit of an oddball scale. I read that it is something to do with it originally being compatible with O Gauge model railways. It always seems a bit weird as a scale as it is not equally divisible by anything like for example 1/48th that doubled in size makes 1/24th scale and up again to 1/12th. One another tack, 1/32nd doubles to 1/16th and again to 1/8th. Purely logical to me.

This has been an incredibly interesting build to follow and shows what a master modeller li!e Francois is can do with an elderly kit. I am looking forward to seeing the next project, your Pocher Rolls Royce renovation. Regarding thin leather for upholstery, a number of years ago I bought a batch of assorted off cuts of thin ladies glove leather from a UK factory named Pittards. They sold off cuts in mixed bundles for people into the leather craft hobby. For the Rolls it might be worth looking to see if any US or Canadian glove factory does the same.

Nice to see a 'spares box' kit being resurrected!

There has been a trend over the last few years or so for huge 1/8th scale mainly die cast car kits becoming available as part works. Well guys! Who has built some of these beasts and what do you think of them generally? Not built one yet myself, but would value some feed back from those experienced in building them. The impression I get is that they are good, but not quite as challenging or detailed as a 1/12th scale MF kit for examp!e. I think that this could become an interesting thread. Comments please !

3D Printing. Revolutionary technology but a bit of a dark art for me I'm afraid ! From what I have seen and read about it the process is very time consuming on the machine, and expensive. I think I will stick to my conventional lathe, milling machine and hand tools.

Cannot argue with any of your comments about dumbing down generally Bill. I read somewhere that someone went onto a US question and answer website and ask this question, 'Why do British people speak English, an American language?' I mean, you just couldn't make it up could you? Getting back to Kalmbach, I had no idea about their titles being being sold off until the responses came in to this thread.

There was a company named Pressed Steel Fisher located in Cowley, Oxford, England who made car bodies. I guess that it was part owned by the American Fisher Group. The Morris car plant was next door. Both companies became part of British Leyland back in the 70's. Since then BMW acquired both factories and started to build the new Mini there and still build some of the new mini models there today.

Nice model taking shape here. Those Monogram classics are nice kits. I have their Bugatti 35B to build that looks a nice accurate kit apart from the heavily chromed parts. They will need to be stripped and redone with Alclad or a similar product. Surprised to learn that Atlantis now have the moulds. Revell must have sold them on after the acquisition of Monogram.

So what is Kalmbach doing now? Anything or nothing? What publisher did their remaining titles go to? Was Fine Scale Modeler amongst them?