Mike999

My Dremel tool croaked years ago, and I decided to try an EnKay variable-speed corded tool. I think the EnKay's lowest speed is 5000 RPM. But I run it thru a Dremel Speed Control, so I can crank it down to just about any speed. I've had the EnKay a long time now and use it a lot. So far no problems. I also use the Speed Control for another piece of Geezer Model Technology: a pyrograph, or a soldering iron with a needle in the tip. Useful for detailing the hair on figures and other oddball heating/melting jobs. The Speed Control varies the temperature of the needle. One of my best tool finds was a few years ago, in a Los Angeles closeout store called "Mr. Stuff." That store sold all kinds of weird things, from car axle pullers to miniature needle files. One day they were selling a nice, polished wooden box full of rotary-tool attachments: different tips, sanding/grinding discs in different grits, drill bits, collets, etc. I think it was $20 but provided nearly a lifetime supply of rotary-tool doodads.

Here's one guy's opinion, found at random on the internet: the 1/24 Aoshima is better than the 1/25 Polar Lights just because of the detailed decals. https://stevethefishdotnet.tumblr.com/post/118691897364/may-11th-2015-here-is-the-reason-to-buy-the

A two-fer! Lindberg tried combining the parts-pack idea with police gear in its "Emergency 911 Accessory Kits." I'm surprised nobody has mentioned them, but maybe they were REALLY obscure. Kit #72716 contained a Vector light-bar, kit #72717 had an MX-7000 light-bar. Both sets also included a shotgun. All parts were taken from the Crown Vic kits. You can see the price on one kit: $5.75. I have another one with a $5.99 price tag. (I didn't pay that for either one. Last year I bought a huge lot of random model junk and 2 sets each of these were in it.) These were probably not great sellers, either, and they seem to have disappeared. I couldn't find a single one on eBay, or even with a general Google search. No wonder, when these days you can buy a whole Crown Vic kit at Ollie's for about 8 bucks.

More Palmer goodness! The "Outlaw" Competition Mustang. The box art, if you squint, looks sort of like a second-generation Mustang: it has the hood recesses, side scallops and T-Bird sequential taillights as used on second-gen Shelby Cobras. The actual parts look weirder, as usual: a mish-mash of second and third-generation body styles, with a molded-in hood scoop. It does have a nice pair of chrome-plated sun visors. At least I think that's what they are. I didn't bother posting the pic of the chrome. If you want to see this eyesore, just go to eBay and search "palmer outlaw mustang." Let's hope this Outlaw got a life sentence with no hope of parole.

I don't know what that "binder" is, but reading around, it seems to be a weak glue. So along with a drop of dish soap to break the surface tension, maybe a drop of good old Elmer's water-soluble white glue would work.

Same here. I also save regular sprues and stash them in bags according to color. For one reason, because I still practice the Antique Geezer Art of sprue-stretching: light a small candle, hold the sprue over the candle with 2 hands and rotate until it goes floppy, then stretch it. With a little practice, you can come up with any size round piece you need, from large diameter to hair-thin. I just did some electrical cables on a firewall using stretched sprue. By stretching black, red and yellow sprues, I had a multicolored, in-scale wiring harness that didn't even need painting. Clear sprues really come in handy; when stretched, they make great fuel lines. Or small warning lights on an instrument panel; drill a hole, stick a piece of clear stretched sprue in it; use heat from a match or whatever to melt the sprue into a dome shape; and finally hit it with a dab of Clear Red, Orange etc. paint.

Yep. "Contains Acetic Acid," i.e., one of the 2 components of vinegar (the other being the deadly H2O). I went looking for an old thread where a modeler found that out the hard way - his little kid drank nearly a whole bottle of the stuff. Maybe Testors or Solvaset, I think he was British. They rushed the kid to a doctor and downloaded the Material Data Sheet for the decal-setting fluid. It was mostly vinegar with a chemical binder to make it stick. Not life-threatening and the kid completely recovered. Here's an old Hobby Talk thread where they talk about overpriced decal setters: http://www.hobbytalk.com/bbs1/99-science-fiction-modeling/89262-how-use-decal-set.html

I'm always looking for good lenses too. In a hobby shop years ago, I found 3 packs of the item shown below: Modeler's brand #P419-600 1/24 Light Lens Set. It has a good mix of plain and engraved round headlight lenses, and square parking/fog lights, in different sizes. I've used some of the round lenses in the searchlights on 1/35 scale tanks. Modeler's was a Japanese brand that also did photo-etched wipers and probably other stuff. A quick internet/eBay search didn't find any of their stuff, so they may be long gone. But like everything, these should turn up on eBay eventually. To answer the hoarding question, I do a Scrooge McDuck on any of those things known on this board as "gimcracks." Guns, bongo drums, stuffed animals, concrete blocks, tape decks, TVs, etc. etc.

Now this is sort of unusual. A Palmer kit with box art that looks every bit as bad as the kit inside. Some Palmer box art looked really good and resembled the real car, while the contents didn't (with a few exceptions). Not my kit, I saw this on eBay a few minutes ago. The seller was asking $34.99:

Scale Model News article on Tom West's passing. With some of his original photos: http://www.scalemodelnews.com/2018/03/from-ragnarok-interceptor-to-star-wars.html#more

That's weird. Most entire 1/6 scale figures from Hot Toys seem to go for $200-300 each. Hard to imagine paying double that just for a head. https://www.sideshowtoy.com/hot-toys/

That Range Rover Police hasn't been available for a long time. Originally released in the 80's, it was re-issued once long ago in a Humbrol box. And ESCI did one re-issue of it as a Dutch police vehicle, but that may have been an issue just for the Netherlands, with nothing changed but the box art. The original kit already had different equipment and decals for a British or Dutch police Rover, with both left and right hand dashboards. And also the chassis changes for LH/RHD. As someone said above, they are curbside kits with a couple of irritating problems. But I'm still very happy to see them back and will be buying a few. I bought 2 of those in Saudi Arabia many years ago and sold both of them, which I always regretted.

That's been my method since the 90's too. I also keep eBay set on "Ending Soonest" for models, just in case I can swoop in at the last minute and pick up a good deal. That does have its dangers. There isn't much time to check out the kit. So one of these days, I'll probably fork over $49.95 for an empty box... One of my weirdest and happiest eBay experiences: probably back in the 90's, I put up the Matchbox 1/12 scale Vincent Black Shadow kit for auction. Two bidders got in a war and it went for about $75. That kit was hard to find back then and I immediately regretted selling it. Just a few days later I saw another one about to end with no bidders. I got it for the minimum bid, which was about $15.

Since the Model T above is painted white and looks like it is not stretched, it may have been a child's hearse. Some bigger funeral homes used dedicated smaller vehicles for kid's funerals. Advances in science and medicine eventually made the idea of a child's hearse unprofitable, and let's hope it stays that way. Here's a long thread about Model T hearses from the MTFCA web site. Lots of interesting history and photos: http://www.mtfca.com/discus/messages/29/47640.html?1204204441

Just as a heads-up, the latest issue of "Air Classics" magazine has several articles related to this thread. For one thing, it has Part Four of the magazine's series on the Schneider Air Races. This is the March 2018 issue, with the Grumman JF-2 Duck on the cover. Twelve cylinders not enough for you? There's a photo of a P-47 being fitted with Chrysler's experimental V-16 IV-2220 monster engine. Also a mention of a Hemi V-12, the Continental I-1430 Hyper engine. It was an inverted V-12 featuring "cylinders with hemispherical combustion chambers using sodium-filled exhaust valves." Continental built 23 of them, and one was tested in the Lockheed XP-49. This issue also has articles on a couple of famous flops: the hapless Brewster Buccaneer/Bermuda dive bomber and the YB-60 bomber, a B-36 with swept wings and 8 jet engines.

I knew that didn't sound right, but just copied what the book said. It was published in 1996. The book also repeats the story that Russia was given the pre-war Packard body dies. And that's why some Russian cars looked so much like Packards. That one has been debunked by quite a few people, especially Andy Thompson in his book "Cars of the Soviet Union." Oh well, the pictures in it are good...

From the Crestline book "Packard" by George H. Dammann & James A. Wren (which I found recently at a local flea market): "April 1941 was also the month when Packard got into gear on its national defense contract to produce aircraft engines. After a thorough inspection and study of the complicated block in 1940, the company cleared the ground, built new buildings, obtained tools, trained workers, and went into war production of the Rolls-Royce Merlin engine. Within six months, on August 2, 1941, the first mass-produced Merlin engine was being tested. Although the initial contract was for only 9,000 such units, by the end of the war Packard had shipped 55,523 Merlin aircraft engines of superior quality. In fact, the company was the largest producer of that engine during World War II... A commendable tribute to Packard engineering was the fact that the Merlin was a liquid-cooled block, whereas at that time all U.S. aviation engines were air-cooled. Even Packard's previous aviation expertise had been in air-cooled units. Packard also greatly improved the design and power of the Merlin through the development of an innovative two-stage supercharger, which increased the power from 1,250 to 2,220 horsepower."

Sorry to board-hog, but I forgot to mention the Plus Models line of resin 1/35 scale G4 kits. They are very well done in resin and photo-etched metal. Plus Models (from the Czech Republic) did several different G4's, including "parade" and "combat" versions armed with machine guns. Plus Models also does a hardtop G4. Mercedes-Benz only built 2 of those, used when Hitler traveled. One carried his luggage, the other was a Radio Car (pic below). ICM is not likely to ever do this version, so it's either Plus Models or the ancient Schmidt vac-form kit. The vac-form included an optional hardtop. It might fit on an ICM plastic kit. I have both kits and, if I ever have a sudden fit of insanity, I might even try that.

Guns: I bought some 1/24 scale AK-47 rifles from Shapeways. They were molded in the "Ultra-Detail Frost" material and look great, with really fine detail. I needed several for building Middle Eastern "technical" vehicles and such in 1/24. The 1/24 plastic figure scene is much better than it was just a few years ago, thanks to companies like ICM and MasterBox. Some of the MasterBox 1/24 female figures are reviewed in Issue #205 of our favorite magazine, on Page 5.

You might come across a cheap (or not) resin G4, made by I-Corps Models. Don't even think about it. See the pic below. It's a very bad copy of the MARUI kit. Even the voids and pinholes have voids and pinholes. I bought this thing years ago at a KCI swap meet, from resin guru Herb Deeks. Even he gave up on it, after doing some minor filling and rework. He glued sheet plastic in the floorboards, which looked like resin Swiss cheese. I-Corps went out of business years ago, and good riddance. Another bad G4 is from Hi-Cast, a Taiwanese company. It's a direct rip-off of the excellent ADV/Azimut 1/35 scale resin kit. Even the instruction sheet is a Xerox copy of Azimut's, with the Azimut name crudely blacked out. The delicate suspension parts that were photo-etched metal in the Azimut kit were copied in...resin! Guaranteed to fall apart/break, even if you could ever get them super-glued together. This kit did come with a standing Hitler figure. Which was (surprise, surprise!) also a copy of somebody else's work. Sovereign, I think. With the excellent ICM plastic kits, there is absolutely no need to waste money or time on these nightmares. If you see either one going for a low price, there's a very good reason.

Same here on the East Coast. Went into a Michael's last Fri. I think the newest car kit they have is the Starsky & Hutch Torino. The last time I was in that store, a couple of weeks ago, they had one Lindberg Little Red Wagon left, molded in white. Thought I'd pick it up for conversion potential. But last Fri. it was gone.

Another entertaining and informative review. Thanks! I don't really have any interest in the subject, but the level of detail MENG put into a "spoof kit" is amazing. Drilled dive brakes? Wow...

The HL near me seems to do the same. Went in one time, they had 2 of the Ken-Skill Teardrops and nothing else. Next time, they had a Winnebago and 1 Teardrop, which I bought. Freetime Hobbies has all those 1/24 trailers for $14.99, but the Shasta Airflyte is still showing as "Out of Stock." They have the Winnebagos and Ken-Skills: https://freetimehobbies.com/search.php?search_query=greenlight+1%2F24&Search

Great job, the old fellow looks like he's about to talk! For 54mm the face/eyes are very well done. It's always tricky to paint something like that riding coat. It can come off looking really monotone, but you got the shadows and highlights right that keep it from looking that way. One of my nearly-done projects has the same issue - a WWII Russian officer wearing a grey overcoat. But he's in 1/16 scale, which makes shadowing/highlighting a little easier.

An idea I had for this kit. I might de-Rommelize it (sacrilege, I know). And make a fictional German version of a Sahara Desert exploration vehicle. Like the Citroen trucks fitted with the Russian Kegresse half-track system, used to explore the Sahara in the 1920's and 30's. These were so loaded with gear you can barely see what the vehicle looked like. Will have to check Michael's and Hobby Lobby for a 1/24 scale camel...