Ace-Garageguy

The Micro-Mesh sheets have been around for quite some time if I remember correctly. First time I encountered them was for polishing 1:1 aircraft canopies and windows....many years before I got back into this hobby.

I have a couple of possibles that might get done as rats...but I HATE the term being applied to a well-thought-out, well-constructed car. A "rat" to me is usually rusty junk, poorly engineered, with nasty fabrication and minimal, often unsafe functionality. A well-constructed car, even if it has wild proportions and is intended to be intimidating and anti-social, is STILL a traditional 'rod...to me. (Your opinion may vary) Cars like these were built in the post-war days, LONG before the term "rat rod" became the me-too me-too term it is today.

Yeah, it's already been argued to death. Build what you like, call it what you want.

Cool idea.

Yup.

You can get fairly close to the cab with this kit, then reinforce and lengthen the frame, easy flat-panel scratchbuild of the ramp section.

Just a suggestion on proportions...this type of car always looks better if the grille shell is pretty close to the centerline of the front axle. That may require pushing the engine back in the chassis, moving the axle forward a bit, or both. Or if you like it as-is, that's OK too.

Thank you sir. Love the cobalt blue over the gold base. Hmmmmmm........

Got up early and went for a long drive in my ratty-looking (good running) old beater truck. Almost no idiot traffic, all the morons still sleepy-bye, clear roads. Lotsa fun. With the 5-speed and the new radials, it's almost like driving an old-style hot-rod. Also just realized there's a robin's nest in the tree outside my office window. Buncha baby birds in it too.

If it's got paint...even flat paint... and isn't made entirely of poorly-assembled, poorly-engineered rusty junk, with jagged edges and bubble gum welds, it's really more of a "traditional" hot-rod than a "rat" rod. In the REAL world, most of the guys who build decent looking, functional, painted cars HATE having them referred to as "rats". Just sayin'.

This is one or two coats of "wet look" clear shot over Duplicolor...no sanding or polishing at this point...just exactly as-shot. It slicks out quite nicely. If you want glass-smooth, sand it with 12.000 wet and hand-rub with 3M Perfect-it polishing compound (exact number on request).

Different modelers will have different techniques. If I have opening panels that have to be painted inside and out, I'll usually paint the INSIDE first by attaching the outside surface to a paint-stir-stick with double-sided tape. Then (if it's a SOLID color) when it's thoroughly dry, turn it over and adhere the inside surface to a stick with double-sided tape and paint the outside. If it's a METALLIC OR PEARL, to get an even color, I'll use masking tape to mount the panels in place on the body, and paint the outsides of the panels at the same time the body is painted.

As far as unclear instructions go, a lot of them are pretty good, and some of them have a potentially daunting disconnect between what the parts actually look like (and where they go) and how they're portrayed. If you stay in the hobby (and are interested) you'll undoubtedly learn enough about how cars actually work (and some of the general similarities between all of them) to have a pretty good idea of how to build your kits with no instructions at all. And it's at that point you'll find that SOME of the instructions are just flat WRONG, and you have to trust your own judgment. Doing a Google image search for the particular car you're working on can show you many things very clearly that the illustrators who did the instructions didn't understand either.

Cool indeed. Now I'm MUCH more interested in acquiring some. The raw part has a definite vacuum-formed look about it. Now we know why.

I had the same thought. Liquid cements make a poor bond between styrene and resin parts. CA would be better, but still looks to me like it would be insufficient during shaping, sanding and handling while finishing the seam. I'd think a higher-strength epoxy would be preferable. 30 minute stuff minimum.

A friend of mine found about a dozen in an 'antique' shop. They had come out of the back of an old toy store that had been locked up for years. She bought 'em all and gave 'em to me. I'm about halfway through crashing 'em, probably save the last two or three for posterity. That old balsa gets pretty brittle after 40 years, but my flight tuning is rather better than it was in my youth, so they last a good bit longer.

Only time I got a little chapped when someone posted HIS model on my thread was a complete POS build that some of the reading-impaired or too-lazy-to-read thought was MY work. And like, who really cares anyway? Anybody with a brain knew the carpy one wasn't mine, and it just made mine look that much better. Yeah, I know. I'm an SOB.

Just a guess, but I imagine fairly recently it has a little to do with the "everyone's a winner" attitude so prevalent in public schools. Perhaps an attempt, in part, to stem the bad-loser behavior, and surely easier than trying to instill a little adult character in competitors so they might lose gracefully. But competition IS ABOUT COMPETING. Duh. There's also the unnecessarily macho attitude of "show me a good loser and I'll show you a loser" that some kids get saddled with by idiot parents. Unfortunately, some of them believe it. Set your own standards, do your best because IT MATTERS TO YOU. If you win, that's icing on the cake. If not, be a man about it, and look at losing as an opportunity to grow, to do even better work. AS LONG AS YOU REALLY DID YOUR BEST, that's all that should matter. Not everyone is going to love you all the time...no matter how good your work is.

So much for being voted Miss Congeniality.

Short of the AMBR or the Riddler, I don't really see any car-show trophies worth getting wadded up panties about anyway.

Still do.

You have an excellent point there, sir. After looking at photos of the model, I think your idea is the best. Same basic procedure, especially making sure the window inserts are stuck VERY well to the edges of the openings so there's no chance of cracking during subsequent bodywork.