Ace-Garageguy

Beautiful work on those light masters, molds and castings. Nice job integrating the power package into the little car too. Lighting really makes a model come alive.

Ron, I like the way you've given the car more visual rake by channeling the front of the body shell deeper over the frame than the rear. This style can often be too extreme, but you've hit a line that looks very aggressive and purposeful without becoming cartoonish. The car has an all-business, serious competition look not often associated with the Victoria body style, and it works very well here. Your model has made me want to get one of the recent-release Vics. My eye was also immediately drawn to the chopped '36 in the first shot. I guess I missed that one, but it looks good to me too. The skirts and Moon discs give it a fine old lakes-racer vibe I can't resist. I'm liking that phaeton too...and the rest, including your dio work. I share some of your frustration about posting, having had a couple of my longer tech responses disappear into some electronic black hole. P'bucket was acting up for a while too, making it misery to try to post photos, and it still has some occasional and maddening little glitches. Looks like you've got the photo thing wired, so keep on posting and most especially...nice work.

I used a slightly stretched C5R frame under a radically chopped kinda pro-touring '70 Chevelle back in 2012, with a front-blown big block Chebby.

I'm interested. There are some mods I've been thinking of since I first saw the real ones. If I build a curbside, I just might be able to get it done in 9 months.

Yeah, you could print out a 'living' steak, lamb chops, veal, headless chicken, frogs' legs...pain-free, cruelty-free protein source for us carnivores. Which reminds me..work IS being done on growing cow-free beef, etc. http://www.livescience.com/3904-free-beef-proposed.html But wait...there's MORE... http://www.geek.com/news/startup-gets-350k-in-funding-to-3d-print-meat-1509683/

Thanks Ed, and I understand that. It's the main reason I didn't stay out there after the contract job I had ended, but since then, I've been slowly working myself into a position where I can generate income anywhere.

PS. Here's a billet housing for a Ford 9". Just more proof that there's no reason somebody couldn't machine a billet QC center section, so if you make one in scale, it COULD be done in reality.

Yup.

X2 indeed.

Geez Ed, keep on posting those beautiful Az. sky pictures and I'm going the HAVE to move back. Maybe I need to look into that little gas station...

Well, in the long term, you could order up the whole hooker to be printed out. Only part that might prove really tricky is the brain, but that's not primarily what you're after anyway, right?

I have to admit I made some real messes of those Revell kits when they first came out and I was a kid. Tube glue, limited tools and experience, chubby hands that didn't always follow the helm exactly, and wanting to see the dang thing finished TODAY were kinda problematical. Today, every time I get into one, I DO have to agree that they must have really been designed with adult modelers in mind. And now, I think they're some of the best kits we'll ever see.

In general, "billet" parts are machined from solid billets...simply chunks of metal plate or bar stock of a particular alloy...which, if they're of decent quality, should be quite consistent throughout as far as density and molecular structure. But all "billet" is not created equal. The good stuff is forged but some of it is cast trash. I have some Chinese-sourced "billet" parts that have voids just like the worst low-pressure castings I've ever seen. Machining a QC center from a billet of appropriate, good-quality material and finishing it correctly (like peening the surface after machining) can produce a part that's markedly stronger than a similar-appearing sand-cast part. Castings can have unknown 'grain' patterns, inclusions, voids, and other potential weaknesses. Quick-change housings are usually cast because they're low-volume parts of a complicated design that could be prohibitively expensive to forge into a near-net-shape. But there's nothing to stop a QC center from being machined from a forged billet, as even some top-fuel dragster ENGINE BLOCKS and heads are now...as the OP well knows. In sales terms, “billet” usually means “you don’t understand the term, so we’ll pretend it’s better, when actually it’s just cheaper for us to make”.

We live in interesting times. Using the patient's own stem cells also neatly side-steps the ethical issue of using fetal stem cells while, as you say, avoiding the tissue rejection problem entirely. Once the techniques are fully developed, any functional body part should be available pretty much to order, made of living tissue, and manufactured to fit exactly where the damaged or even missing part was originally. Ray Kurzweil's recent book Fantastic Voyage: Live Long Enough to Live Forever makes a strong case for the impact of these rapidly evolving technologies in health to move humans towards immortality. With guaranteed-fit, OEM replacement parts available in the not too distant future, it might just be true.

Lab-Made Heart Represents 'Moonshot' for 3D Printing http://www.livescience.com/41280-3d-printing-heart.html

Cutting through a funeral is pretty damm rude, and going a LOT faster on a bike than the rest of the traffic is a recipe for disaster, but I know a fair number of riders who intentionally exceed the speed of the rest of the vehicles for what they perceive as their own safety. Face it...most car drivers aren't particularly engaged in what they're doing, a lot of them are either talking on the phone or texting, and small things like bikes tend to go largely unnoticed. Riding faster than the traffic stream puts the rider more in control of his own fate, cutting through the herd like a shark through a school of mindless minnows, and better managing his own spacial relationship to nearby vehicles. The strategy works equally well while driving something tiny like an original Mini or Lotus 7 that's easily overlooked by the typical dozy commuter.

A lack of patience, a lack of fine motor-skills (which come partially with talent but primarily with practice) and a lack of the confidence to make modifications in order to achieve good fit...get past these limitations that most inexperienced builders at any age will have, and you'll see these old kits are marvels of engineering and crisp, precise and well-scaled tooling. Yes, they DO take more effort and thought than some of the toy-like but easy-to-build kits we've seen recently, but they CAN build up into spectacular models.

^^ The ONLY THING the more critical kit reviewers expect is that the proportions, shapes, curves, obvious dimensions and LOOK of the subject be reflected accurately in models. NOBODY HAS EVER ASKED FOR PERFECTION.

One of mine got a second place ribbon once. I keep it in the clear box the model that won it is in. It makes the little car happy.

Excellent idea.

That's working very well. Amazing how things like this almost seem to know what they want to be...all you have to do is pay attention to what they're telling you.

Nice and low.

Beautiful model, perfect colors.

Nice score, Ray. Love the 330 P4. That '59 Buick of Tommy's is another one I'm lusting after, as is Brad's '62 Nova. Those Hiroboy tires look really really great too. I got one of these cheap, specifically for the Guide lamps, and some other bits. Kinda think I just might build it pretty much like it is though.