Ace-Garageguy

OK...I agree with THAT entirely.

No, but education is a completely different animal. I don't think I should be exempt from having part of my money go to support the military...even though I have no personal quarrel with governments or factions that wish this country harm. I DO have a problem with the creeping IGNORANCE that's destroying this country from the INSIDE, and it can only be combated by education. You can wipe out every welfare or entitlement program, I'll be a happy guy. Give people GOOD basic education, you won't NEED entitlement programs anyway.

So...you're saying that YOUR property taxes were sufficient to cover the entire costs attached to your 3 childrens' public school education? Somehow, I doubt it, but of course that's just my own perspective. I KNOW my own property taxes have never been sufficient to cover the education of just ONE child, or even, assuming a class of 30 children to divide the costs over, 1/30 of the cost. Say your property tax is $1000 per year. That's ONE teacher, getting $30,000 per year to teach 30 kids. In a field. No walls. No roof. No toilets. With no books. No lights. No administration of any kind. The ONLY way it works is if EVERY property owner pays in to the system. And I HATE having to pay to support most of the government and their idiocy...BUT...one of the few things I don't have a problem with paying for is universal basic education...even though I have no kids in the game...and I think the current state of public education is a joke.

Are you using the "low odor" oven cleaner, or the baddass lye-based (sodium hydroxide) oven cleaner? If the coating is anodized, a sodium-hydroxide or potassium-hydroxide product will take it off, though you may have to bag it to keep it wet for a while.

A mold will reproduce exactly what the master is. Exactly. So if your master has a hole in the center, your mold will produce a part that has a hole in the center. Making molds requires adjusting your thinking to operate in negative space, and of course you realize that a one-piece mold is only capable of reproducing one side of a master. This would imply you only want the outside, the part that shows through the wheel, to be molded. So, you make your master with detail only on one side, with the exact size hole in the center that you want your part to have. You attach the back, flat side of the master to the mold-box floor, with the detailed side up. Pour your mold material (silicone, I assume) over it. When it cures, pull the mold out of the mold-box, and remove the master. You now have a one-part mold that has detail on one side only, and a slug of material sticking up in the center that will be the hole in the center of the part. But as Mike says, that's a lot of trouble to go to to make something, and you can buy ready-made resin brakes, some with beautifully photo-etched rotors, from a variety of manufacturers.

Different modelers have different preferences for prepping bare plastic. DON'T bother with the adhesion-promoter. As Longbox55 said, it's made for flexible plastics on real-car bumpers and interiors and is entirely a waste of money on a model. This is what works 100% right for me, every time. Scrub the bare plastic body or part with warm water, an abrasive cleaner like Comet, and an old toothbrush. This will give a nice 'tooth' to the surface for good paint adhesion, and will get in to nooks and crannies you can NOT possibly reach with sandpaper or other means like Scotch-Brite pads. Sandpaper tends to 'dull' or round-off surface details, and you don't have to worry about that with the Comet method. The cleanser will also do a good job of removing surface contaminants like mold-release-lubricants that may be on your new model. Rinse with plenty of water, very thoroughly, and dry. At this point, I take another step some consider to be unnecessary, and I wipe the whole thing down with 70% ISOPROPYL alcohol (cheap, simple rubbing alcohol from the drug or grocery store). It will remove any remaining contaminants, and is excellent insurance against fisheyes. I got in the habit of using the alcohol wipe on full-size aircraft and custom car paint jobs, and it's never let me down yet. I prefer to primer everything, because I find I get a better paint job in the end. The downside to primering is that it's another opportunity for the dreaded 'orange-peel' to creep in, and if it does, it has to be sanded out. Spraying paint over orange-peely primer will look like carp. There are some primers some guys swear by, like Tamiya, that I'm not familiar with enough to recommend...but they say they lay out smooth and slick once you get the hang of using them. That's what you want, if you want to avoid having to sand out 'peel'. I use Duplicolor and SEM primers made for real cars, and they're a little "hot". Duplicolor has two basic kinds...high-build "scratch filler" and a thinner-bodied "sandable" version. if you haven't done any bodywork, and have no deepish scratches that need filling, the "sandable" version slicks out nicely. If you choose to use a primer, and if you can shoot it slick, I'd still recommend scuffing it with Comet, and cleaning it again with alcohol before painting. Practicing and becoming familiar with the way different materials work and handle is the only way to get good at this stuff, so don't get disappointed. DO try to practice on something other than a model you care about FIRST. Plastic pop-bottles make good practice targets for learning how to shoot paint. Prep them exactly as you would a model. The point is to find out EXACTLY what works for YOU. This car was shot with Duplicolor primers and Testors "one-coat" paint and clear. I'm sure everybody here is sick of seeing it on every other how-to paint thread, but it's an example of the results you CAN get from rattlecans.

WAIT!! We didn't explain thoroughly enough, and used a term we're all familiar with, but that someone new to this stuff might not know. In the context of paint, terms like "hot" refer to the aggressiveness of the thinners / solvents in the paint, and how likely they are to attack and craze the plastic a model is made of. Testors and Tamiya lacquers are formulated to be gentle to kit plastic, with solvents that are not too aggressive, less "hot". Duplicolor and other paints formulated for REAL car use tend to have "hotter" solvents in them that allow them to 'bite' better, to adhere better, on a car that will be living in the real world outside. But these "hotter" solvents also make them more likely to craze the plastics models are made of. Some hardware-store paints supposedly MADE for plastic are also too hot for our model use. Krylon Fusion is one such product that's caused a lot of grief among newer, less experienced modelers.

Bottom no-BS line is that there's really no "why" any cars of any period used anything, other than that's what the designers and engineers and management agreed on, for specific reasons peculiar to the vehicle in question, using available technology and then-current engineering practices. Very expensive coachbuilt car, oddly shaped door, difficult to engineer hidden hinges in FRONT... Very expensive coachbuilt car, oddly shaped doors, difficult to engineer hidden hinges in BACK...

One of the simple truths the vast majority of the population seems to be too dense to grasp is that advertising and marketing are now such a significant part of the cost of most products and services, a large part of what they pay for ANY major brand is going to support the legions of marketing people trying to get them to buy the stuff, NOT FOR THE PRODUCT. It's not too hard to read the labels on products like antacids, cold medicine, or aspirin...or to compare the quality and taste of the store-brands of mayonnaise, salsa, etc...and to see that you get EXACTLY the same for much less money by buying generics. Yet, a lot of shoppers firmly stick to a brand that's a rip simply because the advertising has them brainwashed. Sheeple. Tell 'em what to do often enough and loud enough, they do it.

Look at profile shots of the two cars side by side. The 3-window door is much larger. Steel is heavy...and this stuff was thick, MUCH thicker than what car doors are stamped from today. The window on the 3W is also considerably larger than the 5W door window. Glass is also heavy. More is heavier.

The '32 Ford 5-window only used TWO hinges on the front. Not just me, but Ford's own engineers in 1932 seemed to think the additional weight of the 3-window door was worth another hinge. More weight needs more structure to support it.

They're still being used on a few cars today, but things like electric interlocks that keep them from being opened while moving greatly reduce the "unsafe" factor. By the way...when we build rods or customs with suicide-doors, it's common now to replace the old one-click latches with 2-click styles that latch partially even if the door isn't completely shut...AND to install either manual or solenoid-operated pins to prevent accidental opening at speed.

Sorry, weight is a factor, believe it or not. It ALWAYS is in engineering. A '32 3-window door is considerably heavier than an open Ford door of the period. Remember, I work on these things day-in, day-out. As simple as a 2-hinge roadster door would seem to be, go work on a restoration or collision repair, and see what it takes to get them to operate correctly and close right, without slamming, like they're SUPPOSED to, every time. These old hinges are weak, they sag easily...as designed... and if the pillar they're attached to moves around, you're screwed. Yes, geometry is the predominant factor, but the extra weight of the '32-'33-'34 3-window suicide doors most definitely comes into play.

Yes, but the front cut-line of the door opening itself is vertical on the '35, not leaning back like the '32 3-window. The '35 uses TWO hinges, in line, on the vertical cut-line. It's very easy to engineer hinges on a vertical cut-line. It's much more difficult to do it on a line that slants, and requires hinge-think that wasn't in general use at the time. For a door to work, ALL the hinge-pins HAVE to be on the same axis. To accomplish this on a leaning-back cut-line would require at least one of the hinges to stick WAY out, or the rear of the door would swing in an odd arc that would make it unnecessarily difficult to engineer it to close properly...and it would look goofy. It's all just geometry. The earlier mention about the B-pillar on the '32 3-window being stronger is spot on. Closed Fords of the early '30s usually used THREE hinges in line on the front-hinged doors to support the weight. Hanging all the weight of the larger door of the 3-window required a stronger pillar to do it, yet still required three hinges in line. Hinge and more-steel-in-the-body design had progressed by '35 to be able to hang the entire door on two hinges easily, but it wasn't until considerably later in the evolution of body design that curved internal hinges capable of dealing with more pronounced body contours became mainstream.

Just a couple FYIs, for future reference, based on extensive first-hand experience. When you "sand" the styrene plastic that our models are made of, you invariably break the surface, which is usually somewhat harder and more solvent-resistant than what's under it. So, any solvents in your paint will attack where the surface has been sanded much more aggressively than they will on other areas. Case in point. I removed the raised peak and the emblem from this Revell '50 Olds hood. Naturally, in filing off the raised portions, I went into the softer material beneath it. I lightly scuffed the rest of the hood and started shooting primer. EVERYWHERE the raised details had been removed, the Duplicolor primer I used attacked and crazed the plastic, but it laid down nicely where the surface had just been scuffed. It took several sessions of lightly sanding the crazing out, re-shooting with primer, and re-sanding to get a perfect surface for paint...and a sufficient barrier of primer so that the paint wouldn't attack the underlying plastic again. But patience and practice have their rewards. After allowing the primered hood to dry very thoroughly, I shot a Duplicolor lacquer color over it. No crazing, and the paint slicked out very nice and glossy...in this shot with one coat of clear. This has not been sanded or polished, either. Practice, practice, practice...and patience.

VERY tasty.

Smallblock Chebbys are one of the most popular engines on Earth. Besides the little gem already mentioned in the Accurate Miniatures Corvettes, the engine in this old 1/25 Monogram '57 Chebby kit makes a good base. It comes with a factory-style Rochester mechanical fuel-injection setup, and an optional 2-4bbl crossram setup, looking a lot like the early Z-28. Manual trans, too.

Sad, but I think you're right. It appears that once you'd sanded the car, the Duplicolor was WAY too hot to use on the plastic (something nobody above mentioned) and crazed it badly...about the worst I've ever seen. Duplicolor WILL craze many of the plastics that kits are made from these days. On a positive note, you photographed the problem very well, and you might be on to something in creating a realistic vinyl-top texture. I wouldn't throw it out, though. You may someday need bits or shapes from the body to build something radical, and it might have just the part you need. What's there could certainly be the basis for a funny-car body, definitely. One other thing...this is the prefect illustration why I'm always harping on modelers testing the materials they want to combine (that aren't made specifically to go together on models) on the plastic from the kit you're working on at the moment. Plastic formulations vary, and a paint that might not hurt one kit will ruin another one. This is the reason the much vaunted "spoon test", while good for checking color and coverage, is useless for determining whether a particular paint or combination is safe for your model. This is also a perfect illustration of why it's a good idea to practice your painting techniques and get them dialed in BEFORE you commit to painting a model.

To avoid confusing the OP, the actual name of the Testors lacquer product is "One Coat", not "one-shot". There's a One Shot line of striping enamels and airbrush products, but it has nothing whatsoever to do with any Testors product. The Testors One Coat products are not entirely accurately named either. In my own experience, they MAY (or might, if you prefer ) take several coats to achieve good hiding...depending on the topcoat and primer colors. Also, to the OP...if you're having to remove paint to correct mistakes, you need to thoroughly read the paint-stripping how-to thread. As you suspect, repeated sanding will eventually ruin your model's body. You can, however, strip it an almost infinite number of times with no damage...if you do it right. I still use Testors enamel rattlecan products for wheels, engines, etc., with excellent results...usually...because they make a beautiful gloss on small parts you can't easily achieve without enamel. Occasionally, I'll get annoying bubbling on sharp edges, so I'm phasing out the canned enamels now that I have a good airbrush.

Yup, pretty much. Again, it had to do with a slow phasing-out of traditional construction methods, and riding the development-curve of press-tool technology for producing deeply-contoured, large steel panels. Interestingly, some European cars were considerably more advanced than their US counterparts in pressed-and-welded steel structures. This 1934 Citroen design is a full unibody, with no separate frame, and with no cloth roof insert.

I hope you feel better soon, really. It bites to be sick. Last winter I got something pretty bad. Lucky so far this year. Take care of yourself.

The balsa coupe is most impressive, and I'd be proud of it had I built it myself. It's remarkable what you've achieved using materials that aren't really well suited to doing this kind of work, materials and techniques that were all the modelers in the 1940s and early '50s had, as you note. So many builders today complain if their pre-molded parts don't fit perfectly, or if they have to remove a little molding flash; it's good to be reminded what can be done with nothing other than flat pieces of wood as a starting point.

Yes, I'm aware of that. My post says that ONE correct definition of "may" is expressing possibility. My post does NOT say it's THE ONLY definition of "may". YOUR (and Harry's) previous posts implied that the ONLY correct use of "may" was as expressing permission. May I inquire as to whether you may have misunderstood my meaning?

Spoon tests are fine for testing colors and coverage. BUT...you NEED to test the product ON THE PLASTIC THE ACTUAL MODEL IS MADE FROM. I can't overemphasize this. The plastic that many kits are being made of these days has much LESS SOLVENT RESISTANCE that hard styrene spoons. That means it might not craze a spoon, but may absolutely RUIN the surface of a model. TEST ON PARTS OF THE MODEL THAT WON'T SHOW, ON THE MODEL YOU WANT TO USE THE STUFF ON.

Wouldn't it be nice if they were just honest across the board and said something like: "OK, this is "customer service". Yeah, right. There's no one here who really gives a rat's rear about your little problem, and we only have this phone number to call because our marketing department thought you'd feel better if we had one. In the unlikely event you DO stay on the line and go through 15 minutes of pressing "one" or "two" with intervals of low-fidelity and annoying music, the human you might eventually talk to is many time zones away in India, isn't really named Mike, and can't possibly do anything for you anyway. Wouldn't it be easier for everyone concerned if you just send your payment in and accept that we're screwing you? Thanks, and have a nice day."