Ace-Garageguy

Airbrush, but like in "air guitar", if you know what I mean.

True, but no floating alternators either. Yes Joe, it was almost overwhelming.

Nah...I just happened to catch the alien light in the act of beaming them up.

Well, I'm gonna get at least 3 times as many done this year.

Beautiful work, as always.

"Metallics" consist of tiny metal or plastic particles suspended in a tinted clear. This is so you can actually see the particles, or flakes. If the flakes were mixed with an "opaque" paint, they would pretty much disappear. Because the flakes are suspended in a tinted clear, it can sometimes take as many as 5 coats, even when using Teasors "one coat" paints, to achieve full hiding and even color with no basecoat or primer show-through. This is why painters of real cars use "sprayout cards" with black and white squares. When you can't see the black through the paint any more, you know you have enough coats of paint to provide full-hiding. This is especially important if the color is not going to be clear-coated, but sanded and polished. It's necessary to provide additional coats of paint after full-hiding is achieved to allow for the removal of paint on high-spots that is inevitable during polishing, to avoid light spots and primer show-through.

Stopped by my LHS (which in this case is a HobbyTown) and was struck by how many great old models have been re-issued, and how many newer ones are available from folks like Moebius. There's more variety in models on the shelves now than I'd ever thought I'd see again. Only downer was that the HO train-car kits were almost all gone, and have been really light at this store for years now.

England has much the same problem. Many Brits regularly make jokes about the factories and industries and exports they USED to have. I recall one British economist warning of impending economic doom many years ago, saying something to the effect of "essentially, we'll all be taking in each other's laundry".

I recently bought the AMT '62 Corvette "Sock it to Me" edition solely based on the box art (that, and it was marked down to $11 for clearance). I knew better. I know these old AMT Vettes have horrible blobular chassis and the nose details are not well-scaled or proportioned. I was disappointed when I opened the box...BUT...it's got some cool parts, nice tires, and will end up being a flip-nose drag car on another old gluebomb-based Vette chassis. I'm happy for $11, and I LOVE the box art.

Why not just use pins, as above, that don't require all that rework?

See post #4. Also known as "drawing pins" or "map pins", they can be found in a variety of sizes and colors.

The problem with the ones that come in kits is that they have a mold-seam right around the middle. They're small, and getting the seam removed cleanly while keeping them round can be a real bugger.

Gotta agree with that, but to people who don't fly, it's just junk. The old airframe may have so much fatigue cracking and corrosion that it would never be flyable again anyway. Better to go out as a silly race car than Bud cans, I guess.

I was just looking for some of those the other day. I found some very nice SPHERICAL-headed pins, in various colors and 3 sizes (different scales) in the local fabric store. The heads are plastic and very symmetrical. You can hold them by the metal pin-part while you paint them, and then clip it off. The nub of the pin goes down the injector stack. Ball bearings (you can buy individual balls at some hardware stores) work too, but are harder to paint. Sticking them to a piece of double-sided tape works.

Don't worry about toe-stepping. Nobody here got to be good at what they do by ignoring techniques other people have developed. It's ALWAYS good to be shown something new, or pointed in a helpful direction.

Here's a link to the story of probably the most famous of the Bonneville Studebakers. http://www.hotrod.com/cars/featured/1953-studebaker-coupe/ Here's another link, to a tech tutorial on making hinges for a flip-front-end that fits right every time. http://www.modelcarsmag.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=70025 And as far as filler goes, you can't go wrong with Bondo Professional glazing putty, #801. It comes with its own hardener, in modeler-friendly packaging. Here's a link to a current project of mine, and you can see that it works very well (post #36) http://www.modelcarsmag.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=96942#entry1324599

It's also very easy to burn the paint (and instantly dig through several layers, right down to the plastic) depending on the exact speed of your unit, the shape of your particular buff, the material it's made of, and what compound you're using. Practice first. One tiny slip or moment of inattention can ruin a beautiful paint job.

Bend time? Easy. Get a job you hate and marry the wrong woman. You won't have any more modeling time, but every day will seem like eternity.

From Hemming's Daily... The Batmobile’s history actually begins a couple of years before Lincoln debuted it as the Futura. During the development of the Continental Mark II, the Continental division briefly considered building the Mark II as a retractable hardtop convertible. Coachbuilder Hess and Eisenhardt of Cincinnati was then commissioned to build two mechanical prototypes for that project, basing them on 1953 Lincoln chassis stretched three inches to the Mark II dimensions. Only one such prototype, later known as MP#5, was built, so John Hollowell, who was in charge of that project, sold the other modified chassis to the Lincoln-Mercury division sometime before late 1954 for $17,000. Lincoln-Mercury bought the chassis specifically to use as the basis for the Futura, a car that Lincoln head stylist Bill Schmidt began to sketch in 1952. Lincoln press materials claimed that Schmidt got the idea for the Futura when diving in the Bahamas, but as Jim and Cheryl Farrell wrote in their book Ford Design Department Concepts and Showcars, 1932-1961, while Schmidt did indeed vacation and dive in the Bahamas with Bill Mitchell (who, of course, took inspiration from the sea life he saw to create his own legendary concept cars), Schmidt actually took much of his inspiration for the Futura from jet fighters, as did many other stylists at that time. His double-bubble canopied, canted fendered two-seater concept quickly got approved to become a full-sized and functional concept car, and in late 1954 Schmidt sent the modified Lincoln chassis, a complete set of plans and a full-sized plaster model over to Ghia in Turin. Ghia then took just three months to hammer out a body from metal, paint it a unique iridescent bluish-white, and send it back to Dearborn. Lincoln then added the Plexiglas canopy and debuted the Futura in January 1955 at the Chicago Auto Show. Photo courtesy Ford Motor Company. The Futura was Lincoln’s last show car until 1963 and really their last dedicated show car not based on a production car until 1987, so the division continued to exhibit it until 1959, when Barris somehow convinced Lincoln to lend the Futura to Arcola Pictures and MGM for use (painted red) in the film It Started With a Kiss. After filming it went back to Dearborn, then again to Southern California, where it split the next six years between the MGM studio lot and Barris’s shop. As the Farrells wrote, “during that time, the tires went flat, the paint faded, one or two of the wheelcovers were lost and the car generally deteriorated.” Barris continued to work with Ford and Lincoln through the 1960s, however, and sometime in 1965 he convinced Lincoln to sell the Futura to him – reportedly for $1 – then negotiated with Twentieth Century Fox to provide a Batmobile for the upcoming Batman television series. (As an aside, Dean Jeffries told Tom Cotter that he was originally tapped to build the Batmobile and had proceeded to cut up a Cadillac to do so, but the studio moved up the timetable on him, thus giving Barris the opportunity to provide the car. “The producers didn’t like working with Barris, but they were locked into him because he had the rights to the car,” Jeffries said. “They said, ‘We’re not going to deal with him again,’ so that’s how I ended up building the Green Hornet car and Wonder Woman’s car.”) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ The article states that after filming of "It Started...", the car (then red) was returned to Dearborn. It could well have been used during production of the Ford promotional film, already painted red, at that time.

Good looking traditional rod. Nice work.

Again, absolutely positively 100% correct. I highlighted Arron's irrefutable logic that backs this up, and puts paid to the concepts that it's impossible to manufacture anything cost-effectively in the US anymore, and that everything MUST be made offshore to be profitable. It's time business analysts face these self-evident truths, and stop accepting the old tired excuses.

Absolutely positively 100% correct.

OK, I'll bite. Why? In case of spontaneous human combustion??

'34 Ford pickup w/ Ferrari Boxer engine / gearbox