Ace-Garageguy

Good to know. Thanks.

Accomplishments? Consistent ability to comprehend and communicate intelligibly? Understanding how things work in reality? There are lots of ways. But there's interesting psychological research that indicates stupid people are usually quite certain they're smart, and hold steadfastly to every belief (and swallow what they're told by "experts") without question, while smart people often doubt themselves...and everything else. And it's not a new idea.

For a good laugh...and some insight into why things are the way they are today, read the "hampster" story... https://www.inc.com/suzanne-lucas/this-helicopter-mom-raised-a-daughter-incapable-of-normal-business-behavior-a-warning.html

Not just this country. Global general intelligence is in decline. Lots of "experts" disagree, but all they do is prove they're too dumb to understand the real data. And the internet just makes it easy for morons everywhere to prove to the world how stupid they really are.

Yup. Hard to find those qualities in older "experienced" guys too. Last self-styled "fabricator" the other shop hired tried to make a trans mount from old rusty exhaust tubing hammered flat, bent, and brazed. Geez. ?

First question is what are you interested in building? Whatever it is, I'd suggest you start with small relatively simple parts, to get a feel for working with the materials and making things fit together. Even very complex parts can always be broken down into simple shapes and assemblies.

"About face, for'd Harch!" shouted the leather lunged DI, and sent the platoon of crybaby momma's boys straight off the cliff; too bad it's not always that easy to be rid of 'em.

I would recommend a self-etching primer for maximum adhesion. Possibly overkill, but I really hate flaking paint.

Only the second time since 2016, one of the companies I work with has been able to find a young person who wants to work on cool cars, and who has the requisite mechanical aptitude and work ethic. Kid's 17, decided he wanted to learn about cars when he was 12. Started hanging around a family friend's resto shop, eventually got put to work part time sweeping, etc. By the time he was 15, after having learned the basics of a variety of shop operations, including welding, he bought a rusty basket case '70 Chevelle SS396 with money he'd been saving from the beginning. So far he's replaced all the rusty floors and done the bodywork himself, and our painter helped him shoot it in our booth. Not up to our standards, but for a kid's first paint job, it's very nice. The shop has him doing the entry-level grunt work, and he never complains. He works all the time he's there, and I haven't caught him once playing on his phone, or hiding. He's also polite without being a suckup, speaks well, seems plenty intelligent to do something "white collar", and offers to help everyone else in the shop in any way he can. Plus, he wants to learn...and when he doesn't know something, he admits it instead of trying to bluff his way through by pretending (which never works around guys who know their stuff from doing it for decades). Cool kid.

Times like these make me pine for earlier days when rationality was more common, "physical work" wasn't sneered at by legions of effete do-nothings, and the US still had a strong manufacturing base.

PM'd

Doubleplusgood.

"Utter Nonsense, Lies, and Propaganda Network" would be the new name for CNN if there was any respect for reality in today's world.

Cahoots be da ca-owls talkin ta each udder.

Waddya expeck frum too genurashuns dat cant make change frum a dolar w out a app, n school sistums dat teech arithmutick n gettin da rite anser an s--- is a form a o-pressiv scrinimashun?

Blah blah blah. Buy a new car if you like them. Don't if you don't. Blah blah blah. EDIT: Make that "baa baa baa".

Oh...no. Good guy, cool guy, real car guy. So long my friend. See you on the other side.

I always kinda wondered how the name "Beaver Cleaver" worked as an adolescent.

I hate when that happens.

^^^ This has been mentioned before, and one of the favorite rebleats is always "but cars of the (pick a period) also all looked the same". While true to an extent, there are periods when that just wasn't the case.

I appreciate the input, but much of my own experience dates back to paint work on real cars when lacquer was still in general use. Recoating lacquer with lacquer during repairs was very rarely an issue, and was pretty much SOP. In the case of this particular model, the hardware store lacquer cracked up because it couldn't withstand the hot solvents in the Duplicolor product (which has never cracked when I've recoated it with more Duplicolor, by the way). As a general rule, I don't like "sealers"...not on real cars either. And I don't want to bury the thing in more and more layers of stuff anyway. If I can't 'trick' the finish into cooperating, which IS quite likely based on what I've been able to pull off in the past, I'll just strip the body and do it in Duplicolor from the git go. One aside...most of this build was intentionally done with vintage parts and materials that would have been available to modelers back in the '60s. Not everyone had access to model-specific paints, and my initial hardware store black lacquer job looked just fine. But that can aged out during a lull in the work, could not be made so spray, I didn't wat to decant it at the time, and the replacement hardware-store paint wasn't a good match. That's when I decided to just get on with it and shoot it all in Duplicolor. That's where we are today, and if I have to strip it to achieve the quality I expect, so be it.

You really have to be careful with non-model primers. Reading the label, I see it states "superior adhesion" on a variety of plastics, but polystyrene isn't among them. Many primers achieve "superior adhesion" by incorporating very aggressive "hot" solvents, and will instantly craze many kit plastics. Badly. The damage can usually be repaired, but it takes considerable effort. At the very least, TEST that primer on a large area that won't be seen before you use it on that very rare model. Test it ON THAT PARTICILAR MODEL, as testing on something else, like the ever popular spoons, won't tell you diddly.

Place where one of my engines let go during a "street race" was a marked by a dark spot on the road for many years, but was finally paved over recently.