Ace-Garageguy

Say what you will, saying nothing when you have nothing to say is quite a rare virtue.

Don't be too hard on yourself. Most operating features on models aren't really very well engineered, and manufacturing limitations often preclude the kits coming with precisely-operating hinges, and panels that fit their openings closely.

Matters of state should be in the hands of mentally competent, knowledgeable people.

Alas and alack, Shakespeare is being ditched by the destroy-Western-heritage brigade, who by and large seem to lack adult reading-comprehension skills and thereby misunderstand or misinterpret pretty much everything.

Illustrative examples, like photos, factual videos, or links to technical articles or studies, go a long way towards giving credibility to internet advice and opinion.

Yeah...when CNN was a news organization, and not a propaganda outlet. Anyway, he was a good guy, a real news guy, and a credit to the profession.

Onion makes everything better...except for the things it doesn't.

Outstanding.

Discourse of the public kind is somewhat endangered, as reality is often shouted down by folks who have an agenda.

My favorite is USC Icing, but the containers it comes in are way more than the average modeler will ever use, so there's a lot of waste. But no worries, as the Bondo Professional 2-part polyester glazing putty is available at most car parts stores, in modeler-friendly sized tubes. But BE SURE TO GET THE "PROFESSIONAL" STUFF, PART NUMBER 801, as they also make a one-part conventional lacquer putty that WILL shrink badly if used too thick, and the packaging looks similar. All the custom bodywork on both the Z-car I posted above, and the thread below, was done with the Bondo 801.

Problem is...that's really disgusting.

Funny thing is that you can run a diesel on carbon-neutral bio-fuel made from feeding algae the CO2 that would go up the stack when you burn coal to generate electricity. Though I've been told on this very forum that "there's no such thing as clean coal", and that "you can't remove carbon dioxide from coal flue gas", that's just wrong, and I know one fella who holds patents on doing just that. But the naysayers get on their virtue-signalling I-watch-CNN-so-I-know-it-all soapboxes, and shout down viable technologies that would most likely be vastly more cost-effective than building hundreds or thousands of wind and solar farms...and would allow the USA to cleanly burn our 200+ year coal supply without being energy-dependent on anyone, and eliminate the cost of doing business with (and dependence on) China for all the battery components and solar cells. Like any emerging tech, it still needs work, but the promise is unmistakable to anyone with sufficient understanding of the technical issues.

Analyzing the problems is rather like eating the proverbial elephant, one bite at a time. Starting with a good, scalable profile photo of a stock '33-'34 sedan, and the same of the model, you just print out a correctly 1/25 scaled copy of the original along with a full size print of the 1/25 scale model, carefully compare one small area of the real one to the same area of the kit version, and Bob's your uncle. I've used the method, for instance, to analyze the differences between Revell's '29 Ford body shell, AMT's, and a real one, and determined I'd need to start with Revell's version, because of the curvature of the rear deck, to capture the look of the Eddie Dye roadster.

Bummer indeed, as good Mexican food is among my favorites (and my shameless cultural appropriation ).

I'm wondering if this tractor doesn't have to pull a dedicated trailer, housing more batteries under the load-floor. I will definitely be looking for hard info on battery placement and range.

CFD (computational fluid dynamics) programs were developed from countless hours of observed data in wind-tunnels, and wind tunnels are still used extensively to verify results obtained in CFD. Kinda funny though, how many of today's engineers/designers believe "computer design" is the be-all-end-all solution to everything, and have no real-world understanding of what they're doing, or how the programs they rely on were developed from HARD HANDS-ON DATA sets. CAD and CFD and CAE are wonderful tools, but real-world empirical data-collection still has its place. This is a 1/10 scale model I built back around 1987 of my own 1985 design, specifically for wind-tunnel testing. The measured drag coefficient was, at the time, the lowest for anything ever built or proposed for surface transportation.

Yup. That's a running joke when I work.

Hole-in-the-wall restaurants in the middle of nowhere sometimes have astoundingly good food.

I've been reusing containers for decades, and old credit cards for mixing surfaces for catalyzed model fillers, or cut into strips and special shapes for spreaders, etc. Plastic coffee can lids also make great mixing and spreading tools. The lunch meat I usually buy comes in clear containers with easily removable labels, perfect for storing every part (except the body itself) of an ongoing model build, and in the big-car shop for sorted small hardware on the bench. They're impervious to most solvents, and work well for various kinds of strippers too. Cheapo baggies, as mentioned, are perfect for storing all kinds of small stuff you need to be able to keep together, and identify visually. I used to use yogurt and cottage cheese containers for mixing aircraft epoxy when I was working mostly on planes, still use 'em in the big-car shops for mixing epoxies and polyesters, and for short-term storage of some types of release agents. In the shop, I use the large high-quality cardboard boxes that parts are shipped in for templates for sheetmetal fabrication. Coffee cans, especially steel, are great for larger fastener storage, and for brush and roller cleaning solvents for composite work. Etc., etc., etc.

Yup, good stuff.

Temps and humidity are finally going down, and next week's forecast is for clear and cooler. I can get back to working longer days without being wiped out by 5:00 PM.

And electricity in Germany now costs SIX TIMES what it did in 2020. Denmark's numbers show it now costs MORE to recharge a Tesla than to fuel an ICE vehicle of comparable range and size. 20 million Americans are currently behind on their electricity bills due to escalating costs here too. Etc., etc., etc.

Use catalyzed polyester or epoxy putty. No shrinkage.

Interesting. Thanks.

Who needs artificial horror? Just watch the news as the world is overrun by brain-dead zombies intent on "fixing" everything.