Ace-Garageguy

Looks like a good day to light the fire, put on a pot of coffee, and build models.

Regarding denatured alcohol, this is from one of the model railroad forums. Many railroad items come painted with lacquer, and stripping them to custom-finish is very common. Quoting from Model Railroader http://cs.trains.com/mrr/f/88/t/259148.aspx " "Denatured alcohol, appliance fuel/marine stove fuel, it is not only undrinkable, It is Poison. I use it exclusively on stripping paint from all plastic's...but I do not soak them in it. I pour some in a pie tin and brush it on the whole surface, within seconds, it bubbles the paint and then I use a stiffer smaller brush to brush it off with and add more if need be. Have not harmed any plastic models yet."

WHY does anyone who makes an honest appraisal of a scale or accuracy deficiency invariably get tarred with the taking-the-"fun"-out-of-the-hobby brush? I personally have FUN building scale and period correct models (as do many others) and we're damm tired of having to re-do work that could have easily been done by the manufacturer so that we can have "fun" OUR WAY. Even mentioning the shortcomings if a kit these days is apparently not politically-correct speech in the car-modeling community. Is everyone so thin-skinned and fearful of the truth now that to face reality and name it as such is frowned upon universally?

Scott, I suppose a lot depends on the particular audience. Some guys who know '57 Fords very well, for instance, spotted deficiencies that could have been avoided very easily had anyone cared to do their work a little more carefully. These were noted on the web, and many of the folks who had the audacity to speak the simple truth were ridiculed and insulted. I also have been ridiculed and insulted for speaking the truth about real issues. I am rather intimately familiar with many vintage engines, components, and hot-rods in general. For that reason I spot deficiencies pretty much instantly...again deficiencies that could have been very easily avoided by the manufacturer putting in a little extra effort. But putting in extra effort isn't a popular thing these days. Play to the lowest-common-denominator is the name of the game, as that's the widest market. I really wanted to like the Slingster kit, and it was worth the $12 I paid for it as a source of parts. If I'd paid full retail, I'd feel cheated, because there's so much wrong with it. That's all I've got.

I DON'T recall anyone saying the kit was a bla bla whatever. There ARE some serious scale deficiencies, and they scream out at anyone who's spent his life around real drag cars, or has ever seen a real quick-change rear end, or at least has some innate feel for relative sizes of things. The kit IS a curious mix of crisp, well-detailed and well-scaled parts, and poorly-rendered blobs worthy of Palmer. The kit IS also a great source of parts for building other stuff. SOME modelers may find the truth about a kit's shortcomings useful, and not feel their "fun" is being threatened, or that their acceptance of it is somehow personal criticism. I do NOT believe it's detrimental to the hobby to address the truth about kit shortcomings, because these are sold as "scale models" and not presented as "toys". Babies and little children play with toys, and most of them haven't developed any sense of the relative sizes of things yet. They're usually perfectly happy playing with a 9" long aircraft carrier and a 3" long airplane in the same scenario. They don't notice anything wrong, they don't care, and they seem to be having mindless fun...so let 'em. Adult modelers, on the other hand, deserve anything represented as a "scale" model of something to in fact be a scale representation...and that goes for all the parts in the box. (And it's not like Revell hasn't tooled a lot of scale-correct QC rear ends over the years, either. Nobody on staff has to travel to a vintage race car shop and burn time and money measuring a real one. All anyone who had any business designing new kits needed to do was to pull one of Revell's own old kits off the shelf and put a pair of calipers to one of several available vintage QC units. It's just not difficult.) Measuring accurately is not hard. Nor is doing a little extra research to get things right...if you have some clue about what you're doing. It only takes a little more effort, it's not going to be a financial deal-breaker, and no one is expecting "perfection". Just please...to the manufacturers... get it pretty damm close consistently. That's what you're being paid to do. It's not too much to ask.

Dodge Challenger Sportwagon (with Magnum rear greenhouse) Revell 1/25 '37 Ford truck combined with Monogram 1/24 '36 Ford to get a reasonably accurate '38 pickup Buncha stuff

Thank you sir. When I dropped the thing, I lost a couple of the parts...like a wheel-motor and one turbine. The turbines are from the Amtronic, and the wheel motors were made from the old and hard-to-find brakes for the '32 Ford in the AMT double kit with the Willys drag car included. I've sourced replacements, but that's as far as I've gone since then.

That's pretty funny. Actually, what I'm trying to hit is the sweet-spot between the first mockup shots and the last post-stretch shots. The windshield pillars will look leaned back more, and the C-pillars will get thinned towards the top. That's the idea I'm working towards for now, anyway.

Interesting thing about this hobby is that things one modeler notices and cares about, another one misses entirely. Case in point...I couldn't care less about what interior was in what car, because I'd probably never build one stock anyway. As long as the scaling and proportions are spot-on, it doesn't matter to me if the door handles are right or not either. But it does matter to me if the frames and engines are correctly scaled and represented accurately.

Yes, I did some digging. She's at least based on a Fairy Gannet AS-4 / ECM-6, but I've never seen that belly-pod... Aha. She's an AEW-3 variant...

I agree with you in principle here, particularly as the chopped '48 in the Revell kit would be a competently done piece of work in the real world, and not all custom cars appeal to all viewers equally. But are there some clumsy lines on it? Yes. However, if you're going to do a scale-model of a production car, or an actual existing custom, it's simply part of the job to measure and divide by the scale-of-choice accurately. The old kits that were often based on promos were in many cases very accurate proportionally and dimensionally simply because they were built using factory-supplied dimensions. But measuring really isn't as hard as many folks would have us believe.

What is that crazy thing with the counter-rotating props, big belly, and double-folded wings? I thought I knew airplanes, but I've never seen anything like that before...

More on the black-art intricacies of auto boxes and stall-speeds... http://bankspower.com/techarticles/show/9-Understanding-Torque-Converters http://www.badasscars.com/index.cfm/page/ptype=product/product_id=78/prd78.htm

Great resource. I hadn't seen that one before. Thanks !

BUT...if you have significant crazing, the solvents in the paint have eaten into the plastic just like liquid cement. Sometimes, the paint in this case is so firmly attached (literally melted into the surface) that strippers won't take it off.

Long stacks tend to make more torque at lower RPM. A torque-converter, the first element in most automatic transmissions, multiplies torque, so you don't need as many revs to launch the car. You want to optimize torque lower in the RPM band. Automatic transmission cars, especially in the days before lotsa custom-tailored high-stall-speed torque-converters (lotta folks call 'em "stall-converters" for some unknown reason) and automatic launch-control black-boxes, could benefit by having more torque at lower RPM. Manual gearbox cars could be held at engine torque-peak, and launched with the aid of slight clutch slipping. Auto-box cars get held against the trans with the brakes engaged...mash the gas and let off the brakes simultaneously to launch. Subtle but significant difference in technique, and where in the RPM band you needed the torque to peak. This short video explains why and how a torque-converter multiples torque, and why you can launch at lower RPMs...where you tailor the engine torque-peak with longer injector stacks.

Thanks Dennis. Unfortunately, after I stretched the roof, I kinda fell out of love with the proportions. That's where the project stalled. I've been seeing how much I can do to get them back to the original mockup without having to remove the stretch. There's a lot of meat in the AMT roof, so it's kinda looking like I might be able to get there. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- As usual, thanks to everyone for your interest and comments.

See any difference?

When I wrote that response, I wasn't aware Xingu's building was a "pole barn". I understand the difference in construction, and where the structural stability comes from...but thanks for the clarification. Still, I should have been more precise. Most of the shop construction I've seen, primarily prefab steel aircraft hangars in the southeastern and southwestern US, have had foundations and floors poured prior to erection of the rest of the structure (unlike Xingu's building)...but not poured at the same time, obviously. More or less like this... Smaller shops and hangars I seem to remember sometimes having had only a single pour, but still, the floor was in place prior to erection of the structure above it.

"Radiography" is x-ray imaging. I wonder if he means Rapidograph...

Designed by Harry Bradley? Harry Bradley was a good great designer. How drunk did they have to get him to do this horrible thing?

That's a unibody car. The "frame" members are welded in hat-sections as above, not separate.

It matters to me. I had a grandfathered-in paid account. It's being shut down in 30 days. To hell with migrating to another sharing site, and to hell with reposting thousands of images all over the web that will shortly disappear. I've spent many hundreds of hours writing technical articles, answering questions, and posting complex projects in "how to" formats. All that time and effort was wasted. Damm right it matters. But I can see how it might not be that big a deal to somebody whose content was primarily "look at my pretty models".

See...third party hotlinking WAS PERMITTED even to the free accounts until the crash. Storage of images was virtually unlimited, but usage of bandwidth over a certain monthly quota would get you temporarily suspended. Your images would disappear until the month "reset". Bandwidth usage was determined by how many people were actually looking at your images on whatever sites they appeared in. Nobody clicks on your thread, no bandwidth use. As I became more active on the web, I started getting occasional shutdowns for exceeding my permitted bandwidth usage.That was about the time I signed up for a paid account, and began running an ad-blocker. There was no shortage of communication from PB prior to the money grab if you were running over the limits your plan allowed. And because I particularly valued maintaining access to my images, I paid attention to emails from PB. But the big money grab came without warning for the most part. The Terms of Service were changed almost over night, and everything went dark.

The "attempt to attain peace" came at the expense of the lives and limbs and eyes and sanity of the men who thought enough of the concept of peace to risk everything in order to achieve it. The day has become a means of expressing thanks to men like that, still living, who will willingly walk into hell to insure freedom for the rest. Every American soldier I've ever known had a sense of duty to lay down his own life for the liberty so many take for granted. That ideal, sir, is something that deserves universal respect.