Ace-Garageguy

This looks like WAY too much fun. Guess I'll have to learn Photoshop next. So much of my work is heavy restyling... Of course, it seems like with your proficiency, you can knock these out in just a few minutes, where they'd probably take me days... Like I said, WAY too much fun.

At the ACME show in Atlanta today, I saw a well-known aftermarket supplier taking pre-orders for a very comprehensive upgrade kit. Sorry, but I forgot and left the show before getting the particulars. But rest assured, it's coming...and judging from the rest of their stuff that was on display, it should be a real knockout.

Hmmmmm...I fairly recently picked up a Revell "plow" kit, and the first thing I noticed on opening the box is that it seemed kinda BIG. Then I noticed the box is marked 1/24. The intention was to do a full-detail Blazer based on the old MPC snapper, but they're obviously different scales. Anybody have an issue with that?

I've spent a large part of my life doing "dangerous" things, and one of the reasons I still have all my fingers, both eyes, and the rest of my parts is that I try to foresee worst-case scenarios BEFORE they happen, and act accordingly. It's also a mindset you get prepping race-cars and working on aircraft, among other things. The concept of "oh...I didn't think of that happening" can be fatal.

I'm with Harry...interesting concept, but that mid-90s-looking Caprice side window treatment isn't working for me either. Maybe consider pulling the top of the rear fin forward under the quarter glass, and ditching the blacked-out pillars. Though I like the swept-back windshield and roofline, the rearward displacement of the top front of the door opening might tend to make ingress / egress a little awkward. It could be good to pull the rear door cut-line back somewhat, to give a longer door opening. And if the front bumper fascia is supposed to be body-colored plastic, you'll need a natural appearing seam line between it and the sheetmetal of the fenders. The girl, on the other hand, is close to perfect as-is.

And this is how you make one from thin stock that looks much more realistic anyway (Bill Geary aka MrObsessive adds little strips of plastic to the inside of the windshield frame for the "glass" to snap into too). Both these techniques work very well.

Full-detail early Mustang should work, as the Comet and Mustang are both on the "Falcon platform"... The Mustang is on a 108" wheelbase, and the Comet is on 114". AHA. The Fairlane is another possible BETTER donor, on a 115" wheelbase. Only 1" shorter for a Comet. Much easier to shorten a Fairlane chassis 1" than to lengthen a Mustang. And though the Fairlane has a couple-inches wider track, it should be easy to fudge it on a model.

Well folks, it's almost over. I snuck in wearing my old-fat-guy disguise, bought a very few things to finish up some long-time builds, and snuck back out. Hope everybody who attended enjoyed it (the quality was great, but I think the attendance was down), and to everyone who has to travel...be safe. Maybe see y'all next year.

Pity they don't say "hey dumbazz, stop texting, put the damm phone away, and concentrate on your driving."

If it's an old-school resistance heater with exposed heating coils or elements, they glow red-hot and CAN provide an ignition source. A resistance-heater functions essentially by creating a "dead short" through the heating element, which is why it glows red-hot. Imagine dropping an airbrush filled with lacquer thinner during cleaning. The thinner atomizes in a plume as the airbrush hits the hard floor, a tiny bit of it splashes through the vent louvers in the heater, and WHOOMP. When dealing with any flammables, it's far wiser to err on the side of caution. I wouldn't want to be the guy who told the OP "hey man, it's OK" and be responsible for the results of a one-in-a-million "accident".

Wow. The 911 is a fantastic find. Besides that, the rest of the haul includes some pretty spectacular stuff too. Man. Cool.

There are literally DOZENS of types and colors and diameters of "beading wire". This is .013", marked on the package as such. Appropriate for '50s secondary (spark plug) wire. I got this stuff at Hobby Lobby. They also had black. It holds its shape quite nicely, but also bends easily with fingers and holds permanently. It's just about perfect (and the light color is easily changed to any flat color with Sharpies). 12 foot roll, $3. I guess I must live on a different planet from some of you.

Atomized flammable liquids (spraying paint), flammable vapors (thinner fumes) and an ignition source (a hotly-glowing filament in an electrical-resistance heater) are, in general, a recipe for disaster. Proceed with extreme caution. You wouldn't be asking this here if you really thought it was completely safe. That's your brain trying to warn you that it might not be a really good idea. If you HAVE to do it, make sure the heater is OFF well before you start, and that the fan is ON. Don't turn the heater back on until well after you've stopped painting, and allowed the fan to fully remove any fumes from the room. A spark from a switch or relay inside the heater is also a potential ignition source.

"Cheap" and "Chinese" pretty much says it all. More here:

Yeah...but only in places where intellectual (and other) property rights are taken seriously, all the parties are bound by the same laws, and the courts operate the same way and respect each other's decisions...none of which applies to China.

Geez Harry. I didn't know psychological torture was part of the cure. I'd run out screaming after 10 minutes...to hell with the chemo.

Real heater hose is very often 3/4" or 5/8" ID. A 3/4" ID hose will have an OD of about one inch or a little more. Divide one inch by 25. You get .040", so that would be a reasonable hose diameter in 1/24 or 1/25 scale. That's also about 1mm. in case you find something that has metric dimensions on the package. Real battery cables are usually a smaller OD than heater hoses, but obviously larger than plug wires. So...what's between your .014" plug wires and your .040" hoses? It's about .027". Wire "gauge" is ALWAYS listed by the diameter of the CONDUCTOR, inside the insulation. Insulation is NOT always the same thickness from wire to wire, so you won't always get correct-looking wire if you buy it by the "gauge". Do yourself a favor and buy a cheap digital-readout caliper (about $15) and measure the stuff you find in craft or electronics stores to see if it will work and look right. And remember...all you have to do to know the right size for a scale ANYTHING is to measure the real one and divide by the scale you're working in. Open the hood on your car, measure the diameter of the heater hoses, and divide by 25 (if you're working in 1/25 scale). You'll get the RIGHT answer every time if you just go by this simple rule.

Thanks. I know the cut line at the top of the cove doesn't line up well here, but it was either line up the top of the cowl, or line up the cove. Since this little car is going to represent a one-piece clone-bodied lightweight, the awful mis-match can be easily corrected with filler. M/SP is an interesting class. At the period this thing represents, the cars were basically altereds with sports-car bodies, and were allowed 25% engine setback like the altereds. It it was going to be a straight model of the production car, that would be another story entirely. Cutting these bodies at the door line, which would be the natural place to splice on a new nose (on the real car, as well) is out of the question for a stock vehicle, again, because nothing will line up right. I think Dave Darby's approach would be the most efficient and least frustrating. His body looks very good, and I really do like the proportions of the old Revell multi-piece kit. I bought several of them years ago when they were really really cheap, but I didn't see the need to use one up on this old race-car build. The AMT '59 isn't TOO bad, but it needs some nose work to look acceptable, in my opinion. Grafting on the '62 tail at the rear door cut line would be a good option possibly, as it would avoid the cove lineup problem entirely.

Sweet little truck. Right proportions, right stance, right color, and everything is beautifully clean. It really captures the look of the well-turned-out and finished rods of the period.

That is a great looking little car.

Pretty girl. Gonna be a heartbreaker.

NOTHING for me, as I'm still putting aside my modeling budget to contribute to the Harry fund again, soon as there's a decent-sized pile of pennies.

It's good of you to use your OWN work to illustrate flaws and things people should try to pay attention to. A very genuinely helpful gesture.

Man, now THAT is some PAINT.