Ace-Garageguy

There IS a difference between primer and primer-sealer. Sealer, at least in the big-car world, is usually a non-sanding product. Sanding usually defeats the whole purpose of a sealer by compromising its effectiveness as a barrier. I should have been more specific in the opening post. It's all the sanding and "scratch-filler" or "high-build" primers (also sanding-type, obviously) that are crazing everything new. Because of the way I work in particular, with a lot of relatively heavy modifications, it's imperative that I use a "sanding" or "filling" type of product most of the time.

Very nice. The well-modified stance, engine choice and color all set it apart. Fine looking little car.

Delmar Benjamin's full-scale R2 replica is pretty wonderful too.

Beautiful ship, sir. Still my all-time favorite airplane has to be the Staggerwing Beech with retractable gear...

That guy's been selling incredibly carpy "models" for quite some time now, apparently part of a large collection that was built by someone skill-challenged, and complete with insect parts and rodent feces from storage. What a deal.

Looking good.

There are several 1/24 kits of older American subjects that have pretty good engines. They're not wildly popular kits and can often be found for less $ than you'd pay for a 1/24 resin engine kit. Buying car-kits also gives you a lot of other bits. For instance, all the versions of the Monogram '39 Chevy have a decent blown big-block Chebby. The non-snap monogram 1/24 '57 Chevy has a decent small-block. There are several others. A lot of the older NASCAR kits are very cheap, are also in 1/24, and have a ton of usable parts.

You wouldn't be the first guy who bought an alternator when all he needed was to tighten the belt.

Of course it doesn't matter. This is perfectly acceptable as a Corvette too. Palmer must have had the right idea all along.

Model, and I agree with the points Tulio made about the size of the gaps around the bumper sensor caps and the appearance of the door handle. 1/8 scale photographs very much like a real car, usually, so I'd guess this is 1/8 or larger...though how anyone could possibly afford such a spectacular model is beyond my financial imagination. If it IS a model, it probably cost more than my house. One more thing...no bulges at the bottom of the tires.

I added a tubular rear crossmember to stabilize the rails and provide a rear mount for the trunk floor. The rear main (spring-carrying) crossmember is going in next, so we need something to keep the rear of the rails square and prevent them from spreading. We determined earlier, with the nasty old axle, exactly where the axle has to go relative to the body and frame to get the stance we want. Little jigs were made up from styrene stock to insure the location of the axle was maintained precisely, and the NEW axle was swapped into the position the old axle had established. This new axle, glued temporarily to the body, is now used as the fixture to align and glue in the main rear crossmember, with its spring attached. The white pads on the ends of the black main crossmember (shown earlier) were carefully filed and fitted to let the assembly just slip between the rails...just tight enough to allow liquid glue to penetrate and 'weld' it in place as it's held by the axle / spring fixture. We are now guaranteed that the rear of the car will sit on the spring and suspension exactly as it did during the mockup phases. Once everything has hardened up, the good axle will be removed again, and the inner wheel-wells hogged out to provide suspension working clearance, as they will no longer be necessary as fixtures. The car can then sit on its rear spring in the final position, while we make up the new shock mounts.

Nope. By someone who has never seen a disc brake from the beginning of time on any vehicle anywhere, and has no idea of how one works. Brake discs have never had bumps on them, in the USA, China or anywhere else, on cars, aircraft, tanks or snowmobiles. Not on bicycles or motorcycles. Not on lawn tractors. Not on trailers. Or go-carts. Or European cars. Or trains. Sorry to keep beating this, but it's unbelievable that nobody in the whole chain seems to understand how a disc brake functions. Pathetic.

One of my all-time favorite vehicles in 1:1. Oh, how I hope they got the proportions and major mechanical bits right. If it's a good one, I'm in for several.

Fantastic space-ship of a car, beautiful model and gorgeous color.

You're doing your usual beautiful job of bringing plastic to life with all your added detail and textures. Glad to see you building, and I hope we'll be seeing your inspiring work for many years to come. The painted thread to represent old fabric-covered wires is sheer genius.

Sounds like fun.

The hood is getting its hinge slot filled to look like a one-piece custom unit, quite common on rods of all periods. I also almost always kick the bottom of the radiator shells on '32 Fords slightly forward a tick. Without doing this, non-fendered cars usually look (to me) like they're about to trip on their tongues. This is accomplished initially by adding material to the radiator shell where it contacts the corners of the hood. The gluebomb front axle lost the little buttons that function as kingpins when I disassembled it, owing to a little extra glue applied by the previous owner. Guess he wanted to make sure it didn't come apart at 400MPH. Anyway, I'm drilling out the axle ends to accept real brass kingpins to make assembly of the backing plates easier and more prototypical, and to make the entire front end more stable and less jiggly. The underside of the glooey rear crossmember needed the locating holes for the rear spring drilled out, as they'd also snapped off in place due to way excess solvent melt. I opened them up to fit the locating pins on a virgin spring nice and tight. This will be important a little later. A clean non-buggered rear spring is now mounted to the crossmember... ...and test-fitted to a clean, non-buggered axle along with the old QC center section. The NEW axle and spring will function as a fixture to insure the rear crossmember goes in exactly the right place to give us the ride-height and axle location we decided on earlier.

Glad you're enjoying it, Bob.

Good man! Keep it up.

I've shot SEM self-etching black primer (one of the hottest rattlecan primers known to man) over ancient Johan plastic with zero crazing problems. And that's Duplicolor gray on the hood and deck. Again, no crazing. Today's kit plastic is garbage.

Yup. Those and "parts kits", incomplete but with the major stuff I want for a particular build. Because I hardly ever build what's called "out of the box" anyway, getting every last part means very little to me...unless it's something like a Pocher, and even then, I'll take something missing a few bits if I know where to get them and the price for the full kit is right enough. I'll also buy out of production parts-packs, the odd PE detail bits or decals, and Japanese wheel / tire sets. I WILL buy a complete kit on occasion just to get a single part (I recently bought an open-door Revell '57 Nomad just to get one intake manifold) and the rest of it either gets tagged with ideas for a future endeavor, or joins the stockpile of parts-donors. I've never parted-out a kit for money, but it's been nice to be able to trade or give away a part occasionally to another modeler who needs something I'll probably never use, or probably never even miss.

Going by what you said, I'd have to assume pricing is set locally. There is a Hobby Lobby and a Michael's both within a stone's throw of my local Hobby Town. Prices at HL and HT are pretty much identical...about $25 for a current release kit, $10+ for Tamiya primer, etc. The coupons / monthly specials often make getting current-production kits considerably cheaper than buying online. I got most of my new-release Revell '29 and '30 ford kits, for example, for about $19 each, including tax. The round-trip drive is only about $2 in fuel, and as I often have to be over that way for banking, groceries, Home Depot, etc., I usually swing by the HL and HT during the same trip. My local HT is particularly well stocked on paints, styrene, balsa, basswood and tools too.

And that is very often the difference between a drop-dead-gorgeous piece of work and just another mediocre whatever...in any field. Bravo, sir.

I signed up for the HobbyTown member card and get emailed deals-of-the-month. This month is $7 off a $35 purchase. Though it's not as sweet a deal as the Hobby Lobby 40% off-one-item, it's still pretty good. Think of it like this. It's about 30% off a single $25 kit, if you also buy a couple of supply items or tools while you're there...which I always do at Hobby Lobby anyway. Not bad, and helps to keep a kinda real hobby shop in the neighborhood. Works for me.

OK. Experiment one. The cowl on this model and the fuselage upper panel were painted on the same 80-degree day at around 50% humidity, at the same time, from the same can. The cowl, which looks pretty much like polished aluminum, was shot WET, 3 coats, and allowed to dry for two hours prior to polishing. Prep was limited to bare plastic scuffed with Comet, hot water and a toothbrush, followed by a 70% isopropyl alcohol wash. The upper fuselage panel was shot relatively DRY (resulting in a slightly textured finish), 3 coats, and was buffed after 20 minutes. No amount of buffing will bring it to a polished-metal shine...and it was sensitive to scratching because it was still wet.