1/8 camaro build

[Ralph Torres]

Well thats a real car model...i remember i wanted to buy the 1:1  off of you Bill.? glad you put some paint down finaly... ?

[Cien1986]

Hi bill......

Your tail light looks impressive.... do you mind share with me how to do it?

 How about  the headlight mika? Any detail photo on it?

Do you cast it?

[bill w]

Hey Henry, these are the three parts that makeup the headlight. All three parts where cut on a lathe. I cut tiny strips from .005 ( 0.13 mm ) styrene and glued them to the inside

of the lens, clear coated both sides with high gloss, then made a mold and cast the part with clear resin from Alumilite.

The tail lights are made with pieces cut from sheet styrene .040 thick ( 1.02 mm ), then cast with clear resin with red dye added.

Hosted on Fotki

[peteski]

What impressed me (well, everything is impressive, but this just caught my eye) is the license plate with embossed numerals on it (just like the real plates are). How did you do that?

[bill w]

Hi Peter, basically everything that is embossed on the real plate... I drew in Adobe Illustrator, then had my illustration cut out of adhesive backed vinyl, then adhered the 

the lettering to a piece of .040 styrene. I shot some primer all over... kind of thick to bridge over the vinyl so that it looks embossed. Let it dry for an hour then

molded and cast it. After it's cast I painted the whole plate the orange color, I let it dry for 24 hrs. To make the letters and numbers a dark blue... I took my original illustration and

had a dry transfer made, applied the lettering  and gave it a coat of clear to seal it. And that's it, looks like a stamped plate.

 

 

 

[Anglia105E]

Well I can see Bill that you have put in the same amount of work and attention to detail with the license plate as you have with every other aspect of the build. This is why you have created a truly wonderful model and something that most of us scale model car builders can only stand back to gaze upon in awe. Now that is how you do a license plate... you should see my 1:24 scale registration plates, which I thought I had  spent a lot of time getting right, but they are not in the same league at all. When you say 20 years in the making, do you mean you started this build 20 years ago and you are still adding to it ? Some model builders have said on this forum that if they don't get a car finished pretty quick, they lose interest and the project never gets finished.

David

[bill w]

Thanks David, making a 1/8 scale license plate is a lot easier than making a 1/24 scale license plate. It's smaller than 1/8 therefor much more difficult to make.

I started this project 20 years ago this past November. This is the only project I worked on aside for a few things I did for friends. I did think of scraping it... but 

was urged to continue by some friends. So this is it up till now. It's about 99% finished, still have some minor things too make, seat belts for one... I know there is something else just

can't put my finger on it right now.

[peteski]

Thanks for the explanation Bill!  Brilliant (you are very fastidious too)!  So it seems that most of the parts (down to the license plate) are resin-cast.  Wow!

[abelaxe]

This is absolutely amazing!!  Thanks for sharing your work!