New Kit Induced Insomnia

[Jantrix]

This happen to anyone else?

You get a new kit home, open it, peruse the goodies (and the baddies), bag the glass, stow the decals, and look over the instructions. You continue with your day.

That night as you lay in bed, that kit pops back in mind and suddenly your thinkin....

Hmm, if I take the engine from the saltie build, then hammer the remaining parts of the saltie build to ity-bities, then use the wheels and tires from the 49 Merc. Then use the saltie tires (didn't get hammered) on the Merc and add the blown cammer engine from parts box, we get a saltie Merc? Then the Caddy engine from the Merc.............maybe in the 53 Stude? Would that make it a Studillac? Need to research..................yada yada yada.

Suddenly you glance at the clock and notice about 3 or 4 hours has slipped by!?

You get up for work 4 hours later, tired as heck, but it's cool because you have every build planned out down to the tiniest detail for the next three years?

Please tell me I'm not the only nutjob here. This has happened to me more times than I can count. I'm gonna start taking a Unisom every time I buy a new kit.

[lonewolf]

Yaay, I'm not alone. I told my wife I wasn't weird.

[ismaelg]

I'm not the only one! Hurray!

Either this is more common than we think or there are more of us "weird" then we think

In my case I keep doing a mental list of pending tasks on the current project, and how to do them. Sometimes I find myself running mental "experiments" on ways to do this or that. I have also found this to be good company in my rather lonely commute which can take up to 2 hours each way.

Thanks,

[ABC Auto Industry]

Yeah, I often find myself thinking about what models I'm going to build in the future & how I'm going to build them. So, I guess it's pretty common among model builders.

[camaroman]

I wondered why I could not sleep at night,

THIS s'plains every thing!!!!

[FloridaBoy]

You are not alone, my friends, and if you are building at 60 like I am, it doesn't go away as you get older and more "mature". Tell me if I am or a few of us are alone in these areas. You buy more kits than you will ever build, at my rate, I will need to live about another 300 years, and I know there we are all alike.

But i have this hope that every kit I buy will inspire me to have a plan. Some plans are total imagination, some are kitbash inspirations, some are builds to use some spare parts, some are just to scratch an itch, but my mode is to plan a car just like everyone else here does. Only to get it out of my mind from obsessing over it, as I can do, I will take a piece of paper and try to draw or trace the model, do the mods, and write the plan down. Sometimes my plan is written on a paper plate, as when I am eating lunch, I get the itch, and start drafting right there over the crumbs.

I am planning probably my ultimate 40 Ford coupe, a ittle beyond the coupe in the movie "The Hollywood Knights", and even farther out of the box than the Matador. It was an incredible itch, so I took a Sharpie and scratched it out right there. Life can be so cruel sometimes.

One last thing, and maybe I am a little nutty as I get older. I will blame the meds. Ever since the sixties when I was a kid, it was like going in a Disney ride or show when I opened the box. I not only check the box art. instructions, tires, wheels, body, parts on sprues, and spare parts, but I take a whiff to smell the plastic and vinyl on the tires. Full immersion into a kit. And as hard as I try to force it, not every kit inspires me to a particular build. For example, I bought a Revell '56 Ford Pickup, wanting to make a copy of Foose's ride, but the new Model Cars came out, and I sharpened my knife to build a similar '53/ Why, because Jarius's drawings just hit me like an atomic bomb.

At our club meeting last night, I realized I wasn't the only one inspired by Jarius's pickup trucks on the Sketchpad. Every guy there was planning a build, and one of our premier customizers has done all of the body work and is now mocking up the motor and chassis. Those drawings were the talk of the meeting.

We sort of informally voted Jarius in our Admiration Hall of Fame, as a designer and a builder, as during the gossip talk we all agreed that Brad was pretty good and came up with some good cars on paper, but Jarius never designed something we didn't like. Hit the bullseye with all of our guys all of the time. Considering our bunch, that is quite a chore.

Ken "FloridaBoy" Willaman

[drnitrus]

Hello my name is Renato and I am addicted to models

I guess we all have these issues.

Ive almost gotten up in the middle of the night to go work on an idea i thought about while laying in the dark

Edited October 24, 2007 by drnitrus

[Uncle Mike]

You are not alone, my friends, and if you are building at 60 like I am, it doesn't go away as you get older and more "mature". Tell me if I am or a few of us are alone in these areas. You buy more kits than you will ever build, at my rate, I will need to live about another 300 years, and I know there we are all alike.

But i have this hope that every kit I buy will inspire me to have a plan. Some plans are total imagination, some are kitbash inspirations, some are builds to use some spare parts, some are just to scratch an itch, but my mode is to plan a car just like everyone else here does. Only to get it out of my mind from obsessing over it, as I can do, I will take a piece of paper and try to draw or trace the model, do the mods, and write the plan down. Sometimes my plan is written on a paper plate, as when I am eating lunch, I get the itch, and start drafting right there over the crumbs.

I am planning probably my ultimate 40 Ford coupe, a ittle beyond the coupe in the movie "The Hollywood Knights", and even farther out of the box than the Matador. It was an incredible itch, so I took a Sharpie and scratched it out right there. Life can be so cruel sometimes.

One last thing, and maybe I am a little nutty as I get older. I will blame the meds. Ever since the sixties when I was a kid, it was like going in a Disney ride or show when I opened the box. I not only check the box art. instructions, tires, wheels, body, parts on sprues, and spare parts, but I take a whiff to smell the plastic and vinyl on the tires. Full immersion into a kit. And as hard as I try to force it, not every kit inspires me to a particular build. For example, I bought a Revell '56 Ford Pickup, wanting to make a copy of Foose's ride, but the new Model Cars came out, and I sharpened my knife to build a similar '53/ Why, because Jarius's drawings just hit me like an atomic bomb.

At our club meeting last night, I realized I wasn't the only one inspired by Jarius's pickup trucks on the Sketchpad. Every guy there was planning a build, and one of our premier customizers has done all of the body work and is now mocking up the motor and chassis. Those drawings were the talk of the meeting.

We sort of informally voted Jarius in our Admiration Hall of Fame, as a designer and a builder, as during the gossip talk we all agreed that Brad was pretty good and came up with some good cars on paper, but Jarius never designed something we didn't like. Hit the bullseye with all of our guys all of the time. Considering our bunch, that is quite a chore.

Ken "FloridaBoy" Willaman

Ken, I have the Real Story on the "Hollywood Knights" '40 Coupe. It was built right here, (its second build after the rescue from its first build!) A great story, I assure you! -Uncle Mike. melauerman@aol.com Email me. I'll reply with the lengthy story.