Model Car Builder Blog

75 Corvette and 65 Olds Dynamic 88--Tale of 2 Car Bodies

2012-02-12T11:41:00.000-08:00

After taking a break with the 72 GTO birthday build it's time to get back to a couple of projects that have been on the bench....

First up the 65 Olds Dynamic 88. I got this on eBay as a true glue bomb for $40--beat to crap, decals over unpainted plastic, a total mess. I have never tried to fix a glue bomb before. I figure this kit to be rare--I have never seen another Olds Dynamic 88 kit for sale; Coulter/Shelton's model collecting directory says it was originally issued in 65 and never reissued. I figured it was worthwhile to fix this one up.

First, i got rid of the huge sinkmarks in the trunk lid--nothing new here--this is something I've had to fix on many builds before. Tamiya basic Putty, thinned with Testors liquid cement followed by 800 and the 1200 sanding stick did the trick.

The hood presents a bigger challenge. There is a large gap between the back of the hood and the body. A custom hood that came with the eBay buy--this must have been a 3n1 kit--might fit better, but the custom hood had some damage out of the box I am not sure which way I will go.

The sides need a lot or work!!! The original builder attached giant Lake pipes, which proved to be difficult to remove--he really glued the dickens out of these. The pipes came off, but now I need to smooth the side panels. Getting really clean lines on the repaired surfaces is proving nearly impossible. I might end up making this a "kustom" and using parts box lake pipes to cover things up....or, it might be easier to find an original unbuilt Dynamic 88 for $150 or whatever, hold my nose and buy it, and just skip all the repair baloney!

....if that's not enough....I'm also still working on a vintage MPC '75 Vette Roadster; this is probably end up being a stock build.

The hood doesn't quite fit (of course--what AMT and MPC kits have hoods that fit?) but it's pretty close....

And...the rear logo will need to be hand painted as i not been able to find photoetch that will work. Bummer! Not looking forward to that....

Overall the Vette and the Olds are ready for more sanding and TLC. More work! More work! More work!!!

72 GTO--Finished--the 50th Birthday Build....

2012-01-30T15:25:00.000-08:00

Before the end of 2011 I had the pleasure to visit with my family in my Central Valley (CA.) hometown. And what did we do to pass the time? Build model car kits (of course). As anyone who reads this blog regularly knows, model building was a popular pass time growing up, and here I am 35 odd years later, back in the same basement, doing the same thing. It was fun! My younger brother built a really cool (and rare) Lotus Europa kit (I might get some pix of it if he ever finishes). My dad worked on a '53 Mobius Hudson. I built up a Round2 reissue of the MPC 72 GTO.

How did the 72 GTO build go? In spite of having a lot of flash and some really silly issues with parts fit, I got most of it done on my birthday, and then brought it home to finish. It took me about another month from there....adding two-part clear, bare metal foil, some photo etch pieces I had in my parts kit, some parts box decals, and other trim goodies.

The kit was built box-stock except for wheels and tires which came out of the parts box. The stance had to be altered (radically) but that's par for the course. In the end, the MPC 72 GTO has the basic look of the 1:1 car, although things like the side scoops are all wrong, and the engine compartment is a complete disaster. It would have been a huge job to build this up to be a "true to the 1:1 car" so I didn't do it.

It seemed appropriate to make a custom decal of the family portrait taken at the get together and slap that on the hood. I also created a "50 bday" vanity plate using MicroMark custom decal materials.

t was a fun build, that's about it. Nothing wrong with that! This was my first attempt to use two-part clear over decals; I had a bit of bubbling under the large white hood decal, but it's not too noticeable. And yes I put MPC on the side--I loved MPC growing up and I guess I still have a soft spot for their excellent kits!

Paint was decanted Duplicolor green lacquer with some Jacquard Perl-EX blue flakes dumped in. Sanding and polishing was done fast, fast, fast, and you can still see very faint sink marks in the trunk lid. Oh well.

For the interior I used Rust-oleum Vinyl paint. I saw this rattle can at the local auto store and had no idea if it would work on plastic. Yes, it sticks, and it looks great--it looks like real vinyl to me. It comes in different colors and I am going to try more of them. Happy Birthday!

75 Corvette--Aside--Foil Copy is Conquered!

2011-12-24T08:20:00.000-08:00

Sometimes when I'm building I discover things--sometimes by accident. Those accidental discoveries are good things!

I was working on a 1:25 1975 Corvette build, using a couple of vintage Corvette from MPC,when I discovered the rocker covers are nothing like the 1:1 cars'.

Here's what MPC gives you.....

Here's the 1:1 engine (apologies to whoever posted this originally)

Besides not being chrome, the MPC mastered valve covers are nothing like the originals. I figured I'd modify them by casting them using Omurayu
to customize and "move things around"

Here's what I came up with....the casting is OK, and I could now sand it down and start moving around the filler cap and other items by cutting apart multiple castings. But right before I started I wondered--does CA stick to Omurayu? If not, I might be able to do something like the "foil copy" I have read about in hobby mags.

As I understand Foil Copy: you take a piece of tin foil and press it against a detail you want to keep, then fill the indentation in the foil with superglue. Let the CA glue dry, then remove the CA, trim, paint or whatever, and use on your kit.

I could never get this to work--the CA always came out like a little blob. I posted "how do you really do this?" on a couple of hobby forums and no one on the forums seemed to know either. Is foil copy some sort of myth?

Well, no. CA glue DOES NOT stick to Omurayu molds, and I made a PERFECT "foil copy" of the filler cap from it.

So here's how I did it: I cast the small item using Omurayu, poured in a dab of CA, let it dry a LONG time (for me, it took 24-48 hours), removed the dried CA from the mold using tweezers, trimmed, and painted. It works!

Here's the finished part and to give you an idea of the tiny size of the casting, the part vs. a guitar pick. This is like learning to use 2 part clear--for me, it will change a lot of things. And BTW, I will not use this tiny filler cap for the valve covers....the MPC 1980 Monte Carlo MPC-702, besides having a nifty little Honda Motorcycle included in the kit, has correct valve covers for a 75 Vette, and I will just steal them from that.

75 Vette-Vintage Kit-Body Work....

2011-12-17T17:28:00.000-08:00

I had a chance to buy a couple of vintage MPC kits off Ebay--MPC 1-7506, '75 Vette Roadster. This is before the ERTL days or whatever, and I remember back as a kid, MPC was "way cool"--they always made stuff that had the right look. Now that I bought these vintage MPC kits it means they will be reissued soon right?

Getting right down to work: body time. I love the lines on the 1:1 Vettes with this later body style. The front bumper assembly on the kit didn't fit quite right, but I am hammering it into place.

Besides getting rid of mold lines and all the usual steps, I disliked how MPC mastered the front grill for the model--just a blob of chrome with none of the European-looking refinement. Let's fix that....

Using the back end of a #11 blade I cut out the offensive inner facades of the one-piece front bumper assembly.

Tricky work, because the entire front bumper piece doesn't fit on the body that well to begin with and is pretty fragile.....after both inner panels were removed, I replaced them with blanks made from .010 styrene. Looking better already.

The actual mesh for the grillwork is presenting a challenge. Nothing is available in the aftermarket I can find for this, so I am trying to modify some leftover photoetch from an old GTO build. The guitar pick is in there to give you an idea of how tiny this work is, at 1:25 scale.

The other thing I didn't like was the vent in the top of the dash, so I found a more suitable vent on an Avanti kit from the parts bin....

I cast the vent in resin, and then cut it into the dash. I didn't quite center it right, but after some sanding it's probably going to be OK. I am still somewhat of a beginner, so this is as much about learning technique as anything else.

And of course! You have to get rid of the "1975" license plates....many kits that were derived from promos seem to have the year stamped on the plate, which obviously isn't realistic. Poof--sanded off--gone. Are we ready for paint yet?

51 Channeled Chevy--Finished--The Good, the Bad, and the Fugly!

2011-12-03T16:05:00.000-08:00

Free at last!--the 51 Channeled Chevy is done....some of it came out OK, some pretty bad, and some just downright fugly.....

What came out not so good--the hand painted flames on the side. I'm not going to try to do that again...from certain angles it looks OK but for the most part it looks sloppy and unprofessional. I give the handpainted flames a C-! If I had used masks (like on the hood) it would have looked much better.

I give the engine compartment a solid B (?) or not-so-solid B/B-? Maybe this was beyond my abilites, because cramming such a large engine into a small compartment was akin to building a tricky jigsaw puzzle! It's hard to believe that because I was too lazy to figure out how things would fit during the early stages of this, I basically built the engine up inside the finished engine compartment. Doh!

The fugly would be the stance. In Pat Ganahl's seminal book "The American Custom Car", he talks about the history of custom car stance--specifically hot rods are raked; customs, low front and rear, or even low rear and high front. So my build is a custom with a hot rod rake. To me, this doesn't really work. The build would have looked better if I had given the whole thing a more traditional "lead sled" low look, or, made it more of a hot rod as far as paint and trim (sponsor decals, dechromed, hood scoop, rear slicks, whatever).

The good is the interior. This is my best interior work to date, and the color scheme--ivory and flat green, with red trim, works well.

Overall--hey, it's done, on to other things. Thank goodness!

51 Channeled Chevy--Engine is finally in....

2011-11-19T14:18:00.000-08:00

I haven't blogged much but I have been building! I thought assembling the rest of the Channeled 51 Chevy would be easy but it's not been...I have fought almost every part to get it glued into place!

The engine compartment was smaller than "stock" due to the channeling and I didn't know if anything other than the block would fit! To make things even more challenging, I am using a parts-box V8 instead of the kit supplied straight 6. I did a pretty good job customizing the frame and engine compartment to accept the larger block, but didn't plan for anything else under the hood. Thus I decided to build most of the engine with the block already mounted inside the engine compartment which of course isn't the way a sane person would do this.

Fuel lines and some plumbing are already in place, but I have along way to go!

Lo and behold--the fanbelt/pulley assembly didn't fit quite right, so I had to do some minor surgery and then use this contraption to hold it all in place while the glue set.

Same thing with the radiator--I didn't do the best job "engineering" that fit before paint and assembly, and the channeling meant I had to be pretty accurate or nothing else would fit. So I had to do some trimming and repainting, and then hold the radiator in place with a weight while the glue dried.

Speaking of paint....I have rethought how I apply brush paint....I used to dip brushes directly into bottles but no more. Now, I always stir the paint with a craft stick and then use the stick to transfer the paint to a small cup (like, the little paper ones you get at a burger place for ketchup). Less paint clumps and brush streaks that way.

The engine compartment is finished! I feel like I can knock the rest out in a day or two but that's what I said before; it took 3 weeks (off an on, more off than on) to assemble the interior and engine....so who knows.

51 Channeled Chevy--the Build Dabbles On....

2011-10-25T08:55:00.000-07:00

Back at the bench!!! I am still working on a 1:25 scale 1951 Channeled Chevy, based on AMT's AMT-608 kit. The good news: the body and paint are pretty much done. There wasn't any "customizing" for this build as far as the body; but, there were lots of sink marks, casting imperfections, mold seams, and other gremlins had to be removed/filled/fixed before paint....after these fixes, the body was shot with Duplicolor white primer and sanded lightly (!) with 2000 grit wet n' dry.

For color I used decanted Duplicolor metalflake silver, with extra Jacquard PearlEX silver flakes thrown in (anyone who has read this blog to date knows I LOVE Jacquard paints!) I sprayed the mixture with a Iwata SAR single action airbrush which replaced my single action external Paasche--it was time to move up! This was my first attempt at decanting lacquer; I will cover it in more detail in later posts. To make a long story short(er), decanting lacquer, then airbrushing, yields a much smoother finish (for me anyway), versus just spraying out of the rattle can.

What about the flames? The hood was masked with a hand-cut frisket. With limited time to devote to this hobby, frisket cutting by hand doesn't work for me--I simply don't have the hours to cut the tiny patterns--so I am considering using some sort of computerized frisket cutting for future projects. The sides were entirely hand flamed using different acrylics--lame excuse, but I ran out of time to cut a mask for this! I like the hood flames much better than the sides; the side flames look sloppy but also bright and happy. The oranges and yellows were applied either by hand or with an Iwata Micron-C. Finally, after a quick sanding with 2000 grit paper, all was coated with HOK Kustom two-part Polyester clear, as far as the clear, I was extremely happy with the results; this was followed by the requisite Bare Metal Foil.

The AMT 51 Chevy kit comes with a cool straight-6, but for me it wasn't right for this build. So: I scrounged around in my parts box for a small block V8. Since this is a channeled build, like a 1:1 chaneled car, there isn't much room under the hood. During mock up, this engine just barely fit! I have no idea what kit this came out of--it's AMT something I think, at scale, probably too small to even be a 280 c.i. ish engine--maybe out of a 55ish AMT Chevy?

To finish the other engine parts I used Alclad II, and tried something new: spraying one color of Alclad and then, to get some variety, gradually mixed other Alclad colors into the airbrush's hopper. It worked great--Alclad can indeed be mixed, and the results are really nice. I started with chrome; mixed in some stainless steel for the belt assembly, and finally some pale gold for the fan. Variety under the hood is always nice!

The block was painted with Testors One-Coat metalflake blue and then hit with 2 part clear. I was curious if 2 part clear can be detailed after application with acrylics, and it seemed that it can--the advantage being that any detailing "painting mistakes" can be easily cleaned up with Windex without anyone being the wiser.....the Windex takes off the acryic but leaves the 2 part clear and color coat beneath untouched! Another victory over sloppy paint!

51 Channeled Chevy--Interior Hack

2011-09-30T10:45:00.000-07:00

Again not much time to build this month....just a little bit, really....so this is going to be a quick one....

From last time: I had some 51 Chevy Kits lying around--one convertible, two coupes. I thought it'd be fun to make a 1:25 scale channeled hot rod....

The body/frame/stance mock up was done end of last month....now it's time to chop some stuff up!

Inner door panels needed to be taken down about 5 scale inches. I also had to screw around with the back part of each panel, so it fit a wider back seat (I really didn't like the kit seats--too bulky!)...I am not happy with how this came out, and do not have time to redo them....Fortunately not much of the rear part of either panel will be seen, as it's hidden by the seats.

Next time I mock up a convertible I put in the seats! As I said, the kit seats were way too bulky. Compare the bottom seats with the top--which one would you want in a sleek hot rod? To find the smaller seats, I hunted around in the my parts box and came up with two that not only fit, they matched each other, uphostery wise! I have no idea what kit these originally came out of.

I have tried different interior shades over the past couple of years but keep coming back to the Model Master "interior" colors--their semi-flat appearance looks realistic to me. That combined with cream lacquer from Duplicolor gives the upholstry a retro sort of look.

I am also experimenting with using craft wire to accent the paint--I have seen this done in hobby mags many times; I am not sure how to get all traces of the glue out of the final look, but I can get it pretty close.

51 Chevy--Changing the Channel

2011-08-28T08:33:00.000-07:00

Having finished my experiments with 2 part clear it's back to some building. I got some AMT 51 Chevy kits on sale from modelroundup.com and it's time to build something.

I have found that mock-ups are key and, at least from the perspective of making a hot rod out of this, it needs to ride lower. I didn't end up getting a picture of "Before" I mocked up a lower ride...but it looked like "the Eisenhower family's Chevy" and I don't want that.

So here's "after" lowering. I quickly glued up the chassis frame and front and rear ends, found some tires in the scrap box, and came up with this:

The body is channeled about 8 scale inches--which means: a lot! The 51 kit came with spindles for the front for a "lowered ride" look. I used that, and the stock ride height for the rear.

Nothing is cleaned up yet--there are still ejector pins and mold lines all over the place and other than some primer, no paint has been applied yet. I have found in modelling you always, always have to walk before you run!!!

I am thinking about frenching the headlights, and doing some sort of flame thing for paint.

Channeling means that many other parts of the car will need to be customized--interior, seats, radiator, motor mounts, and so on, because they will now ride too high. But since I am working in plastic, and nothing has to "work" as it would on a 1:1 car, this is no big deal. I already started to hack up the interior and will take more photos soon.

66 Nova--Finished!

2011-08-27T10:53:00.000-07:00

Not much time to build again this month but I did manage to finish the 66 Nova....

The Nova started mostly as an excuse to practice painting more with 2 part Polyurethane Clearcoat.

Again I have found that 2 part clear takes some extra attention to making sure the color coat is smooth--problems with the color coat seem amplified by tqo part polyurethane clear, rather than muted.

Overall a fun build...I had a good time applying the photoetch parts....

I used license plate decals, but just cut the decals out and did not soak them; I glued them to the bumpers with plain old styrene glue. I feel this looks better than other methods I have tried.

And, using brass for the fuel plumbing came out OK....

I have 3 '51 Chevy kits sitting around, that will be next....

Almost fall again!

66 Nova--Engine and Details

2011-07-24T18:16:00.000-07:00

I have to remind myself that there are things everywhere. This silly hobby is no exception. Metalworking is something I want to know more about and what safer/easier way to learn a little about it than with a scale model.

So...this weekend, while some servers I was working on remotely were churning away on updates, I did some (very simple) metalwork to detail out the engine of the 1:25 scale 66 Nova, which I would now very much like to finish.

When I look at really good modelmakers, most seem to make pretty extensive use of metals (brass, tin, aluminum)....I spent many years working with electronics, so I am familiar with soldering, but I can't see how that would help with anything this small--at 1:1 scale even a really small solder joint is going to look like someone made a fist-sized weld. So I need to use glues. Epoxy works well for joining metals to all sorts of surfaces but mixing it is a pain, and the 5 minute kind isn't useful after, well, 5 minutes. CA glue works, and is especially good for metal to plastic bonds. The other glue you see here is "Cement for wood and metal" by good old Testors. I didn't know Testors made a glue for metal! It works well for metal, but is not useful for bonding metal to plastic.

Using simple bent brass and some small styrene bits, I scratch built this little fuel feed setup.....

Using CA I glued that to the intake manifold....Here's what I came up with so far.

Overall, metal (photoetch, wiring, brass tubing) does look pretty good for detailing out scale objects, but it's really hard toget the glue joints looking neat. And, getting the fit right on any engine has always proved difficult to me. I got some very small dremel grinding bits from Harbor Freight and put them to work levelling out the engine block so the oil pan and manifolds sit straight (or, straighter then usual, for me).

The carb assemblies were some of the smallest-scale detail work I've done--without really good magnification this isn't possible at all. I left the bend in the fuel feed to wrap around the radiator hoses (not quite sure how I am going to work that one out, but I will figure something out)....I left some of the plumbing long on purpose because at the moment I have no idea how any of this is going to "plug into" the firewall; that is for next time.

66 Nova Hiatus Continued--Now, a 68 GTO....

2011-07-16T18:55:00.000-07:00

In my experimentation with two part polyurethane clear I shot a 68 GTO body I had lying around, so I figured why not finish the build....

Paint was Jacquard Acrylic, I mixed up a purple and kept throwing in red flake and red tint until it was a nice dark shade.

Overall, things were a bit rushed, although it seems it took a good 3 weeks to finish it, but just a bit of work here and there.....

There are lots of little sloppy things about this build--the Bare Metal Foil is a bit ratty in places (it usually seems to be)--next time I figure I will use some sort of guide to help this go on straighter.

I have always like GTO's--it was fun to build this but now it's back to the question--how much time am I really going to devote to this? To take this to "the next level" I'd need to spend more time....not sure I want to do that.

One thing about 2 part clear--it seems to amplify flaws in the color coat and makes careful sanding and finishing of the color coat critical. The danger though is burning through the color coat trying to flatten it all out. More time and effort are needed here.

The box stock stance was pretty bad--the tires for instance were way too big, giving the car a clownish look. I robbed some smaller tires from the parts box. I like the way the mag wheels came out.

I used more photo etch on this build, and it was a major breakthrough for me that photoetch looks good painted. However, after paint you have to apply it straight! Much harder!

66 Nova Haitus--So: 67 Impala--Finished.....

2011-06-26T17:43:00.000-07:00

I haven't been posting a lot but have done some building....Last time I was messing with acrylic flames and 2-part Polyurethane clear. Before finishing the Nova I thought I'd mess with finishing another build--a 67 Impala.

The goal was to get this build done fast, fast, fast. To save time, I decided to make this a "curbside" (no engine!) and perform no major "reengineering" so I could concentrate on the finish and trim.

I liked this 67 Impala kit (AMT/Ertl 8208) with a couple of exceptions. Like the 66 Olds I finished not too long ago, the window glass is too thick and doesn't fit correctly into the body. I put a black trim strip, cut from electrical tape, over the top of the windshield to compensate.

More important: the "box stock" stance for the kit was a disaster!! The tires literally didn't fit into the wheel wells, and the rear axle was way too low. To compensate, I drilled new holes in some inner wheels I had in my parts box. These holes were off center, correcting the obvious stance issues. Painted flat black they look OK. I also used smaller tires for the front, as the stock front tires were too fat and wouldn't fit no matter what I did. If I had more time, I should have "reengineered" the axles and stance. But this was a quick build.

The mag wheels came out of an old AMT Corvette kit; they had to be modified somewhat to work with my funky fix-the-stance setup.....the flames came out a bit weak, I should have made each flame thinner and more graceful....next time....

I have 3 more bodies trimmed out: a 68 GTO, a 71 Charger, and the Nova. I figured as long as I was spraying 2 part clear I might as well clear several bodies. Not sure what I am going to build next...stay tuned....

66 Nova--Flame On! Part Two!!

2011-05-15T10:23:00.000-07:00

Not being able to get scale pinstripes right has really been bugging me (see my last post) and it's been working in my subconscious. I had a idea, which now seems completely obvious--why not use a masking agent to help with this?

Out comes the bare metal foil, which in addition to using for brightwork, can be used as a high-end masking tape. I threw the mask on one of my "junk box" bodies (a '49 Stock Merc) and carved out some flames using a SHARP #11Xacto. The rest of the body was masked with Tamiya tape. Finally, to keep paint from seeping under mask, I brushed a light coat of Future Floor Polish acrylic clear on the seams.....this is all stuff I've done a few times, nothing new here.

Once this was all done, some Jacquard acrylic was fogged into the flames. Now here's the new part. I got a 000 brush and loaded it up with international orange acrylic paint and carefully painted each mask border. The idea was to get about 2/3rds of the paint onto the mask and 1/3rd on the flame.

Here's what I ended up with. The pinstripes weren't perfect but much better than doing this without using a mask as a guide.

Not perfect, but a lot better.

And, I got a bit better as I painted more flames. By the time I was done--the whole process, start to finish, took about an hour and half--I had pretty good looking flames. Still far from perfect, but, good enough that I was a bit sorry I hadn't started with a lacquer color coat--I could have kept my work and built some sort of scale Billet-Proof Merc, but alas, this was practice only--flames over bare grey plastic. I ended up experimenting with laying some russet red over the whole body, which as a disaster as I had the amount of thinner wrong, so I wiped everything down with Windex, and the test body is back to bare plastic.

But the photos remain, hey, that's what a blog is for right??? I am going to try this in a few weeks on an Chevy body with an enamel color coat. I have been curing this for about three days and in about 2 more weeks the enamel should be tough enough that I can try this again.

66 Nova--Flame On!

2011-05-14T14:06:00.000-07:00

It's still a bit too cold and misty for painting, so I worked this week on my "flame" technique.

First I needed to be able to draw flames. Earlier attempts looked like crab claws. Maybe a bit of practice is in order.

Tools for the job include a fine tip paint brush, a Sharpie marker, and a single-action Paasche 200 airbrush. I found the Sharpie wouldn't write on plastic or paint unless you lightly sanded it first.

Using the Sharpie I drew flames on some junk box bodies by hand. This is looking a bit crab-claw like; after some practice I got a little better.

Once the shape was drawn in I went over it using paint. Acryic seems to work OK for this. But here's the best thing--using Acrylic, painting details over an enamel or lacquer color coat, it's easy to fix "mistakes" with a q-tip dipped in Windex, since Windex will take off the acrylic but doesn't affect enamel or lacquer color coat below.

Then I filled in the outline with some Jacquard color. Anything that "spilled over" the flame outline got fixed with Windex used as a thinner.

This is about the best I could do after an evening of messing around with this.

In general, flames are not easy to paint at scale I am finding. Things are just too tiny. The biggest issue I have is the pinstripe that goes around the flames. I know there is a way to do this because I see other modellers who have figured it out. But for me, the lines around the flames come out too thick, making them not look "scale". I got some extra fine Sharpee paint pens, maybe that will help. Stay tuned.

66 Nova--Experiments with Two Part Polyurethane Clear!!!

2011-05-01T13:59:00.000-07:00

One of the toughest things I've grappled with, since coming back to this silly hobby, is how to apply clearcoat to a finished color coat and get professional results. In the old days, we'd just spritz some Testors Enamel Clear over whatever we were working on and hey, we were done. For better or worse, I am setting my sites a bit higher now....

Reading the hobby mags, the clearcoat of choice (for model cars as well as some 1:1 cars) is Two Part Polyurethane. "Two Part" because the paint consists of a clearcoat and hardener--you have to mix the two right before use.

However there's a catch! Polyurethanes are extremely toxic before they have gassed out, especially for folks with lung problems (I have had asthma my entire life, so I would consider myself someone with "lung problems".....)

If I am going to experiment with Two part clear, I'd better be careful!

First thing I did was buy a forced-air system. These are mandatory at pro paint shops, and can cost thousands of dollars; fortunately scaled-down versions ($400 US or so) are available for small-potato painters like me.....I chose an Axis Air "Hobby Air" system as it seemed to be the most popular one out there.

You put a little yellow box--basically a small compressor--by a source of clear air. You make sure the air from the paint room is isolated from the air pushed from the "Hobby Air" device. The compressor forces the clean air down a 40 foot hose to a breathing mask. In addition to this mask, you have to wear a hood and latex gloves--you don't want the clear to get on your skin!

OK, with safety precautions taken care of, next thing I wanted to do is make sure two part clear didn't "eat" the color coat--no point in having a great shine if the color coat gets ruined!

To test, I got some body scraps out of the junk box and painted each with different paints I commonly use--here, it's Testors one coat lacquer with a quick and extremely ugly test-flame of some testors enamel and Tamiya acrylic. I would **never** try using lacquer clear over this as the ugly acrylic flame would be destroyed--come to think of it, maybe that wouldn't be such a bad thing.....

For these tests: no primer, no sanding, nothing fancy--this is not for show.

I then mixed up a 4:1 ratio of clear to hardener and shot it out my trusty Paasche H0708 single action el-cheapo airbrush. The results were fantastic, and, incredible!

So: does polyurethane clear eat water based acrylics for lunch? Good news is, if there was a problem, I didn't see it. As they said on SNL--great taste--and look at that shine!

Lacquer--duplicolor here--same thing! I spent about 2 minutes polishing this one and it looks um--OK.... With some more work, both in prep and in finishing, it would have been (could have been?) perfect!

In fact I had so much luck with this stuff that I thought I'd try to "clear" something REALLY tough. I had an old body lying around that on which I was practicing painting flames by hand. I don't remember all the different paints I used during my practice sessions, but I think it has pretty much everything I own, including metalizing lacquers, transparent enamels, water based acrylics, acrylic/enamel hybrids, you name it, it's there. So I sprayed a few coats on there, sure that at least some of the paints would fade, welt, weep, or otherwise dislike the clearcoat. In the end, I didn't have a single problem with color coats and detail paints being destroyed--any of them!

So to sum it up--two part clear requires a lot of safety precautions but it's worth it! I made separate "test units" for Jacquard acylic, Testors lacquer and enamel, Tamiya acrylic and enamel, Duplicolor lacquer, as well as a motley hippy flame job consisting of everything I had lying around, and the clear coat played nice with all of it!

I think for my hobbies, 2 part clear will "change things". I won't treat clear coating any craft materials--model cars or otherwise--the same again!

66 Nova--"Not a Project"--Parts is Parts

2011-04-24T12:46:00.001-07:00

Easter Already! And on my day off I am dabbling on with a 1:25 build of a '66 Chevy Nova....

As a kid, building stuff in the basement, enamel paints ruled the roost; since then we have more many paint choices, such as acrylic or hobby lacquer. About 2 years ago I gave away (literally) my whole collection of enamels, mostly because I was frustrated with how long enamels take to gas out (sometimes as long as week!) But now I am back to using a few of them again--for fine detail work, for me, enamels still work the best--they flow and cover better.

The engine included in the 66 Nova kit is quite tall, and I am not sure it will fit under the hood, having never test fit this! Let's hope it does!

The guts of the engine are ready for detail work now--I have already scraped away paint to glue on headers and drilled holes for plug wiring.....I am leaving off the oil pan for now. In the past I scratched it while handling the engine--no point in gluing it until the engine is ready drop into the chassis.

In interior is box-stock except for the seats, which I stole out of an old gasser kit. The 66 Nova kit didn't have a roll bar so grabbed an old vette rollbar from the parts box and fabricated the rest.

I tried weathing the seat backs and floor of the interior--I have never tried to weather anything before. It came out OK--but not great. Surprisingly, getting a realistic "clean" look might be easier than getting a lifelike "worn" look!

For the license plate I used a backing fabricated from a thin sheet of brass, which looks better than plastic--the latter looked too thick, and thus less realistic.

So I'm just building up the parts--I keep putting off working on the body. I plan to try, for the first time, using two-part clear on this build. The prospect of working with something so toxic is a bit off-putting, but at this point I have bought the materials and am probably going to do it.....maybe next weekend?

66 Nova--Stance Part II

2011-03-27T18:51:00.001-07:00

I was in Patagonia, South America, for 2+ weeks, taking endless pictures in one of the most beautiful spots in the world. Surrounded by nature, I still thought from time to time about model cars--I have to admit it. I am not sure why I suffer, but I suffer happily....

Before the trip I started building a "Not a Project" 66 Nova--a quick and easy build that hopefully will avoid months spent fretting over how to do everything just right.

After being gone for 3 weeks it was good to see the project with fresh eyes. Yep, the box-stock stance is too high in front....so, I had to "engineer" a way to fix this.

First, I got rid of the stock axle bits that came box stock and jammed in some tube styrene....and glued the dickens out of it (I will clean it up later....)

Then I put some more tube in, to strenghten the first joint. I will do further reinforcing once I get a stance I like.

After getting one side the way I wanted, I measured everything and repeated the process for the other side.

....when this was all done the mock up still looked too high in the front. So I decided to get even more slimey. Getting inner wheels out of the parts box, I mocked up a wheel where the axle entrance was not centered, to quickly drop the front end further.

This dropped the front of the model another 1/8" or so--maybe 3+ inches on a 1:1 car. On a different day I might have done something more involved to allow the front wheels to still be "poseable" but what the heck, I am just trying to have fun here.

OK here's what I get during mock-up now, after the slimey styrene-and-off-centered-wheel work. To me, this is a good look.

....not as high as an original box stock build, but not totally "slammed" either; an over-slammed front gave the car an too-modern look that I wanted to avoid. Best of all, what might have taken 4-5 evenings to engineer "totally clean" was glued up in about 30 minutes. No one will be wiser but me (and you!). I won't tell anyone if you don't.

66 Nova--Setting the Stance

2011-03-04T10:22:00.001-08:00

For the past week or so I've been working on a 1:25 scale AMT Nova #636. The goal is to keep things in the realm of "Not a Project"--nothing custom, nothing fancy, rather, a simple and relaxing build.

Unfortunately, AMT never makes things too easy, and this kit is no exception. A lot of the problematic areas I've seen with their kits pop up here. For one: the "steerable" front is fragile; intuitively I don't see it holding up the weight of the model. In this case, each front wheel is supported by a small spindle that is in extreme danger of falling off and/or breaking.

To (try to) fix this, I glued the dickens out of the top A-frame (using sytrene glue, CA, and plastic weld). Then I did the same to the lower supporting axle assembly in an effort to "sandwich" each spindle in place. Finally I glued the seam between the frame and the inner wheel well, again with CA, normal glue, and plastic weld. When this was done and dry, I shot the entire axle assembly with primer/sealer. The result isn't very "clean", due to the amount of glue I had to use, but inside the wheel well, painted flat black, no one will notice.

Another issue: in my experience, AMT engines never sit quite right on their motor mounts. I am seeing that here; the motor is not sitting flat, nor straight, when nestled into the engine compartment. I will have to tweak the block and motor mounts to fix this. This is why I test fit--I would be unable to sort this out once the engine is painted.

(By the way, no photos yet, but I have a strong suspicion the exhaust system won't fit and will have to be reworked, and the front and rear bumpers and grilles will have to be modified to fit without large seams being visible....just a guess, but on most other AMT kits I have built to date this has been the case.)

The stance--the way the model rides on its front and rear axles, wheels and tires, is key to the model looking good versus looking like a load. I have learned that AMT kits sometimes have poor attention paid to "stance" while the kit is being mastered. Fixing the ride height before paint is critical to the final model looking good.

This Nova kit is no exception--but, as this is "not a project", I wanted to keep things easy. To start, I taped the rear axle in place and added the cool, huge rear slicks. The back end looks great--so far so good.

On the front end, the "stock" ride height looked so bad that I didn't bother photographing it. Basically the front rode higher than the rear, and that's not a look I wanted.

To fix this, one option is to really cheat--just epoxy the fronts into the wheel wells.

This is the lowest ride possible in the front. Looks good I guess, but steering is pretty much impossible.

Here, I turned the front spindles over 180 degrees so the ride height is lowered by about 1/8" (real inches, not scale). This is probably what I will end up using; this is a good look, and I could see the 1:1 car having a ride height like this.

OK, this slightly lowered front is probably what I will end up using. But looking over the photos, the super-low front end appeals to the ten-year-old in me. It's not a slam dunk! I am going to go out of town for a bit so when I come back I can review this, and maybe the decision will be easy. Right now, at this very moment, the ten year old in me is winning out! Who cares if the 1:1 car can't steer! This isn't a 1:1 car!

66 Nova--"Not a Project"

2011-02-26T17:30:00.001-08:00

After taking months (!) to build the 66 Olds it's time to cool down. Let's try something easy! Anything with big rear tires and little fronts appeals to the ten year old in me, so why not AMT's Chevy Nova 66 Pro Street #AMT-636. A steal at $18.

Open the kit up--it's molded in blue! Why do manufacturers do this? Do they really think in this day and age most modellers aren't going to paint every part?

Along with the odd blue plastic is flash--everywhere. It's not too hard to get rid of, but takes time.

After faily lengthy cleanup the engine compartment was easily assembled. I will test fit everything I can, and check out the stance in "blue plastic" before doing any real painting. I learned this lesson the hard way--fit first, paint later!

As I was cleaning up the parts, I realized that sanding the soft blue plastic brings out odd white chunks that are strangely resilient to filing, as if the plastic is a bit too soft and too rubbery. Don't know what's up--I think primer-sealer is going to be necessary.

Hefty rear racing axle. The parts didn't fit together quite right, but it looks nice and will get the job done.

Small block Chevy? I would have liked something bigger, but this is a "non-project", remember? No swapping in any other engines for this one--I will stick to what came with the kit.

The body looks good and seems to be void of any major sinkmarks. There are a few mold lines to clean up--so a quick shot of primer-sealer will help identify them.

I have to leave for a few weeks, but when I get back this should hopefully be a quick build--quicker than the last one! We will see!

66 Olds 442: FINISHED!

2011-02-19T08:23:00.001-08:00

After many weeks the Olds 442 build is finally done....

To me this hobby has become like learning an instrument or a language. I am constantly attempting to figure out how to build things "cleaner" or "more professionally". My goal is to be as good as what I see in magazines. But then I realize: it's something that, ultimately, doesn't really matter that much to anyone but myself.....and in the very last stages of this long build I had an epiphany, I realized that improving at a fairly meaningless craft has little or nothing to do any of this.

Nah....I'm not just passing time.

When I have to have some quiet, when I have to be by myself, or when I have to pretend I am 11 years old again for whatever reason, this is what I do: sit at my work bench, smelling paint fumes and plastic and glue, and it all bring back memories of endless hours listening to AM radio in the basement, building model cars with my brothers, like it's the summer of 1970 again.

And my heart aches for the simplicity of those times.

What next? Maybe a sloppy build? A build where I do everything wrong? Use no paint? Intentionally get glue all over everything? I can't see myself doing that. But at the end of the day it doesn't matter how clean a build is.

It was the journey, not the destination, that captivates me.

And by the way, the damn hood doesn't sit flat, no matter what I do.

Question is: What's next?

66 Olds 442: Almost Finished....

2011-01-30T08:43:00.001-08:00

The Olds 442 Build has taken a lot longer than I thought...I am ready to finish off the final few bits before I call it quits.

Steering wheels have always been hard for me; for instance, getting the wheel's rim to look right relative to everything else never happens. This time out I tried using Silly Putty as a masking agent--I read in a hobby mag that this should work, but it didn't--the paint leaked under the putty and I had to start over. Some of the putty also sticked to the plastic and made a mess. So much for Silly Putty?

One reason this build is taking so long is that the kit, for all its ambitious detail, has some major flaws...to name a few: there was almost endless body trim to file and sand off; the exhaust system didn't fit the undercarriage; and the windshield glass looked too thick and didn't fit under the car's roof. All of these needed to be corrected, and all took time.

Add to this list the air cleaner intake tubes. As you can see, they don't fit together seamlessly, and turns out, they didn't fit under the hood either. I ended up using a lot of plastic weld to smooth things out and took a Dremel tool to the underside of the hood so the tubes would fit.

I got a bit more into photo-etch for this build which was fun. Photoetch parts are thin pieces of metal that come on sprues; you cut and prep them a lot like a tiny plastic parts. The goal is to add detail and realism to the build. The license plate holders wouldn't have been possible without Photoetch.

Photo etch was also used on the dashboard--again, fun....

I came into this build knowing I needed to work more on trim, so I spent extra time on things like the front and rear bumper/grill assemblies. The front Grill could still benefit from better separation between grill and bumper, but at some point I had to move on.

OK, here's the engine compartment before final assembly. Another issue with the kit that I had to fix: there is no good way to get the belt/alternator to stay put when the body is dropped onto the chassis, or, perhaps more to the point, there is no room for the body to fit over the engine as per the way AMT mastered the kit. I ended up having to cut off the alternator and glue it back on after the body was in place.

This was a huge oversight on AMT's part....

So why all the boo-boos? I figure AMT mastered the model in a computer, and during Q A perhaps they realized they made some major mistakes (like, things didn't fit together, um, at all) but didn't have the money or desire to start over.

So here's the finished engine compartment. To get those darn air cleaner tubes in place, I didn't install the carbs at all, glued the air cleaner to the tubes, and then put a coil (?) in front of the alternator so you don't notice the air cleaner is postioned too far forward. Good enough. If this build were going into the NY Crafts Museum, I should have recreated the tubes from scratch but guess what? The build isn't bound for a museum. It has been a bit of a surprise to me, however, that a box-stock build like this can be as tough as a custom or kit bash build, due to the fact that the kit manufacturer got lazy during QA. Who would have known?

Happy Macro Birthday!!!

2011-01-08T16:30:00.000-08:00

I am one of those lucky folks who has my birthday a few days after Christmas, so family has it easy--they lovingly give me a gift and say "Here's your single present....".

This year my brother and sister in law gave me a bodacious "combined present"--a really nifty PHD (push here dummy) point and shoot Nikon. Turns out this camera has almost unbelievable specs for macro photography, which means it can be used for--wait for it--the MODEL CAR BLOG!!!

I tore open the present and got to work, and in about 10 minutes got the picture above. Compared to my auto-nothing macro setup I have now, this is bliss--a shot that might have taken 15-20 minutes to set up now takes about 30 seconds. Dealing with the lighting is still a bit tricky, but it took me 2 minutes to figure out for tight macros to work I have to defeat the built in flash and use some form of external lighting--for this, it's just a natural light fluorescent a few inches away.

I had an old steering wheel from something or other on my workbench, so here it is. This has very little "photoshoping". With more setup work, I probably could have gotten this to look much better.....

Here's the emblem off the 442 Olds Grille. In reality it measures 4mm x 1mm. Not bad for a PHD camera!

And the problem now is (of course) you can see TOO MUCH....notice the bad overlap of Bare Metal Foil. With a non-macro shot, you probably wouldn't notice this. But I notice this. So much for a "clean build"....

Man this is going to be fun! This headlight bezel measures 8x4mm. It is incredible how far PhD cameras have come. And nothing against my in laws, but I have a feeling this camera didn't break the bank either!

66 Olds 442: BMF and ClearCoat

2010-12-24T13:31:00.001-08:00

For the past several months I have been trying to create "clean" build of a 1:25 scale Olds 442....there are two things working against this: clean builds take a lot of time, and I don't have a lot of time; and, being a bit absent minded and sloppy, doing things in a "clean" manner doesn't come very easily to me.

Last time I wrote about the color coat, using a mix of Jacquard acrylics I whipped up, applied with a cheap airbrush to the body.

Now it's time to add the trim...for this I used something called "Bare Metal Foil" or, as the hobby magazines sometime call it, "BMF".

This comes in a single 4"x8" (?) sheet and costs about six bucks. Think of rice-paper-thin, uber-fragile tin foil with a semi-sticky adhesive on the back and you have a sheet of BMF. You cut out strips with a #11 Xacto knife, stick it over what needs to be chromed, tamp it down with something like a toothpick, and, using a very (very!)sharp knife, carefully, and I mean carefully, cut away what you don't want. You can spend hours with BMF--it is not for the faint of heart. For me, the windshield surround you see here is about the best I can do. It seems impossible to me, and I've tried, to get a really smooth finish out of this stuff, but it's better than nothing.

I have read articles in hobby mags about using BMF, and one writer I remember said it's not that hard to use--I have news, it is. Very hard to use. Very, very, frustratingly hard.

I will say, however, that it looks better than trying to mask and using something like Alclad II or one of the other "real metal" paints. I couldn't get that to look decent at all.

Once the BMF was tamped down, I brushed over it with some Future Floor Polish which is basically clear acrylic paint. Besides dulling the brightness of the foil, which I've found makes things look more realistic, it means breathing on the BMF doesn't lift it off. So I'm now up to about 5 coats of clear. When I hit 7 or 8, it's time to polish, another frustrating and difficult thing to do well. Merry Christmas!

66 Olds 442: Color Coat at Last!!!

2010-11-28T14:52:00.001-08:00

I can't believe another month has gone by! Here we are again--after Thanksgiving already. Where does the time go?

From last time: still working on a 66 Olds, with an emphasis on a "clean build"--something that doesn't come easily to me!

This morning the body was still in primer (I've taken to using Plastikote T-235 Gray--seems to orange peel less than Duplicolor's similar product). If you've followed previous posts, the '66 Olds kit (AMT/Ertl 6268) was mastered with trim for a vinyl top. I used vinyl on the last two builds--and didn't much like the way either came out. So, off with the vinyl trim. But, it turns out, it was a lot (I mean, a LOT!!) of work to grind and sand away the large trim strips that run the length of the body. After weeks of sanding and finishing I figured the body work was as good as I could get it.

And: with a brief break in the rainy weather I figured it was finally time to apply the color coat to the body.

But what kind of paint? I've tried different paints over the past couple of years--enamels, acrylics, and lacquers, mostly, trying to figure out what works best.

After returning to the hobby after a 35 year absence, I started out using enamel--that's what I used growing up. Turns out enamel takes a long time to dry and is intolerent of when follow up coats are applied (you have to apply second costs right away, or wait about a week--if you don't, you end up with paint that never really dries).

On the plus side, enamel is the defacto hobby paint for plastics(still), self-levels, has little or no orange peel issues to deal with, is easy to polish, and with patience, can come out looking great.

Next up: lacquer. I tried a fair amount of lacquer finishes, but dealing with the fogging and orange peel associated with lacquer, and after enduring some catastophic failures due to bad primer, I have decided perhaps it's not worth the trouble.

This said, I have settled (I think) on acrylic, and specially, acrylic paints by Jacquard....Jacquard may be what I use from here on out--best to just know one thing well, maybe. I have written about Jacquard before, but to reiterate, as a craft paint it has a lot going for it: it's easy to mix, easy to airbrush, a breeze to thin, cleans up quickly, sticks to almost any primer, and best of all, is non-toxic and doesn't stink up the house. Just the fact that it's not poisonous makes Jacquard acrylic get my vote going forward.

I had some Jacquard purple I mixed up a few months ago but never used--so I used that....first up, a the mist coat. It took about 30 seconds for this to dry.

After the first color coat, things are already looking OK....to me, a notable thing about Jacquard is that a Jacquard color coat looks radically different depending on the light that hits it.

After the second color coat, in very bright light the Olds looks red/pink/copper. I didn't much like this at first--it seems too feminine for an old muscle car like this, but it's grown on me.

In low light the 66 Olds looks downright purple/maroon, and looks great. OK, Jacquard it is, from here on out. Will I miss out on some other great paints? Maybe, but, at least my wife isn't yelling at me for stinking up the house!

66 Olds--Trial and Error....

2010-10-12T20:54:00.001-07:00

So from last time, I'm gearing up to paint a 1:25 66' Olds "Clean Build". And what could be more clean then a snarky candy paint job?

My trial of using a metallic paint (in this case Krylon Metallic Gold), covered by acrylic color coats, is a disaster. The paint did not spread correctly and resulted in a splotchy finish....

I tried a variation of this a second test body, this time the psuedo-metal finish was covered with clear "acryl red" from Testors, shot with an external mix airbrush at 20 or so psi--same results--everything beads up, nothing spreads, and it looks awful.

Back to the drawing board.

In the meantime, final prep work is going on on the body. I am down to little dings and nicks here and there......

....circling problem spots then trying to correct them with superglue and some careful sanding and filing.

As long as the CA glue is out: while waiting for things to dry I continue to work on an "Orange Crate" body; I have no idea what this might be used for some day, but it's always fun to chop some top. See ya next time!

Still working on 66 Olds--Paint Test!

2010-09-28T18:02:00.000-07:00

What happened to August? For that matter what happened to September? Time hurries on....I wanted to do something different for paint on the 66 Olds build, so I am trying to use a different undercoat, and some transparent acrylics over them. Instead of just using plastic spoons or whatever, I thought I'd use the bodies left over from the 71 RoadRunner build.

The first body came from Ebay, and since it smelled like ciggies, the second one came from Ebay too....

I used Plastikote primer and after 24 hours sprayed on a single coat of Krylon Real Gold Metallic. The paint covers very well and covering with a single coat was no problem.

One of the unexpected results was that this gold paint shows up defects in the body like no one's bizness--like this huge sink mark on the hood of one of the bodies. It was interesing that many of the sink marks--and there were lots of them--existed in exactly the same place on both bodies. I guess there was a problem in the molding process, and no one cared enough to fix it....glad I'm not using these bodies "for real" because filling in all the sink marks would be a pain.

Overall the bodies are looking like they're ready for a color coat. I have a feeling that some masking/candies and then some metal flake sprayed over is going to look really good, assuming it spreads out OK and doesn't peel. I really have no idea what will happen.

Next time: and hopefully sooner than this time: some transparent coatings--see if we can do a multicolor "candy" finish.

66 Olds 442 "Clean Build"--More Time to Dry!

2010-07-25T20:56:00.001-07:00

The bad news is that I continue to have time for not much of anything....hobbies and crafts being a couple of those things.

The good news is that allowing lots of drying time really helps a painting project!

Take the Alclad process. If you've followed this blog or any hobby mags--this is lacquer paint that will make non-metal surfaces look like they are made of metal--and it really works! Any sort of model builder--planes, trains, dioramas, whatever--is going to need this. You apply black enamel first, then airbrush over the Alclad lacquer. Only during this build have I realized that it's critical to let the enamel undercoat dry and gas out completely (a week!) or else the Alclad will look pitted or have other problems.

These are wheels I cast in resin and then Alclad coated with "Stainless Steel". On the bench they look better than they do in this photo--sadly I didn't have a lot of time to set up the shot--I am reasonably happy with how they came out.

Same thing with this aircleaner. It doesn't look so bad on the bench. The lighting in the photo leaves a bit to be desired....

The other item is scale "carpet". I have tried various means to get this into the build fast (because I never have time for any of this--remember?) but I have found that the best way to apply flocking is slowly and carefully--allowing the white glue several days to dry after its application.

Here it is. The seats and interior trim will cover up the yellow lines I drew as carpet "boundries". Maybe this weekend I will have some time to put together some of the subassemblies--we will see.

442 Olds "Clean Build"--Engine

2010-07-12T18:29:00.001-07:00

So here we are a month since the last post--not much more time for hobbies and crafts, but hey, a bit of time here and there is better than no time at all....

I'm taking a bit of a break from customizing and focusing this time on a "clean build". We're talking less runs, drips, fingerprints, smudge and so on, and for me it doesn't come easy! One thing I've rethought is how I brush paint--no more dipping paint into bottles and dragging big clumps of goo onto the build. Instead, careful stirring, pouring into small plastic containers I stole from the local burrito place, and going from there.

Also a bit more attention paid to little things, like putting the lids back on the paint so it doesn't dry out or spill on some other part sitting on the bench. Simple, but, I wasn't always doing it!

So here's what I have so far. Not the clean room sort of thing you see in some of the hobby mags, but for me, it's a lot better.

As I said last time, I got some magnifying glasses I can wear, so I can see details a bit better. It has been a huge help, one of the best investments I've made in the pursuit of the "clean build". Now I can see details that need to be fixed before the camera picks them up.

But is it fun? I don't know. For me, it's different. I am always rushing around, trying to get more done at work, trying to get more done around my house, just trying to do more, more, more. Here, it's good to slow down and concentrate on something monumentally unimportant, for a change.

Next I have to apply the metalizing paints to parts of the chassis and put together the interior. After priming and sanding I have put aside the body for now--a clean build on that will be tough indeed!

66 Olds 442--Starting to Paint

2010-06-13T13:42:00.000-07:00

So who has time for hobbies and crafts? In the past couple of months not me! I finally got a few minutes this weekend to do some quick painting of the 442 Olds I've been building (or trying to find time to build) over the past several weeks. Painting is always my favorite part!!!

From past entries you may know that I LOVE paints from Jacquard. Although Jacquard primarily advertises their paint as being best for dyeing fabric and coloring ceramics, their acrylics are great for plastic--easy to mix and airbrush once they are thinned down, and best of all, they don't stink up the house.

The main trick is what to thin them with....and after a bit of trial and error I found that windshield wiper fluid works best (who would have thought?) I whipped up some metalflake silver/green by mixing some Jacquard powders and airbrush colors and got ready to spray....

Two light coats, applied with a cheap airbrush, was all I needed....

Next I mixed up some blue wash, using 90% wiper fluid and 10% "Dazzling Mettalics" ice blue crafts paint from Decoart, and applied the wash to some of the surfaces of the interior.

The chassis pan was painted with Tamiya Matte Black, one of my favorite flat blacks....

...and the chassis components were prepped for metalizing paint with Duplicolor Acrylic Enamel Gloss black.

The good thing about having no time to paint (or anything else...): everything gets plenty of time to dry!!

66 Olds 442-Body Work Part II

2010-04-30T07:42:00.001-07:00

It's been a month and there's not been a lot of time at the bench....I continue to work on a "clean build" of a 66 442 Olds....

Well it turns out--a clean build takes a lot of time!!! As I discovered last time, the '66 442 Olds kit had side trim moldings that is great for a vinyl top build, but for a "normal" roof, which I am using here, they had to go. I have been sanding, filing, carving and sanding some more.

It turns out getting rid of the trim is easier said then done! We're talking hours of work. Finally....the trim pieces are gone, but on the 1:1 car there is a "crease" in the sheetmetal, down the side of the car, right underneath the side molding. It's proving impossible--or at least extremely difficult--for me to get a sharp crease here. After 2 weeks of knocking it around on the bench, I reached the point of diminishing returns; the more I sanded, the worse it looked....

And another problem: After removing the trim strips, the door lines needed to be carved out again. I was not sure exactly how to do this, so in "experimental mode" I used the sharp tip and back of an X-acto #11 blade, a Micro Mark reaming tool, and a bit of .020 plastic as a guide, that I taped to the door before carving.

I filled in some of the spots and holes and carving slip ups with superglue, which I then sanded down....

A lot of the rear trim had to go as well; it will be replaced by photoetch parts. From this photo I also notice that the styrene rod I put in place to help fix the rear window is visible from certain angles. It might be that once the headliner is in it will be harder to see. But it's something I hadn't thought a lot about, until now. I need to file that down, then, it'll be ready for primer-sand-primer- repeat.....who said this was going to be easy?

66 Olds 442--Body Work, Part I

2010-03-28T16:28:00.000-07:00

Still working on a mild custom 66 Olds....the goal of this build is to test fit everything and get everything entirely in shape before doing ANY finishing....

This is one of those AMTish things that drives me crazy. The instructions say if I'm building a non-vinyl top (I am) to remove the side trim pieces, a bit of which you can see here. This trim wraps around the front, sides, and rear. It all has to go. I haven't been doing this that long but I do know that removing a big old chunk of trim is a going to be a lot of work! But I need to do it; getting rid of the trim will make this look less like "your Mom's Olds" which is what I'm after here.

To make things harder there's a piece of body trim that can't be removed--this little crosshatch gizmo thing on each side. So I have to carefully sand and file around it. I ended up putting my finger over it to make sure I didn't accidentally scape it up. I have read of others "foil copying" this sort of thing, then sanding away the original, then gluing the copy back on, but I have never had any luck with that whole process...it always ends up looking like a little blob of bird doodoo.

So that's for a different project.....

OK, after some filing and sanding here's the back so far. A new problem is cropping up--on the 1:1 car, about mid-door there is a nice sharp point where the body sheetmetal is bent at a 20 or so degree angle. The trim strip covered that, and with it gone, I have to try to get it back somehow.

And here's the side. It's getting there, but as with so many other crafts, to do a good job is going to take time. I just have to get used to it. It would have been nice if AMT gave optional trim pieces you could attach or not, depending on what you wanted the finished model to look like, but, nope.

I continue to do a lot of reading about how anyone working with minatures does his thing without losing his or her mind and going blind at the same time. One key is to have good magnification, that's comfortable to wear, so I'm told. To this end I bought a $40 magification headband thingy from Micromark, which seems to work OK, although you have to hold your work x inches for it to be in focus (no way around that I can think of)

But the best part is the instructions that came with. This picture of happy Mr. Science Guy rocks the front of the instructions and I just cracked up. I mean, this guy just had a frontal lobotomy and now he's ready to party! I liked it so much I cut out his picture from the cheesy manual and put it above my bench. These are visual aids for the truly inspired.

1966 Olds--Parts is Parts....

2010-03-14T17:18:00.000-07:00

From last time: still working on rounding up parts for a '66 Oldsmobile mild custom.

Getting scale windshields in without them looking terrible (glue smears, finger smears, poor fit) is always tough for me. The glass that came with the kit (AMT/Ertl #6268) didn't fit, and it looked too thick. So I put some styrene rod into the inside of the roof....

And cut a playing card up to size out how big the "glass" (to be cut out of clear tyvek) will be. Should be pretty straightforward, but we'll see how it works when final assembly day comes.

Dashboards are tricky for me too. They never seem to fit right. The kit has me suspend the dash between the two interior side panels, but on other builds that's never worked for me. Instead I've glued a strip of styrene to the back of the dashboard, which I'll affix to the body, beneath the windshield.

I didn't much like the custom wheels that came with the Ertl kit; instead I found 2 wheels in the parts box that looks like something that might have been dreamed up by Centerline in the 1:1 world. But I only had 2 wheels, and needed 4...which means....time to cast.

I used 1:1 RTV mold maker this time, having run out of the first batch of 1:10. I like the 1:1 a lot better--much easier to prepare and mix.

Trying to learn from previous mistakes, I put polymer clay around the entire mold as a barrier; I learned my lesson a few months ago when RTV mold goo leaked all over the place before it had time to set. It made a heck of a mess!

So here's what I used this time around. I found that tiny bubbles (real ones, not the ones in the song) were getting into tight places in the wheel mold and was making small details, like the scale "bolts" on each wheel look, well, terrible. To fix this I use a toothpick right after the resin pour and actively chase the bubbles out. Now the scale bolts look spot-on.

BTW latex gloves are a big time saver, keeps RTV and resin crud off my hands, and I am not going to do a lot more casting without wearing them.

So here are the Centerlines I ended up with. There were a few issues with the very outer rims having tiny holes in them, but I figure these can be fixed with gap-filling CA glue.

I also found at the bottom of my parts box a crazy, retro looking Mag wheel, perhaps off an old Monogram drag kit. I figured I might as well make some copies of that too, and I did. No idea what I'll end up using them for.

66 Olds 442--Planning the Stance

2010-03-08T20:30:00.000-08:00

My dad read the last Blog Entry and was saying hey--the Roadrunner doesn't look all that bad! Well....I'm glad he thinks so--but remember, I took a lot of pictures of the thing, and uploaded only those that showed the build in a favorable light! I don't retouch my photos, but I also don't want to zoom in on all the little flaws....

ANYWAY let's hope the next build isn't as much of a struggle. It's a 66 Olds, one of my favorite 1:1 cars, I figure I will build it as a mild custom. What have I learned? For one, plan ahead, plan ahead, test fit, and then plan some more. I have to go back to the book by the greatest modeler of all time, Gerald Wingrove, to realize that the really good builders (no matter what they are building) figure out things first, then build, then paint/polish/finish. Since I like painting and paints, I have never done as much planning and test fitting as I should, I just slap stuff together and start painting. And then I always have the same issues:

The stance doesn't look right, so I end up hacking up an already painted build to correct stance issues. Result: I wreck the paint.

The glass never fits. result: usually I get some glue or other dreck somewhere (mostly on the glass) trying to fix it.

The front and back bumpers don't fit. Result--the finished build looks like someone hit it with a shopping cart.

The headers and exhaust don't fit right. Result--don't even think about photographing the underside of the build.

This is a "modern tooling" kit, which means the detail is much better than a few of the "vintage" builds I have tried lately. The back end can easily be seen to be way better in the detail department than anything on the Roadrunner build.

So this time I'm doing more test fitting and planning in advance of any sort of finishing--for instance, on this kit the rear end looked too high to me, so I am doing all the hacking and cutting and fitting to the rear end first....

And "pinning" things parts so I can see where I am at....

And here's the stance. The back end is pinned in, and the front suspension is assembled. I am going to cheat on the finished build by gluing the bottom of the front "axle" (really, a nub of plastic) to the bottom of the inner front wheels. No one will notice on the finished build....It's got a long way to go, but at least it's pointed in the right direction.

71 Roadrunner 1:25 scale--FINISHED

2010-03-06T17:27:00.001-08:00

It's been a few weeks since the last post, and a big reason I've not been building is I've been hating--HATING--this stupid Roadrunner build. It's been a struggle start to finish, and really not been a lot of fun.

Some of it is my fault; poor planning, poor research, and rushing through the build for whatever reason. Part of it is the kit--even with a fair amount of work to correct some of the kit's obvious flaws, such as casting the front bumper (that was completely wrong and looked like who knows what), the finished build still doesn't capture the spirit of the 1:1 car. I can't put my finger on what is wrong here; obviously the problem goes all the way back to whatever promo MPC used way back when to master this kit. The body just doesn't look right--is it too narrow? Is the rake of the front end vs. the back not right? Does the way the rear valance sit not give the right "mean" look to the build? It's hard to say.

Maybe some of the experience I lack is to know when a project is just too big to take on. To make the body look right might have almost taken a entire scratch build of the body, and at the very least, scratch building the front grille, which has none of the subtle swoops and curves of the 1:1 car.

If I were to do that, I wouldn't do this in 1:25 scale, rather something bigger, so it would be easier to work with.

I don't know. I'm just not happy with this. Again I am faced with questioning how much time I really want to spend on these things. I can clearly see that to get to the next level I am going to have to spend a lot more time test fitting things and working on planning and prep. I have to decide if I really want to do that.

I guess we'll see.

71 Roadrunner 1:25th Scale--Polish

2010-01-24T09:03:00.001-08:00

From last time: still working on a 1:25 scale 71 Roadrunner. This is a "vintage" kit that hasn't been released in many years, making parts hard to find....

It's time to polish up the body--after applying 4 coats of Future Floor Polish (actually just an acrylic clear sealer) I let things dry for about a week--I've been busy with work and haven't had much time at the bench anyway.....

As I mentioned last time, there are issues where the hood (which doesn't lift or come off) joins the body. From previous builds I know that little problems become big problems after polish and finish are applied....for some reason I thought I could get away with the subtle issues, but no, once again, it wasn't meant to be. The roughness around this part of the hood looks pretty bad, and I have to think about what if anything I am going to do about it--if anything can be done. Stripping and repainting at this point is out of the question. The lesson learned is that prep work (Careful! prep work) has to be done before the color coat. Once you get to this stage, you're committed, and have to live with how things come out.

From the rear end, things don't look quite as bad, although I did have some issues with the primer (gray) showing through a bit, especially noticable on the trunk. Next time I paint something a light color I have to remember to use a white primer!!!! The bare metal foil trim job isn't the best either, but it's going to have to do.

After I took these pictures I removed the Bare Metal Foil from the drivers side A-pillar; while I was polishing the roof "caved in" and bent up the foil. Perhaps in the future I need to support the roof during polishing, but in most builds I don't think a roof will cave in.

My general finishing process: a) Future Floor Polish; 3-4 coats. The clear finish starts to shine a lot better after the 3rd coat or so. b) 2000 grit automotive sandpaper. I was very careful to not remove any paint, but here and there (around the hood especially) I did. Damn! c) Tamiya "fine" and "finish" polish d) Novus 3,2,1 plastic polish and clean.

In general, I never spend that much time on polish and finish, and it shows. Unless I quit my job and give up other interests, it's just not going to happen. For the amount of time I've spent so far, the build is coming out OK, but it will never look perfect. Perfection takes time. That's true of a lot of things, and that's true about model building.

71 Roadrunner 1:25th Scale--Body Odor....

2010-01-11T20:32:00.000-08:00

I had a pretty relaxing XMAS/New Years but now it's back to work....

I have been building a 1:25th scale 1971 Roadrunner from a vintage (and somewhat hard to find) MPC kit. The hood came off a resin kit whose body I otherwise destroyed and I cast the front bumper, using a NASCAR stock car bumper as the master, since the front bumper/grille that came with the MPC kit didn't look, well, right.

I am feeling I may have overextended myself a bit--this build is turning out to be beyond my skills level. That's the way to improve right? Well, maybe. I am taking a fresh look at my builds and finding little problems everywhere, problems that seem to come up again and again....and so far I don't have good solutions.

At least I am getting better information about what needs to improve....

First up: painting within the lines. I have never been very good at this. For the Roadrunner I figured painting the side lights would be easy but it wasn't in the end; as you see here, I had trouble keeping things neat. In retrospect, I should have used baremetal foil and/or masked; it was silly for me to think I could flow paint into the side lights and have them look OK. I'm not sure how I will fix this, maybe some touch up paint and polish?

Surprise: the rear emblem decal came out looking....bad! This should have been easy but ended up looking smeared. Not sure what if anything can be done about this, in the future I need to take care to completely sand off the molded emblem I am replacing before applying a decal or photoetch.

Another issue that plagues me: lines I cut into things look crooked, rather than neat and straight. Door lines, hood lines, trunk lines....if I need to create these I am in big trouble. Hood lines are especially troubling. Above you can see a where glue is visible through the crack in the hood. That really bugs me, but I am not sure what at this point I can do about it; maybe scribing it with a #11 blade and then applying some black wash.

Finish issues exist where the front bumper I cast meets the body. This is a strange one. The bumper was mounted to a piece of thin sheet plastic, then glued to the rest of the body as a unit. But the line joining the two pieces isn't clean; in the photo above, you can see that part of the joining line has vanished entirely. I don't know why this happened; perhaps the glue melted some of the joined plastic and ruined what should have been a crisp line.

What all this really means is that I need to spend a lot more time getting things right before I paint. The bumper-join issue was probably fixable at some point, as well as the hood, but not once I've painted the color coats. I am thinking I need to work on a process where I use a master, like a piece of brass fixed to the body, to server as a guide around which I scribe things like door lines.

I am getting a bit better with Bare Metal Foil, but things are still not perfect. In addition to tiny bumps here and there--not sure where they came from, as I am tacking the BMF down to smooth unpainted plastic--the place where the BMF and trim end often look bad. Maybe I need a tiny bit of glue so I don't end up with a small terminating blob, as you see here?

More BMF issues with where some of the trim joins up. In general, the rear window frame came out OK, but this particular corner didn't. Not sure why.

71 Roadrunner 1:25th Scale--and a Side Olds 442 Project....

2009-12-06T12:58:00.001-08:00

From last time: I'm still working on a 1:25 scale '71 Roadrunner "Vintage" build. In the meantime, I am beginning a side project: 1 '66 Olds 88 Dynamic.

The Roadrunner dries after a second round of color coating. It's slow going due to the wet weather here.....I want to give it extra time so nothing in terms of bare metal foil, clear coat, or decals gets messed up.

In the meantime....as far as the Dynamic 88 project: for this I bought a donor kit from AMT--the 66 Olds 442 #6268.....

But it turns out the donor kit is in the wrong scale! The Dynamic 88 is 1:24 scale, and this AMT donor kit is 1:25, which makes it a bad donor kit. But the 442 Olds kit looks so good that I decided to just go ahead and build it.....

For the last few weeks I've been struggling with "where I want to go" with this silly hobby. Should I be concerned with trying to improve my skills at the expense of the pastime not being as much fun? After some thought: it seems I am programmed to try to always be better at anything I do....crafts, artwork, and hobbies are no exception, and there's no point in fighting it. So let's improve away. This time, I am focusing on a "clean stock build" using new techniques I learned from a book by Gerald Wingrove.

I've tried to "clean up my builds" before but with only limited success. As I said in previous posts, Gerald Wingrove is considered by some to be the greatest car modeler of all time, and looking at his work, it'd be hard to argue that a build could be "cleaner". His builds look like they just drove off the showroom floor with no test drives allowed! How does he do it?

One thing Gerald emphasizes in his book: He builds everything up first, fits/tweaks/lines up everything, gets everything ready completely ready to go, and only THEN starts thinking about finishing and final assembly. In the past I've done a bit of this, but really, not nearly as much as I should. I end up painting parts and trying to fit them, the part doesn't quite line up, and the re-fitting and re-gluing processes mars the paint. The result--crooked, badly painted things. Doh!

It doesn't seem to take that much more time to build a plastic kit the "Gerald way", but for me, it requires rethinking the build process. For example: I am cleaning and fitting everything first, handling parts as infrequently as possible, even bagging stuff up when not using it, as opposed to just tossing it back into a box. Things that don't fit well, due to (say) a pin being misplaced or a part not lining up are dealt with while the project is still in "white plastic" using basic scratchbuilding techniques.

And: did I mention the AMT/ERTL '66 Olds 442 is a super-cool kit? Extremely crisp molding, fit so far seems to be good for everything; excellent detail. Some refitting is needed: for instance, the exhaust pipes didn't line up quite right with the holes in the chassis. But it's really not too bad. Take a look at this air cleaner for instance. On the tree, it's nearly perfect. Cutting it off and cleaning it up should be pretty easy. After having messed with vintage kits it makes me appreciate this "modern tooling" a lot more!

71 Roadrunner 1:25th Scale--Color Coat

2009-11-29T04:58:00.001-08:00

I'm happy to say the 71 Roadrunner 1:25 vintage build has its color coat! Finally! This marks the second psuedo-vinyl top I've created, and also maybe the second body I've tried to paint with my new airbrush setup....

After trying different airbrushes--including some fairly expensive ones--I think I've settled on the right one for this kind of job. It's a Paasche H0708, single action, external mix. It's inexpensive and simple to clean, perfect for painting model car bodies. To me double action and even internal mix airbrushes seem overly complex for paint jobs this basic. This one gets the job done.

As I said in an earlier post: I replaced the putt-putt Testors compressor I was borrowing from a friend with a Iwata Studio Series "Sprint Jet". That's made a huge difference as well. The ability to dial in and view the PSI's of the paint "session", then try the pressure on some scrap, make adjustments, and paint, has made my color coats look a lot better.

Paint for this build is Scalefinishes.com "Dodge Y1 Top Banana". I chose this because I have applied lots of different color coats over the past couple of years but not yellow. This is the first body I've tried to paint with Scalefinishes.com color...their website says this is acrylic paint which, to me, seems easier to apply then lacquer.

Before painting I tried an additional step: I poured the paint through a cloth sieve, to remove any paint chunks that mixing and stirring didn't get rid of. The result was no blotches and splotches when spraying. Joy! I almost forgot to paint the side mirrors (not shown) but remembered at the last minute....

So here is the painted body so far. I've been here before with other builds, and have a long way to go. Still, applying the color coat is a milestone. Still to do: carefully 1500 grit sand the color coat (after letting it dry for a week!), Bare Metal Foil, decals, clearcoat, and then figure out how to put headlights on the grille.

Miles to go before I sleep? As I get (slightly) better at this, I also see things becoming more and more work. I can devote more time but it also means each build takes longer and longer, and I generally don't have hours each evening to work on these things. Cue up Sly Stone's version of "Que Sera Sera"....so earthy and funky that you drop the needle and nasty body odor starts wafting uncontrollably out of the stereo speakers...whatever will be, will be.

Roadrunner Continues--and the Next Build....

2009-11-15T11:41:00.000-08:00

Onward and upward....after a couple of bad weeks I am trying to get to the end of a 1:25 71 Roadrunner stock build. As I've said before, it's not hard finding a GTX in 1:24 scale, but 1:25 RR's are few and far between, far harder to find and thus more challenging....but to make this build not too difficult I also glued the hood shut. So once again I am not quite sure where my head is at with this build....anyway, the 71 Roadrunner sits in the paint booth awaiting more primer.

I have found that letting the booth blower run for 30 minutes before I start painting helps get some of the dust out....I did a lot of test fitting and made sure the side mirrors and bumpers had the means to be glued to the body without making a mess. The Gerald Wingrove book espouses doing ALL the building, testing fitting, and prep work before any paint and finish work, and that sounds like a great idea to me. I always seem to struggle to get trim and finish parts to fit, and if they are already painted it just makes things worse.

And now for something completely different....

The larch....the....LARCH.

Usually about now I start tinkering with my next build; for the Roadrunner I'm into watching-paint-dry mode, and don't want to just sit around staring at the supid thing.

I was thinking about finishing off one of the customs ("Kustoms") I started several months ago, but something came up on Ebay I couldn't resist--a unpainted (well, almost) glue bomb of a 1:25 66 olds 88 Dynamic.

Growing up I always LOVED this car--especially in convertible form. Like some of the big caddies, the Olds 88 got me into the "I wish I could drive" mode.

I have never seen this in boxed kit form anywhere, although 442 kits aren't hard to find. I also have never tried any sort of glue-bomb-to-slightly-less-of-a-glue-bomb type kit restoration.

In the end I just had to buy it--Joy! I won the bid for about $33; it showed up looking exactly like the Ebay photos. Nothing got broken in transit--the seller did an excellent job packing it up. The bad news is that whoever glued it really went to town, so getting everything apart to start the restoration is going to be tough. Also one of the crazy side pipes is broken, and the custom hood is chipped in one corner. So I not entirely sure what look I am going to go for. Stock would be nice, but it seems a bit dull after the last couple of stock builds I've done. This must have been a "2 n 1" originally and thus, just for nostalgia's sake, I might go for the "drag" version.

Man that's a cool blown engine!

A lucky break: the seller had some spare 66 Olds parts, including an entire additional engine with blower and dual carbs, which he included. I wonder where he got all these parts?

Sadly: someone had taken a soldering iron or firecracker or something to the original build. The ebay listing said someone had melted off the wheels (and you do see some heat damage inside the wheelwells, but fortunately what is visible is OK.) There are also a few burn marks on the body, like someone was trying to torture the poor thing, but nothing too bad.

The seller also threw in some really nice Olds hubcaps and a nice set of scale Firestone white wall tires. I just went through my entire collection the other day picking out tires for the Roadrunner; I have nothing like these 1:25 Firestones, and they are extremely sweet.

71 Roadrunner: Vinyl Top

2009-11-12T05:34:00.001-08:00

It's been a tough couple of weeks and sadly it's made me reconsider why I am doing any of this hobby. It's now apparent to me I'm not going to spend hours and hours on builds, and I will never be great at this; or maybe even good. Part of it is because I have a real life and a real job, a family that I am serious about, and am emotionally more invested in things that seem more important the glue and plastic. I read about the model car world of NNL and "Fierce Competitors" and it makes me laugh--I have zero desire to travel all over the country to compete, like the "master modelers" do....the whole thing reminds me a bit of "Best of Show"....competing? Why? What do the competitors hope to accomplish? If they're after the girls, I got news, good buddies....

But I just can't let myself build whatever comes out, I have to keep pushing to get better I guess--but, why? It's been a good learning experience, maybe. It's relaxing, sometimes, but maybe not often enough. Perhaps I am preprogrammed to try to be good (obsessively good?) at whatever I do, and maybe this is the universe's way of telling me I don't have to do that. Perhaps it takes a real gift to be satisfied with being mediocre at something that has no purpose other than relaxation.

I got a book by Gerald Wingrove on how he builds what I'm pretty sure are considered the best car models in the world. The book goes over, in extreme detail, HOW he builds his model cars. But it avoids a much more compelling question--WHY does he do what he does? Yep, Gerald's builds are impressive, really impressive, and man does that guy do some crazy stuff to build them (if you don't believe me, get his book). And he got to meet the queen!! But I have to ask--to the rest of the Gerald Wingroves of the world--why? What urges you on? The 12 year old kid from China playing the hell out of the violin: why? Did you listen to Paganini as a 4 year old and say--by god, I want to play like that! Be honest now: is it an early onset of OCD? Or a parent beating crap out of you if you don't practice?

This whole endeavor makes me ask what I've always wondered, and always lacked: what motivates some people to be obsessively good at one thing?

So enough of Gerald, and all the kids at Julliard. And back to the world of mediocrity: about this '71 Roadrunner....same as it ever was: I decided to add a vinyl top.....I used plastic strips to imitate the vinyl creases in the top; used Tenax glue for that, and sanded it down with a nail file.

Masking is obviously critical. I am effectively doing a 2 tone job here.

bare metal foil and Tamiya tape are used.....

There are two coats used for the Model Master's vinyl system, basecoat and finish coat, this is the second time I've been though this, first time was on the 69 Superbee, complete with crooked bumpers and the wrong side mirror. Avast!

There you have it. If I were Gerald Wingrove, I'd still be masking the first damn A pillar. Whatever floats your boat.

71 Roadrunner 1:25th Scale--Body Work!!!

2009-10-31T08:01:00.001-07:00

The story so far: I've been building a '71 Plymouth Roadrunner, using a vintage 1:25 MPC kit (MPC/Ertl #6282) as the build's basis. To complicate things I found the MPC front grille/bumper to not be to my liking, so I cast a new one using a Japanese casting product called Oyumaru, basing the new bumper on a Plymouth stock car from Competition Resins. Never can keep things simple, eh?

Priming is essential to see "where things are at" when doing body work, since the primer exposes areas that still need attention. Until now I have almost exclusively used Duplicolor primers; reading about what some of the "big boys" use, Plasti-kote T-235 seems more popular, so I decided to give that a try.

So far I have liked it--it goes on smooth, sands out easily, and dries fast. HOWEVER! I have read that you need to MAKE SURE you use T-234, T-235, orT-237 and not one of their other primers--their other primers might melt your plastic!

It might be my imagination, but it seems a bit thicker than the Duplicolor primer I've been using.

I had a few different parts choices for the interior, having bought resin parts for the build from Bandit Resins as well as Modelhaus. And, of course I had the parts that came with the vintage MPC kit.

I found that the seats and/or interior tubs were essentially the same from all suppliers; all vendors apparently cast their parts from the same master (a Plymouth dealer promo?). So it came down to which part looked and/or fit the best. I ended up choosing the MPC tub because it fit the body well(the Bandit Resin's casting was crisper then the yellow plastic MPC tub, but there was a gap between the BR tub and the MPC plastic body). The seats from Modelhaus were perfect--crisp, no flash, great looking. The dashboard is from Bandit Resins--the casting is wonderful. Both Modelhaus and Bandit Resins do great work!

The hand-made resin front bumper has been glued to the body at last. I am finding cleaning it up difficult. But to me the extra 2-3 or so scale inches the new bumper adds to the length of the build makes this Roadrunner look a lot more like the 1:1 car. Let's see if I can clean up the custom bumper without ruining other things!!!

Overall the body is beginning to look good. Softening some of the sharp lines of the body (using a 300 grit sanding stick) has helped. I think with the right paint and stance this build is going to come out "cool".

I ended up gluing the hood (from the Bandit Resins kit) down. I couldn't figure out how to hinge it, as this is a resin hood being mounted to a plastic body. Besides, I am a bit tired of building the same 440 Mopar motor over and over. So in the hobby parlance this is going to be a "curbside" which means "look ma, no motor!" Most important, I'm not using the "air grabber" hood from the MPC kit; I like the look of the hood from the Bandit Resins kit a lot better.

71 Roadrunner Dash--The Silver Lining?

2009-10-25T17:23:00.000-07:00

The good news is that any sort of craft, like building models, is good for relieving work- (or life-)related stress. I think most everyone would agree to that. The bad news is that sometimes I'm working too much to have time to do the things that relieve stress. The past 2-3 weeks have been those sorta' weeks.

I tagged along to our local Target with my wife (she needed to return something--don't know what). While she was looking around at whatever is it she looks around at I went into the "back to school" section. There I found some interesting pens made by Sharpie--"Sharpie Paint". The blister pack art said that the pens had a metallic finish and would stick to plastic. Good for modelling? Hmmm....

Having about 10 minutes between bouts of remote access to work, I got a dash out of one of the 71 Roadrunner donor kits and covered the dash with Floquil Engine Black #F110010.

If you've read earlier posts you know that I just love Floquil paints.....I then applied Silver Sharpie Paint pen. You see the results here. It doesn't look 100% right, maybe it's 50% right? It's not perfect, but this was my first attempt. If there's a finer point it might work better, and maybe masking some of the long straight lines will help.

From a distance--and since this dash will be inside a model without opening doors, no one will be able to see much no matter what--it's OK. Good enough. Since I am doing this to learn about new crafts, and get away from work, good enough is, well, good enough.

71 Plymouth Roadrunner--Resin Body Destroyed!

2009-10-05T19:25:00.000-07:00

Another troubled day in my model car world. From previous posts: I am trying to build a "vintage" 71 Roadrunner in 1:25 scale. The build in 1:24 scale would be easy--go to the local Hobby shop, buy the Revell 1:24 1971 GTX kit, and build it. But what fun would that be? There is, or was, a 1:25 resin body available, from Bandit Resins, so I scooped it up. It's a nice body: they already kludged a good firewall/engine compartment in there while mastering it. The BR resin kit is not too cheap--I paid about $45 for the body/hood/interior tub/seats/dash; if you get it, you still need a donor kit (Bandit recommends the AMT 71 Charger) to complete the build.

Here's what I ended up with. The body itself looks a whole lot like the MPC body I already have--it wouldn't surprise me if the MPC kit was the master, or they were both mastered from the same "promo" body at one point. And!! While trying to test fit the body to the donor kit (AMT/Ertl 71 Dodge Charger #30054, no longer in production, but easily found on Ebay), disaster struck: a big crack developed in the rear passenger side quarter panel, probably when I tried to stretch the body over the chassis. Lesson learned--be gentle with resin bodies! I tried to repair that with CA glue, which warped the entire body, and then I tried to repair the warpage with warm water and twisting, which popped the passenger side A piller off. Then I gave up; bottom line: the resin body is toast. When I told this sad story to my wife she couldn't believe I didn't scream when the A piller went flying. Well, I didn't, I must be getting mellow in my old age!

So it's back to the plastic body (from MPC #6282--pretty hard/expensive to find on Ebay...and really, not a great kit....)

Oh well, the plastic body will work; I am going to use the hood from the resin kit which doesn't have the air grabber scoop arrangement...which I like better. I debonded the air grabber hood that I had already glued down and removed it; happily the engine compartment I had shoved in there was intact, so at least at this time I have options. I still need to decide if I want to glue the hood shut. I should put an engine and hinged hood into the build, but, that would be a pretty big time commitment.

The front bumper/grille remains a problem. The one that came with the MPC kit doesn't look like the 1:1 bumper/grille so forget about that one. Here is the one that came with the bandit resins kit. To me, it looks the same as the MPC grille/bumper--it has the same problems. I assume they may have both been cast from the same source.

The bumper looks like it's about 2 scale inches less deep than the 1:1 bumper; there are also no bumper mounting bolt covers visible. And, to my eyes, the headlights aren't large enough. We can do better.

So here's the bumper I created, so far; I cast this from a 71 Plymouth stock car bumper I got from Competition Resins, and then cut out the grille using a dremel tool, leaving a bit of the original grille behind to have something to mount the new grille to.

I have to figure out the headlights and grille next. The Bandit Resins GTX grille is the top one; the other is the MPC grille. I am not too crazy about either but overall like the Bandit Resin's one better (although it's a GTX, not a Roadrunner....) Best would be to scratch build this somehow, but that would be a pretty big project. My biggest challenge right now is how to do this build in the time I have; I am very busy with about a million other things. I may have to take the quick way out.

69 Superbee with Vinyl Top FINISHED!

2009-09-21T17:40:00.000-07:00

I just finished a box-stock (almost) 1969 Superbee based on Revell's "Revell Muscle" series--kit #85-2363.

This kit was a departure for me--it's 1:24 and I haven't built anything in 1:24 for years; I did almost no customizing or scratch building, and I tried, for the first time, doing a scale vinyl top.

The engine compartment was detailed out with scratch built heater plumbing. I also cast the wiper motor and a few goodies on the inside of the firewall, as the Revell kit didn't have much detail....

The tires and "Mopar Dog Dish" wheels came from "Scale Equipment Ltd".....it might be a bit hard to tell from the photos but the decals on the tires didn't come out very well--the edges of the decals are visible if held into the light just right (or "just wrong"). I don't think I will be using tire decals again any time soon; rub on lettering looks a lot better.

OK, so here's the top...after a lot of reading I decided to give Model Masters "Black Vinyl Top Base Coat" and "Black Vinyl Top Texture Coat" a try. It came out OK....but to me the "bumps" aren't to scale (I may have held the texture coat can too far from the subject, but, I did follow the directions from Testors and held the can 18"-24" away). I also made the seams a bit too big....I need to use smaller gauge plastic rod next time.

Part numbers from Model Masters is 28153 and 28152....

Does it look better than just using mist coats of enamel? Don't know....The finished build got a bit rushed towards the end; I had a heck of a time with the stance, since Revell's stock build looked WAY too tall to me. I ended up hacking up the suspensions and just epoxying the wheels to the axles after putting in some styrene rod to allow the stance to be lowered.

The stance could come down a tad more--not sure--1:1 photos shows these things riding up a bit high.....

The vanity plates reflect the build: 1st vinyl.

Don't know what I'm going to build next--I have parts now for the Roadrunner, as well as a Duster, but I guess I am not crazy about building yet another Mopar. In fact, I am going to go out of town for a few weeks and take a break from work and hobbies. Maybe after that I will have some new ideas.

Macro Mania--taking pictures of those tiny parts!

2009-09-08T20:23:00.000-07:00

I'm still waiting for various parts to show up for different builds so I had a bit of time to revisit my basic photography setup....

I currently use a Nikon D40 with add on 600 and 800 flash units. A pretty simple setup, and I've always used the AF lens that came "stock" with the D40....

However with this setup I've never really been happy taking Macro shots with this rig. Even with autofocus turned off the D40's "stock" macro settings still leave a bit to be desired, and for taking pictures of itty-bitty model parts it didn't always get it done.

Ebay to the rescue! I read that the D40 takes older Nikkor lenses, as long as you're willing to set all the settings (Fstop, focus, lighting) manually. Well, from what I've read about macro photography you probably need to do that anyway, so there's no point in getting some uber-expensive auto lens for this as I see it....and you can get these old Nikkor lenses used for cheap, cheap, CHEAP!!!

The lens I ended up getting was a Nikkor AI F3.5 55mm. From my reading, this is/was a top notch lens, one that in its day (and even now) other lenses are compared to. I won't say what I paid, but believe me, compared to what the uber computerized-auto-everything macro lenses can set you back, this lens was PEANUTS.

It was a bit baffling getting this lens to work at all--but I found that once I set the camera to "M" (it's what Nikon calls a "pre CPU lens" so you have to set everything to manual--doh!) it would take basic pix....like this 1:25 scale battery. Out of focus a bit....but this is about 20 seconds of setup, no tripod, and me shaking a bit having just consumed a Snickers bar....

There was an old AA battery on my work bench, I just snapped a close up and this is what I got--again, no tripod or any lighting other than what's on my bench. Not too bad.....

....or the logo to a toothpick box...again, no tripod....the focus is a tiny bit out.

OK, after a bit of setup (not much)--mostly screwing with lighting, and using a tripod, I found I could get SUPER close up shots--like this tranny. This was after say 3 minutes of setup....

.
Another 3 minutes for the lugs nuts on this cool old wheel.

It's a school night so I didn't mess around with this lens as much as I could of--and will. But for a few minutes of setup I am really pleased with this purchase! Hours of fun!!!

Casting Part III-Quick Casting with Oyumaru

2009-09-05T12:54:00.000-07:00

Last time around I was trying to give myself a crash course in casting. For the 71 Roadrunner build, I needed to make copies of rare/expensive parts before I modify them. Casting seemed to be the best way to do it.

Now I'm bitten by the casting bug.

Although satisfying when everything goes right, casting can be time consuming and frustrating. You have to make the mold box, create the mold, let the mold cure, pour the resin, let that cure, demold the resin, and see how you did. And unlike most aspects of this strange hobby, the materials for casting can be surprisingly expensive--I paid $36 for a pretty tiny bit of RTV silicone and now it's almost all gone.

So I'm on the lookout for a casting system that saves time and money. I may have found it: I discovered a Japanese product called Oyumaru that can be used to make molds inexpensively and quickly. Sounds like something to try!

Just looking at the packaging: things are happy in the land of Oyumaru! I have no idea what the graphics on the package say, but right from the get go Oyumaru looks fun, fun, fun!!! The price was definitely right: $6US for 6 sticks of Oyumaru, each of which can be reused almost indefinitely. So here's how you use it....

First, grab a pot to boil up some Oyumaru. No, no, not those pots, those are the zillion dollar uber alloy space age ones the wife uses for cooking--never, ever, EVER use them for anything else! Don't even look at them!

Much better! This is a $3 pot I bought at the local general store. Boil up some water, dump some Oyumaru in there, and let it boil for about 3 minutes....

There's some kind of release agent or paint or something on this cheapo pot that stinks! But the Oyumaru itself doesn't have any scent. You can't eat it, but at least it doesn't gas you out of the house.

Take out the Oyumaru with tongs (I bought a $2 ladel at the same general store--still alive!) and wipe it off with paper towel. Then squish it out into chunks onto some wax paper. While it's still soft--you have about 3-5 minutes--squish your masters down into the Oyumaru. For my first effort I jammed some random parts I had lying around--a couple of V8 heads, a cool Cobra air cleaner, and a master cylinder--into the Oyumaru, and let it cool (once the masters are set, you have to let Oyumaru cool before you do anything else with it....) Then I slapped a second piece of Oyumaru on top creating a cheap and dirty squish mold. No release agent is used--so the first piece has to be really cool or the two mold pieces will stick together, trapping the master inside.

After everything's cool, I pulled the mold halves apart, removed the masters, and was ready for a resin pour.....

After pouring 1:1 resin and letting the cast parts sit for about 1/2 hour, I demolded. Bad news: The results were barely usable. Perhaps it was a mistake to try to jam 4 pieces into such a small chunk of Oyumaru....I should have been more generous with amount of mold I used for each piece. And I probably should have waited longer before demolding.

Back to the drawing board....I have heard (not tried it yet) that you can't use that perfect Oyumaru mold you created last Sunday over and over; with each subsequent pour the cast becomes a bit more flabby and inaccurate. But the upside--that I have seen already: if your Oyumaru mold is NG, or you're done with it, throw it in boiling water and start again....yes, you can indeed use Oyumaru over and over.

For the second attempt with Oyumaru I created 4 molds, composed of 6 Oyumaru chunks: two one piece molds for two Cobra air cleaners; a two piece squish mold for a small block Chevy oil pan, and a two piece "true" mold for the master cylinder/vacuum boost out of the Revell 1:24 69 Superbee I'm working on right now.

The only thing I did differently than the first run, other than using more Oyumaru for each cast, was to put the true 2 part mold into a vice and pour the resin into the top (as you would with an RTV type mold). Some things can't be squish molded no matter what! I found that with Oyumaru you can't crank the vice down too tight or it will deform the mold....which will ruin the casting....

Here are the finished pieces. Not perfect, but, not too bad. The only thing I had real trouble with--I am still not getting the hang of this in general--is the "true" 2 piece mold. The master Cylinder/vacuum boost looked like it had a huge (1/8") air bubble trapped so it was unusable. During clean up I cut off the motor mounts from the oil pan, but that's not Oyumaru's fault, it's mine, and that's OK.

This is just for practice, right? In general Oyumaru works for cheap and quick casting. Next time I need to make a one-off copy of a simple piece quickly this will be the way I go.

Casting Continued--the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

2009-08-23T11:22:00.000-07:00

The quest to build more Mopars remains on hold....I'm waiting for our UPS guy to deliver Resin parts for the 71 Roadrunner project and vinyl textured paint for the '69 Superbee.....

As I said last time, I've never tried to recreate a vinyl roof before, and I didn't want to try this out on an expensive resin body, so I got a '69 Revell Superbee that I'm building box-stock to learn more about creating a fake vinyl top. I've painted the body already with Model Car World #6955, "Seafoam Turp. Metallic" purchased for the Charger 500 project but never used until now....

I masked off everything but the roof....the brightwork had to be masked as well, I figure, since Bare Metal Foil reveals every little bump and pit and would look terrible covering scale vinyl. Ironically I used Bare Metal foil as the mask for the eventual application of--Bare Metal Foil! Overall this vinyl top thing is a mystery; I have no idea how this is going to look, but that's what $12 box-stock builds are for, for me anyway: trying out new things.

In the meantime I've been messing with more resin casting. Last week I bought a starter kit from Alumilite and have spent a lot of this weekend playing around with it, casting more Halibrand wheels and a bunch of valve covers.

For the wheels: I found a few deep rear 5 spoke Halibrands in my parts box. I always have loved these wheels, but each was missing its mate, and one of them had a pretty big chip taken out of the rim. I repaired the rim by stripping the chrome with 91% isopropyl alcohol, then using Plastic Weld, tube styrene, and a file to replace the missing chunk. But what about its mate? We need 2 wheels Scotty!!

Casting ahead warp factor nine!!!

What I've found:

First and foremost, mix the resin components really carefully! Or else the resin never quite cures and you end up with wheels that looked chewed by a dog!

Also: make sure to deform the mold right after pouring the resin to allow the resin to flow down into all the creases and crevices.

And let the part cure in the mold a long time--a few hours, at least--it takes the rims of the wheels a lot longer to cure than the rest....I was taking the part out of the mold, but the rim was staying behind, which of course is not good....letting the cast wheel sit in the mold for a few hours seems to fix this.

Another trick: glue the original part down to the bottom of the mold box--if not it will literally float--then the cast part will not be able to be extracted from the mold.

And....small round salsa containers, from the "para llevar" counter at the local Mexican joint, make great mold boxes for small one piece molds.

Putting the mold in the microwave and using baby powder to get rid of air bubbles, before the pour, didn't make a lot of different I could see, at least so far. The Alumilite site says to do this, but I couldn't see any difference, and occasionally the baby powder would deform the piece. As long as I could pop air bubbles with a toothpick before the resin hardened I was OK, for the most part. What air bubbles were left--and there usually weren't a lot--didn't seem that hard to fill with superglue.

As far as the wheels, I had about 50/50 results--meaning I could keep about half of what I cast, which isn't too bad for a newbie at this. The takeaway: I could repair an original wheel and then cast a mate, and then use both on a build! Cool!

For the valve covers I went into my parts box and got every "cool" valve cover I could find--and a cool Thunderbird air cleaner to boot. We're talking the Caddie valve covers that say "Cadillac", Dodge Red Ram, Weiand, Ford Cobra, and so on--the nifty covers the kit manufacturers don't include these days because they don't want to pay GM or whoever an (even huger) licensing fee.

I whipped up a quickie mold box out of .015 plastic sheet, CA glue, and polymer clay.

The results were really good! I had about 90% keepers for the 3 rounds. The parts, other than needing to have flash trimmed off, look every bit as good as the originals. These would go for $3-5 or more per pair (!!!) from one of the aftermarket resin places. For me, it was about 50 cents worth of resin and about 1/2 hour of my time to make a lifetime supply of them!!!!

I did try some 2 part molds this week as well, but it was a complete disaster. More on that next time. Overall, casting is easier than I thought, at least for simple things, and going forward I see it changing the way I approach a lot of the builds I do.

Roadrunner on Hold--so in the Meantime.....

2009-08-18T09:39:00.000-07:00

After a lot of sitting around staring at the 1:25 MPC 71 Roadrunner MPC body I have decided that it's going to be too much work to modify the body and front grille/bumper to suit my needs. I love MPC, I really do, but this body just doesn't get it done--it is too far from the spirit of the 1:1 car, so I'm not going to use it for the '71 Roadrunner build.

I'm not giving up; I have ordered some resin parts from Modelhaus and Bandit Resins to get the '71 Roadrunner build done....so now I'm waiting for the parts to show up, then decide what to do next.

In the meantime I have been building a "box stock" '69 Superbee in 1:24 scale...Revell 85-2363....I don't normally work in this scale so it makes it more likely I will stick to a stock build--and I need to build box stock now and then to see if my basic skills are improving. Also I wanted to practice creating a vinyl roof, having never tried that before. This kit serves as a better test bed for this than a $45 resin body.

Things are progressing OK on the Superbee but I remain a bit unchallenged by a stock build and find myself at times a bit bored and impatient. I also see an awful lot of really, really good scale muscle car builds all over the place; the hobby forums are full of them, with one Revell 1:24 69 Superbee build better than the next. It seems some of the very best builders build lots of muscle cars. It's a bit intimidating.

However, I'm doing everything I can to keep boredom and intimidation out of my hobby life, so it's on to other things while I figure out what to do about the MPC Roadrunner situation.

So....I have been reading up on casting resin parts. As with so many other things these days, the Internet makes it all easy. Like the crazy world of polymer clays crafts: there is an entire Internet universe devoted to all aspects of casting--and this casting universe is totally and completely nuts. You can spend your entire life doing nothing but casting or for that matter just reading about casting; and of course being able to cast small and large items has 1001 uses to almost every hobby or craft as well as many professions.

So what am I waiting for? I got a "starter" resin casting kit from Alumilite and plucked some random parts out of the parts box to get some casting practice.

The Alumilite starter kit has everything needed to, well, get started. To do my first single mold casts I followed the how-to directions on the Aluminite site, combined with some reading on various casting forums.

For mold boxes I used some scrap plastic I had lying around; I didn't cover the seams very well on one of the mold boxes but thankfully not too much Silicon spoo bubbled out.

So here are the 2 pieces cast so far. The Halibrand type front wheel came out a lot better than I expected; I lost the master cylinder but the vacuum boost part came out really well. Overall, I did a lot better than I thought I would for a first effort--it was really pretty easy.

Next up: a two part mold--casting a turbocharger from a CART racer, a rare part that would be very useful for custom builds. Step one is to mold the "back" of the part, then flip the mold box, remove the clay, and create the mold for the front. Exactly how I am going to cut holes to get the resin down into this two part mold escapes me now, but maybe I will figure it out. Overall casting with 2 part molds looks to me to be exponentially more difficult, so I'm really not expecting much the first time out.

Aftermarket Vendor List!!!

2009-08-07T12:48:00.000-07:00

I am always forgetting where to find what in aftermarket land. Here is a running list of who I've used and what I know about them.

AFTERMARKET LISTINGS:
http://www.modelcarhub.com/bg-accessories.htm
http://www.socalcarculture.com/modelcarlinks.html
http://www.briansmodelcars.com/links

AFTER MARKET VENDORS:

SCALE EQUIPMENT LIMITED:
Neat stuff, Good and helpful service
http://seltd.net/ez-catalog/X344897/21
What they have: Excellent and realistic wheels/tires for musclecars and stocks, dioramma making stuff, "accessories" like scale burgers and doughnuts, hard to find resin goodies. Decals.

SLIXX:
Scale Decals!
http://www.slixx.com
Decals for historic and current drag cars and race cars (Gassers, dragsters, stockcars, etc) Some model kits, Black Gold brand paints, Competition resin Bodies and accessories. tools.

DIECAST AND DECALS:
http://www.diecastanddecals.com/
Custom waterslide decals made to customer's needs

THE PARTS BOX:
http://www.thepartsbox.com/
Australian but I have gotten stuff from them shipped in the US. Hot rod parts, bodies for European cars, stuff you can't find anywhere else.

MODEL CAR GARAGE:
Good source for photoetch. Other places sell MCG too. Discounts available if you're on their mailing list.
http://www.modelcargarage.com/
Photoetch; flocking; wiring; plumbing. Resin parts for things like flatheads and old engines.

LPSTECH:
http://www.lpstech.com/products.htm
Really good prewired distributors, valve covers, wheels/tires.

COMPETITION RESINS:
Great source of motorsports resin bodies and conversions.
http://www.compresins.com/
Resin bodies and parts; Slixx decals

HENDRIX RESIN:
Huge selection of Resin parts and bodies, mostly hot rods and oldies. Good prices.
http://www.resinrealm.net/Star/HendrixGallery/index.html

SCALE REPROS PLUS:
http://shop.scalereprosplus.ieasysite.com/default.aspx?categoryid=0
Engine parts: metal and resin: valve covers, funny car engines, magnetos, distibutors, oil pans. etc.

ALTERTED STATES MODELS:
http://www.alteredstatesmodels.com/
Resin Bodies and parts for old dragsters, gassers, and salt flat racers...interesting stuff.

SCALE DREAMS:
Great one stop shop; fast service
http://stores.scaledreams.com/StoreFront.bok
Most of Model Car Garage (Photo etch, resin parts), Detail Master's stuff (Engine details in resin, wire), Ross Gibson engines, Scale Repros stuff (turned aluminum parts, racing engines, good selection of valve covers; air cleaners, oil pans; distributors, trannies) Detail Master stuff (AN fittings, wiring, turned aluminum)

Strada Sports:
http://www.stradasportsstore.com/Model-Cars.html
Another one stop shop for aftermarket (as well as hard to find kits)
Emphasis on Motor Cycle and F1 type building: Shabo Transfer letting; Evergreen and plastruct plastic; KS metal, Ross Gibson engines, Jimmy Flintstone Resin, some Rep and Minitures of Maryland (F1 type stuff, not hot rod stuff), Model Car Specialities

DETAIL MASTER:
http://www.detailmaster.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=SFNT&Store_Code=detailmaster
Another One stop shop: They are best known for their own AN fittings and small resin parts, but they also carry: House of Kolor, Slixx, Ross Gibson Engines, Shabo lettering, BareMetal Foil, lots of others. Pricey, and constantly out of stock on some stuff they don't mfgr, it seems to me, but the AN fittings are cool....

JIMMY FLINTSTONE RESIN:
http://www.jimmyflintstonestudios.com/onlinestore/sunshop/index.php?l=product_list&c=3
Great selection of Resin bodies (mostly hot rods, oldies, customs) at very reasonable prices.

RESIN REALM:
http://www.resinrealm.net/-MCM/ResinList.html
50s era resin bodies: Fords, Chevys, Hudson, Desoto, Etc.

PRO TECH:
http://protechmodelparts.com/
Engine detail parts, tubing/wiring, Distributors, Magnetos, braided lines/AN fittings

DRAG CITY CASTING:
http://www.dragcitycasting.com/
Resin hoods, some valve covers, some wheels, some 60's era Gassers.

MORGAN AUTOMOTIVE DETAIL:
http://www.lpstech.com/products.htm
Prewired Distributors, Trannies, Valve covers, wheels, performance parts

RELIABLE RESIN:
http://www.reliableresin.com/products.html
Resin Funny Car Bodies, Gassers, Transkits, rivet decals\

KITCHEN TABLE RESINS:
http://public.fotki.com/KenK/kitchen_table_resin_kits/
Resin: Unusual engines

BANDIT RESINS:
http://www.banditresins.com/
Resin Bodies, parts, conversions.

RESILIENT RESINS
http://www.resilientresins.com/home.cfm
RESIN Bodies (1:24 and 1:32) of old race cars (Lotus,McClaren,Indy Cars, etc). Cool!

MISSING LINK:
http://www.missinglinkrc.com/Index.html
Resin Bodies, parts from the major mfgr's recast.

MODELHAUS:
http://www.modelhaus.com/
http://public.fotki.com/drasticplasticsmcc/1/2/1/after-market-source/modelhaus/
Huge assortment of spare parts cast from promos.

71 Plymouth Roadrunner--Caution--Vintage Build Ahead!!!

2009-08-05T15:00:00.001-07:00

Welcome back!! Chargers are done!! On to the next build!

I started this one while waiting for the Charger "Scrap Parts" build to dry....Bought on Ebay for about $45, it's a 1971 Plymouth Roadrunner as you can see. I always liked 71 Roadrunners and as far as I know this tooling hasn't been reissued in a really long time--say in the past 15-20 years? So it's a vintage kit....there's a common Revell 1971 (72?)GTX 1:24 kit around, but I don't build in 1:24 generally so here we are.

A few weeks ago I began working on the engine compartment, but the hood never really fit right, so sadly due to time constraints it's going to have the hood glued shut. But worse: to me the MPC 1:25 the body looks very little like the 1:1 car, as evident from the box art photo of the "actual model" compared to 1:1 pix I see on the web, like this cool 71 owned by the great Richard Carpenter. I mean come on--does the box art photo really look like a 71 Roadrunner? The stance is close but not quite right, and the general squareness of the 1:25 stock build makes it look like, well, I don't know what, but not a 71 Roadrunner.

Another big issue is the chrome grille/bumper that came with the 71 MPC kit. The bumper is the wrong shape and the headlights are too small and incorrectly positioned. So I got a 71 NASCAR Roadrunner resin body from Competition Resins and stole the bumper/grille off that--that's the whiteish thing on the bottom of the photo. To me, the resin bumper looks more like the 1:1 bumper, which is good! I am going to have to do some surgery this still, for sure, but it'll be easier than scratchbuilding the whole thing or trying to hack up the MPC bumper/grille to make it look better. To this end I am going to try to make a resin copy of of the resin copy...I don't want to work on the original if possible--it was expensive....and then see what I can do....this will be my first attempt at casting....we will see how it comes out.

So here's what I have so far. With the resin grille in place it looks decent--doesn't have some of the sexy organic lines of the 1:1 car but it's close. I took a file to the really sharp edges to the fenders....add some cool wheels/tires, a 70's era beam-me-up-Scotty-interior, etc., and we'll have a pretty good looking car...hopefully!

69 Charger Scrapper-FINISHED!

2009-07-30T10:25:00.001-07:00

Time to wrap up the 69 Dodge Charger street racer built out of parts leftover from the Vintage Charger 500 build....It was a race to the finish, but I really wanted to get this build done by the end of the month....and I did. The results came out pretty good....my wife said she liked the blue and gold colors and the stance. The paint finish is a bit ratty again--I rushed through the polish stage in an effort to get this done by the end of the month--but I doubt a 1:1 match racer would have a really mirror finish to it. Overall it was a fun build and did bring back the spirit of the good old days, way back when, building models with my brothers.

The only tough part finishing this was dealing with the rear wing. It came off a AMT/Ertl 71 Charger. Getting the wing to sit straight and situated correctly on the trunk lid turned out to be more work than I anticipated. The 71 AMT Charger was purchased as a donor for the next build (a vintage 1:25 71 Roadrunner, which I already started). To make matter much worse, wing-wise, I dropped one of my photography lights on the model right before this photo shoot and the wing broke off! So it had to be reattached!

But that's what glue is for right? Anyway this was very quick build--only a few weeks from start to finish--especially considering that the interior and engine compartment was scratch built. And how busy I am doing other non-model-making things right noiw. The alacrity of this build makes up for 6 months of pain and suffering to build the Vintage Charger 500!!!

The hood doesn't hinge or come off in a clever way--again something I did to speed up the build. I will probably display this "hood off". More finish problems: some of the decals on the hood rippled up after a week or so of gassing out--maybe some sort of interaction with the Future Floor Polish? But it's not that noticeable.

Overall I might not be getting better at custom builds but I am getting faster!

The engine compartment was detailed out with craft wire and very small diameter plastic rod bent into shape. I paid little attention to how realistic things are in terms of 1:1 function. I don't even know what some of the parts I bolted to the firewall are supposed to do, not knowing that much about cars. I just put them on because I thought they'd look good, which is exactly what I did 35 odd years ago. As I see it there's nothing wrong with any of it.

So next is yet another Mopar. A 1:25 Early 70's Roadrunner or GTX seems to be a vintage model kit holy grail of sorts--I see promos going on Ebay for $100!! When is someone going to reissue this bad boy? Anyway I already prepped the body of a 71 Roadrunner (bought on Ebay, yes....) already have some primer on it and have the donor kit open, which I am already pilfering. So I am committed, but am still looking around for other ways to get this next build done.

69 Charger Scrapper--Decals and Clearcoat

2009-07-19T07:46:00.001-07:00

I'm almost finished with a 1:25 scale 69 Dodge Charger street racer built out of spare parts....

I realized as I was applying the decals from Slixx that it's been almost 35 years, maybe more, since I've applied a lot of decals to a scale model. Growing up we'd put decals on everything we built, and it seemed easy, but now years later it doesn't seem as easy as it was back then.

I am not sure why--perhaps I am just pickier now about how it comes out, and maybe that's not the best thing.

It was helpful to use Badger "Model Flex" Decal Setting Solution and Decal Softening Solution. I discovered these during the 32 Texas Old School Hot Rod build...the first helps the decal stick and the second helps it conform to the tricky curves and whatnot. I found (once again) that's it's dangerous to overdo the application of solset and solsoft--the decals will crack and split. Also a good tip is to apply solset and solsoft alphabetical order--because it's a very bad idea to start with the softener, doing so will pretty much destroy the decal every time; it did for me anyway.

Afraid of melting the decals with lacquer or enamel clearcoats, I once again chose Future Floor Polish ("Pledge with Future Shine") as the clearcoat for this build, so I brushed on in 2 heavy coats 8 hours apart.

A major breakthrough was the clearcoat/solvent relationship between Future and another household product: Windex glass cleaner. Last build I had issues with Future whitening and pooling up in certain tight spaces on the body. On the 69 Charger 500 build I sanded out the Future goo and tried to live with it. It turns out Windex is the perfect solvent to get rid a build of Future clearcoat problems, and it doesn't wreck the lacquer color coats below. So if the Future acrylic goes wrong (dries cloudy, dries white, won't dry no matter what, pools up and looks ugly, and so on) just spray or brush the affected area with Windex, wipe if off with a lint free cloth, let it dry, reapply the Future polish and keep going. I had to redo the "hood scoops" because Future pooled up in them and dried white, so I removed about small section of clearcoat with Windex and reapplied Future just over the area. You could never tell I touched up the clearcoat. If only everything else was like that!

69 Charger Scrapper--Paint, and the Next Build

2009-07-04T11:29:00.001-07:00

The "hot" 69 Charger, built up out of scrap and left over parts continues....

This week I thought a lot about what paint scheme would look good. I wanted something retro looking, but not "stock". I had some Duplicolor royal blue and gold mist lacquers around....

After taping off with Tamiya tape, I came up with a simple two tone scheme. So far, so good. But I am usually impatient when it comes to applying the Bare Metal Foil, decal, polish and what not. This time the lacquer is going to gas out for at least a week before I continue.

In the meantime I am starting the next stock Mopar build. For this I purchased an MPC/Ertl Roadrunner kit on Ebay for about $40. But is it "safe?" The last "vintage" stock build, a 69 Charger 500, took nearly 6 months to complete and was fraught with fear and loathing from warped rooflines, clearcoat eating through the color coat and front grilles that didn't fit; in general, a much harder and more time consuming build than expected. So let's see if this one takes as long--and if I learn from my mistakes.

As far as the kit (MPC/Ertl 6282--there is no reissue I know of that can be purchased new, and Revell's offering is a GTX in 1:24 scale, not a 1:25 Roadrunner): it was in good condition, unbuilt except for the engine which someone had started; the body was in good shape; like the Charger 500 build I'm going to steal the engine and other critical components from more recently tooled, better detailed Mopar kits....

The 71 Dodge Charger (#30053) is such an offering from AMT/Ertl. What a difference in detail between modern tooling of the 71 Charger and the older Plymouth kit! I got this from Ebay as well for about $15; I am pretty sure it's not that hard to find elsewhere if you look around.

Repeating the same process I used to spice up the 69 Charger 500's engine compartment, I hacked the inner fender walls from the '71 Charger and grafted it into the older kit....

It's not that hard a process to do...surprising easily actually.....I finished off the engine compartment "sheetmetal" using sheet styrene shims and thick superglue to fill some of the gaps.

Getting the hood to stay up was tricky. I tried supergluing styrene posts to the hood and then shoving the posts into enlarged holes in the firewall, only to find that there was no friction to hold the hood up--the hood would slide back down and shut every time! I needed to cut ridges into the posts, but at first I couldn't figure out how to do this. After some thought I came up with a solution: I softened up the styrene posts with plastic weld and then with the plastic soft and I pressed a scored piece of metal onto it. This left ridges in the soft plastic, and when the glue dried I had a sort of plastic ratchet. Now the hood stays up due to the ridges on the posts. I am probably going to display this hood up, so having the hood stay up isn't a bad thing!

Paint for this will be from scalefinishes.com. I want to see how their paint compares to MCW's, especially the clearcoat. I will probably have a chance to paint the 71 Roadrunner before turning back to the Charger "scrapper" so stay tuned....

69 Charger Scrapper--New Glues, New Paints

2009-06-27T20:24:00.000-07:00

It's been a busy couple of weeks but I still have some time at the bench I'm happy to say. This time I'm continuing to build a scale 69 Charger using scrap parts left over from last month's 69 Vintage Charger 500 Build.

Since I've started up this hobby again I've read about the wonders of using superglue (or "CA glue", or "cyanoacrylate") to bond dissimilar materials together like styrene and craft wiring. But I've not had great results using CA to date. The pictured Pacer ZAP CA glue is what I've used for the past year or so since it's the only brand my local hobby shop carries. Results have been OK for some things: I used ZAP CA and CA accelator to build up the seats of the 32 Texas Old Skool Rod, and the ZAP CA and baking soda to craft the retro floor board for the 55 Chevy Gasser.

However beyond that ZAP CA seemed too runny to be very useful--it's the consistency of water. So for "normal gluing"--engine wiring details for instance--it flowed off the part and stuck to everything else (like, the workbench, or my fingers).

But reading the hobby mags and whatnot, others aren't having this issue. So what gives?

Turns out I was using the wrong glue for the job. CA's aren't all the same when it comes to viscosity. I ended up trying the super thick CA glue from HobbyLinc.com and unlike The ZAP CA offering it's super thick and stays in one place, like Devcon Epoxy or other traditional hobby glues. Perfect!

So here's the Charger Scrapper engine so far. The engine block, exhaust pipes and valve covers for the scrap parts 69 Charger comes from Revell's 67 Dodge Charger 2 n 1 85-7669 but the rest is from the parts box.

It was a lot of fun digging through the parts box looking for cool engine parts I could use; The intake manifold was scratch built from styrene rod; the magneto came from the AMT BluePrint Parts pack; the carbs are out of from the MPC 32 Ford Switchers kit I used for the 32 Ford Highboy build way back when....but other things like the fan belt and pully assembly--no idea where that came from.

I painted the belt assembly with Alclad II and then detailed the belts with Floquil Engine Black.....lots of fun!

So let's talk wheels and tires.....turns out the MPC 69 Charger 500 has great racing tires and mags....I am finding that some of the older kits might not have the incredible detail and high parts counts that the newer computer-mastered kits have, but MPC's craftmen way back then knew how to create parts that looked great for sure. The rear mags are so deep....not realistic, rather bigger than life; and these optional "2-n-1" parts were treasured by my brothers and me as key additions to our scrap box builds...."cool!"

The MPC tires have nice raised lettering and offer an opportunity work on my "dry brushing" technique, such as it is. The idea is to put paint on a brush, brush out most of the paint, then lightly dust the brush over and over on whatever raised surface you want detailed.

It's not really that easy. I never really got dry brushing to work using acrylic paints like Tamiya flat white--it either ran (too much paint) or stuck to the brush (not enough paint).

I was at the office supply store and found these Elmers "Painters" paint pens so I bought a few. I hoped I could pen the white ink onto the tires, but that didn't work--it made a mess. So I removed the paint with enamel paint thinner. BTW I also discovered the Testors enamel effectively thinner removes Tamiya brush acrylics, better than isopropyl alchohol which I didn't know.

Next I put a blob of the white paint onto a yellow piece of styrene as you see here, then used a small flat brush to dry brush. It worked a lot better! These "Painters" pens seem to have paint that is the perfect consistency for dry brushing. The raised GOODYEAR letters on the MPC tires were done this way. I don't think the guys at Elmers planned on end users using their products like this but I have a feeling they won't mind.

69 Charger Redeux--Interior

2009-06-19T14:02:00.000-07:00

The story so far: to revisit the "scrap box builds" of yesteryear I'm building up a 69 Charger out of left over parts from the 69 Charger 500 Vintage Build and whatever else I have in my parts bin.

As long as I am throwing parts box parts together I figured it might be a good time to experiment with new metal finishes....so from Hobbylinc I got a few rattle cans of Testor's Metalizer.

As you've seen in other posts I usually use Alclad2 for metalizing, but Testors stuff is popular as well so I figure it's worth a try....it comes in a rattle can which means not having to clean the airbrush every time!

The metalizer line didn't make a lot of sense to me at first--there's buffing, non-buffing, buffing sealers, non buffing sealers....hello? But it's easy. For the buffing varieties, you lay on the paint (no need for gloss black undercoat!) then once dry you "buff" it with a cotton swab to bring out the metal look. Non buffing is even easier: just spray, dry, and go. The sealer keeps the metal paint from coming off once applied.

The 69 Charger scratch built firewall and engine compartment were my first attempt at using the Testors Metalizers. So is it better than Alclad? I don't know. It's a quicker application process, and the buffing step indeed brings out a decent metal look. And, I didn't try the non buffing variety. However the sealer to me seemed to dull things a bit and without some kind of sealer Metalizer seems fragile--I scraped off some with a q-tip while trying to buff gently....and overall it doesn't seem quite as convincing as Alclad. I need to experiment more but at this point I see myself sticking with Alclad2.

The fun doesn't end. I was in Target with my wife and, bored out of my mind while she compared the features (?) of every single suntan lotion ever made, found a huge selection of nail polish on the next aisle. I have read that Nail polish, like some of the other goodies you find in the cosmetics department, has an established place in our odd hobby. Target had a lot of choices: wacky nail colors everywhere, in all shapes and sizes of bottles. I ended up getting a crazy electric grape and bright metalflake green from "Nicole by OPI". Very cool. But they weren't that cheap--$7.50 for each, and that's at Target (the good stuff costs!! says the wife). But you get a lot of paint in a small bottle--to airbrush it I'd need to thin it at least 2:1 thinner to paint, so it's going to go a long way.

I had this vision of the nail polish lacquer melting any plastic it was applied to, so I ended up laying down some Bare Metal Foil over the seats, applied a generous coat of crazy grape Nicole nail polish, and then trimming the foil. It was another one of those things that took about 2 minutes and ended up looking pretty good!

The rest of the interior treatment was standard stuff. I used my favorite flat black for some of it--Tamiya TS-6 Matt Black. Floquil Conrail Blue was used for some of the trim, and a host of Tamiya acrylics elsewhere. The seat belts are not very realistic, coming out of some unknown AMT kit, but it's just the thing I would have used for a 1970 parts box build up 39 years ago so it seemed appropriate here.

69 Charger Part Deux--The "Scrapper Mentality" Lives.....

2009-05-30T08:29:00.000-07:00

After my on again, off again struggle building a "factory accurate" model of the rare 1969 Dodge Charger 500, it was time for a change. But what about all the left over parts? I had a big box full--some from the original "Vintage Charger 500 MPC Kit", others from the spare Vintage MPC kit, bits from an AMT/ERTL Charger Daytona, plus a donor Revell Charger R/T Donor kit....yep, I had a lot of '69 Charger parts on hand!!!

I would normally just throw these into my parts bins. But! Frustrated with how long the stock build went, I realized it was time to build a "scrapper."

So what is a "scrapper"? Back when dinosaurs still roamed the earth my brothers and I would gather in the family basement, collect any scrap parts we had left over from whatever we were building, mix in things cannibalized from models we wanted to get rid of, add parts from what I recall was a truly amazing parts box of bizarre model car goodies, and build something up fast, fast, fast that was cool, cool, cool. Usually our end result was something with big rear tires and a big V8 motor, with blower of course, the product of the "Inner Hot Wheels" mentality common to many 10 to 12 year old boys.

I realized I hadn't built anything like this in many a decade, and that much of my inexplicable return to model car building is attempt to recapture innocent and simpler times. So a scrapper it must be.

My adult take on the Dodge redeux is a bit more refined, a tiny bit anyway, and maybe that's not so good, but, like it or not, I couldn't bring myself to only use scrap parts for the build....so I started to craft parts from scratch like the inner fender wells and radiator for my Dodge Scrapper about 4 days ago.

The stock interior tub would never due ("too wimpy" my older brother would say back in 1968, as he hacked the crap up out of whatever he was working on with his dremel tool), so I sawed out the guts of the tub and put in a scratch built floor and brass plate where the back seat was.

Man that firewall has got to go too. "Too wimpy"!!! I made a template for a new more macho firewall from card stock and transferred it to .010 plastic. Most gluing was done with CA (which we never had back in the day) and Tenax 7R type plastic weld (ditto). The bolts--bolts never look wimpy--were small styrene rod shoved through 000 type drilled holes and cut off with a sprue cutter. Yes it's more refined, but at least everything was done fast, fast, fast.

The dashboard also got de-wimpified. It has a way to go but the basics are starting to shape up. I could try to Master-Modellerize this scratch build, but that's not the scrapper mentality. It's getting close as-is.

The chassis is one piece, as the Charger is older tooling and a lot of the details are molded in. Thankfully it doesn't have the exhaust molded in, as that would take a lot of time to neatly remove.

This is the Dodge Hemi block I should have used on the Stock build, very nicely tooled, it comes from the....

....extremely cool Revell 1967 Charger kit #85-7669. There are all sorts of good parts in this kit for anyone building a 60's era Hemi Dodge. And that's the good thing about building an adult scrapper--now I have $15 in my pocket to impulsively buy kits like this one at the local hobby store. Back then it was $2 a kit, but it might as well have been $1000, since I almost never had money to buy that kit I really needed....and yes, I miss those rainy days in the basement with my brothers.

69 Charger 500--Finished at Last!!!

2009-05-25T07:46:00.000-07:00

At Last!! It's time to wrap up the "MPC Charger 500" Vintage Build! It defies belief that what should have been a simple 2-3 week project turned into 5 months of spills, accidents, and glue blobs! This was the most jinked build I have ever done....wrecking the paint with the wrong clearcoat turned out to just be the beginning of my problems....

One of the main issues was that the front grille simply didn't fit into the body provided--the body was too wide for the "Coronet" grille. When I was trying to repair this I carelessly glooped some G-S Hypo Cement on to drivers side front fender. Out came the isopropyl to remove it right? BAD IDEA! The alcohol ate through a bit of the Future Floor Polish clearcoat! Now one of the front fenders is less shiny then the other....and you can see the yucky shim I ended up putting next to the front grill/bumper to hold it to the body. There are other drips and runs here and there with the clearcoat if you look carefully. I guess I didn't have the energy to spend more weeks on getting the clearcoat and polish just right. Oh well.

I am going to display this build "hood up" since the engine compartment ended up looking pretty good. But the engine had its fair share of issues as well. For instance, I had a heck of a time getting the "426 Hemi" decal onto the air cleaner. I ended up buying 4 sets from Keith Marks Graphics and that's a good thing, because it took 4 of the Hemi decals to get the air cleaner looking OK. And I learned something else: when applying decals on engine parts, put the decal on when the part AFTER it is in place, not before. Doh! I ended up doing a good job getting decal #3 onto the air cleaner, only to destoy it when I put the aircleaner on the engine.

As long as we're talking engines--I spent a fair amount of time trying to "modernize" the old-school tooling of the hemi, and, the air cleaner was treated with Alclad to make it look chrome. Turns out none of this was necessary--Revell has a much better tooled Dodge Hemi (with a great looking Hemi-style chrome air cleaner) in the 67 Dodge Charger 426 Kit, # 85-7669. Lesson learned: before spending a lot of time on modifying something, make I need make sure it isn't already out there in "box stock" form! As it is the air cleaner looks like it is a plastic bit painted silver!!!

The rear bumper didn't fit either--I ended up having to carve out the rear valance, push the bumper in place(no glue needed; it was a tight squeeze) and then touch up aroud the bumper with hemi orange MCW paint....I know I've said this before, but I need to spend more time test fitting before I paint. I assumed the rear bumper would fit--it looked like it would...but "when you assume".....

In spite of all the issues I had with this build, it's not a bad looking build, and IMO the MPC tooling of the body looks more "long and lean" than some more current offerings, like the "Revell Muscle!" Dodge Charger from Revell #85-2824.

So I am thinking, what next?

I am tempted to jettison the whole "muscle car accurate build" thing and go back to hot rods, which can pretty much be built anyway I want. But there is a lot to be learned from builds like this, so I think a few more are in store, soon.

69 Charger 500--MCW Lacquer Finish, Back to Square One

2009-05-13T18:55:00.001-07:00

One thing about a hobby Blog, you can tell how long you've been working on a project by when you started the first Blog entry about it. For this given build, it's been way, way too long. What I naively thought would be a few weeks on an almost box stock "vintage" build has turned into more than five months (!!!) of hard work and much fear and loathing. Part of it because of travel, part because of the holidays, part because of a destroyed paint job....

Ah yes, destroyed paint. As I said a few weeks ago, due to an incompatible clearcoat, my MCW lacquer paint job was ruined; the 69 Charger body had to be stripped of paint using EasyOff Oven Cleaner, and I had to start over with the paint and body prep from square one. After several days in a Tupperware tub the old paint finally came off, but I also found that some of the putty repairs I made to sinkmarks and whatnot came off too and had to be redone, like on the hood.

It almost got me to abandon the project--all the careful work I did filling this and that casting imperfection were gone along with the paint. So I did the putty work over, as well as the Keith Marks decals, the Bare Metal Foil, the MCW paint.

Did I do as good a job the 2nd time? Nope.

MCW clearcoat was what I was going to use to seal up the lacquer color but I didn't like the way it looked after a few coats--it didn't go on smooth, in fact quite the opposite, and was not shiny at all. Not sure what happened--what I did wrong--wrong settings in my airbrush? Wrong pressure on my new compressor? Don't know....I ended up sanding it down, putting on a few more color coats of MCW Hemi Orange and calling it a day for color coats.

I was going to use Tamiya TS13 lacquer clearcoat, but after much reading online about Tamiya clearcoats, I figured there was a chance the lacquer on lacquer could destroy the decals (maybe), crack and craze and split after 6 months of drying(maybe) and even react adversely with the MCW lacquer color coats (maybe). In the end I resorted to "Future Floor Polish" Acrylic covering, which is a trusty standby that I have used a few times for other builds such as the Texas Old School Rod.

I have never seen it react badly with any paint, provided the color coat was really, really dry. I brushed on a thick coat (Brushing looks better to me than airbrushing--it's self levelling and brushing gets a nice heavy coat) and after 8 hours put on a second coat. Now I can see the end of the tunnel on this build! But I said that before!

So here's what I have so far. Have I been here before? Yes. has it all been worth it? Maybe. I do this to relax and get my mind off of other things. But that doesn't account for my wife yelling at me for getting EasyOff on the lawn, or having to buy paint and decals (again) and redoing the body prep work (again) and priming and painting (again) and clearcoating (again). But is it fun? Does it make me happy? Yes, building these silly bits out of plastic and metal, that mean so little in the grand scheme of things, still does that.

69 Charger 500--Still Being Stripped--So in the Meantime....Starbird Chevy!!!

2009-04-25T14:54:00.001-07:00

I've been on the road again and the bad news is that the 69 Charger body, whose lacquer paint was destroyed by using an incompatible clearcoat, still isn't stripped. I've now applied 3 coats of Easy-Off, and for the most part the stripper is working. What started as a relatively easy almost box stock build has turned into the project that won't end.

Like everything else on the Charger 500 build, the paint stripping is going slowly! Nothing much happened after the first 2 coats of Easy Off. After coat 3, to my surprise, the paint didn't flake off; instead the Easy Off seemed to attack whatever binds the paint to the plastic. About 90% of the paint peeled off like a skin off a grape. Whatever works I guess. But there is still 10% that refuses to come off, so I just started Easy Off coat 4 last night.

So as not to sit around and "watch paint dry" (actually, watch paint be removed) it's on to another project I had shelved. As I said last time, one of the backburner projects I'm working on now is an attempt to marry a 55 Chevy with a Bubble Top custom, in the hopes to come up with some sort of scale Darryl Starbird type custom.

The 55 Chevy donor is an AMT body that "lost out" to the Revell 55 Chevy in the 55 Chevy Gasser build. I didn't like the roofline on the AMT body so it seemed like a good candidate for a roof conversion.

The bubbletop donor kit is the AMT Silhouette #38450. This is a kit that I built at least 3 times as a kid--always liked it.

I didn't do the greatest job marrying the plastic together, and there were big holes that I filled with strip styrene and CA glue/baking soda. Next I went against common wisdom--that you should use as little putty as possible--and covered the whole thing with Evercoat Eurosoft. So as you can see, the body is lousy with putty--putty on nearly every surface--putty everywhere.

Eurosoft is great stuff for what we do. I think it was made for filling plastic bumpers on 1:1 cars, but it's great heavy-duty putty for scale applications as well: it mixes up fast, dries fast, sticks to plastic like no one's business, and is easily filed and sanded without chipping off.

Next I attacked the putty-laden body with 150 grit sandpaper and a 200 grit Dremel wheel, to get the really big chunks off. Then I sanded using 400 grit wet and dry and the "foam block technique". This left some pits and ruts--using 400 grit on putty seems to usually do this.

To fill in the ruts I applied Tamiya basic putty and, once on the body, painted over the putty blobs with Testor's liquid cement. Like the Eurosoft putty application, this totally stunk up the house, and I imagine is toxic as all get out, so I wore a respirator when applying this, and you should too, if you ever work with these materials.

The last secret weapon in this is Duplicolor Filler-Primer. This is sort of like super thin putty you can spray all over the body, filling in minor scratches and whatnot. I wouldn't spray it on a body with details that need to be preserved, but for this sort of project it's perfect. After the putty and liquid cement was sanded out, I put on a heavy coat, to the point where it ran. It's OK, it needs to be sanded anyway.

So here's what I have so far. This is after 1 round of Evercoat, 1 round of putty and 1 really thick coat of Duplicolor filler, with plenty of 150 and 400 grit sanding between and after. I have a custom body that's not looking too bad. It's not done obviously, but at this point it looks to me like the body is going to make it to a chassis someday. It was so rough looking after the initial Evercoat application I wasn't sure if it was going to make it this far!

69 Charger 500--Still on Hold

2009-04-12T10:17:00.001-07:00

I have been out of town for the past 2 weeks on business....I thought I could visit some cool hobby shops while on the East Coast but no dice. In the meantime, the 69 Charger project was languishing back here in California.

As I said last time, a clearcoat disaster means I have to strip the paint off the 69 Charger 500 and start over. After a bit of research I have found that Easy Off Oven Cleaner is supposed to be a good bet....but does it remove lacquer? Maybe and maybe not, but I'm on day 3 and the 3rd application of this stinky stuff and so far not a lot of paint has come off. I have also heard dot-3 brake fluid (Dot-2 is best but isn't made anymore) works as well. If the Easy Off continues to be Not-So-Easy-Off I may need to resort to Brake Fluid next.

So while the Charger body is sitting in Tupperware getting stink-i-fied by Easy Off, I figured it'd be a good time to take an inventory of other projects I've been working on that are on hold now. First up is a 5 window 32 Ford that was chopped; the rear section is from a 36 Ford 1/24th scale; and the headlights are from the AMT Wagon Rod #30087 which I bought off Ebay for something like $3. I chopped the headlights right off the Wagon Rod's fenders and epoxied them to what you see here. I have a chassis already built for it, and am debating a using a Buick Nailhead engine versus something kitbashed from various Revell Packs. Sanding it was taking forever, so I shelved it, but now that I've learned the trick of making a sanding block out of foam rubber I'm back in business.

Second up is a project inspired by the cool stuff done by Bill Stillwagon; a 51 Chevy curbside that's been made into a hardtop. If you want to see an awesome builder, go to his site--his stuff is the coolest! Anyway, the 51 Chevy was shelved because I wasn't sure how get the sanding done. A chassis/wheel setup is already built for this; I was going to put some sort of cool engine in but couldn't get the hinged hood to sit right so it's going to be a curbside.

My most ambitious project to date--this is pretty experimental for me--is a marriage between an AMT 55 Chevy body and the AMT Silhouette #38450. This is a sort of oil-and-water amalgam of different kits and as you can see is made up of way too much Evercoat polyester putty. No idea if it will ever come out, but I thought it'd be good practice to see how far I can stretch the polyester putty thing.

Finally the 6" chop on a 32 Ford Sedan. This is the "Orange Crate" look. I have already finished a 32 Sedan chopped dragster, but I thought it'd be fun to revisit the Orange Crate idea for a street car or maybe a salt flats racer. Not sure where this is going yet, and the chop is a bit fragile, so this one will be a lot of work to finish up.

It's tempting to jettison the 69 charger since the loss of the paint, but, I want to stay focused. The 69 Charger has made me realize that I like customizing a lot more than making knock offs of "showroom model" type cars, even though I love old Mopars. But there is only so much time, and many ideas to chase down--I was going to build 3 stock Mopars--the Charger 500, a Roadrunner, and a '71 Charger R/T, but at this point that seems unlikely. The next build will probably be another custom of some sort.

69 Charger 500--Disaster Strikes!

2009-03-28T16:55:00.000-07:00

I was counting the days before the 69 Charger "Vintage MPC" build was done--but no longer. It's been one of the saddest days during the brief rebirth of this stupid hobby, and the bad news is that I've lost the otherwise great paint to some sort of issue with the clearcoat process.

As I said last time I was painting the body with MCW Hemi Orange, and it was looking good--in fact, the smoothest and most orange-peel free paint job I had yet done. There were a few chips in the engine compartment from the hood being test fitted, but otherwise, it was looking very good.

The problems began when I applied about the fourth coat of Krylon Crystal Clear. It's acrylic coating, so the label says, and I would assume that that means there should be little or no interaction with the underlying lacquer paint. Adding to this false sense of security: I have this used same clear coat over many Duplicolor Lacquer finishes without incident. And it was OK for the first 3 coats. So it should be OK to use over MCW lacquer every time, right?

Wrong. During clear coat pass number four a huge series of bubbles and orange peel welts welled up on the passenger side roof.

I tried to wet sand the bad spot with 2000 sandpaper--figuring maybe the extreme orange peel could be fixed with polish somehow. To make a long story short the entire paint job, all the way down to the primer and beyond, came up when I tried to sand it. So I had a catastrophic failure of paint adhesion here. What you see here is what's left--the paint literally got stripped down to the raw plastic.

I have no idea what happened or why, but I had already applied the bare metal foil--which came out pretty well, the Keith Marks decals (didn't do a perfect job, but it was going to be good enough) and painted in the side turn signals. In other words, in addition to the paint itself, there was a lot of time and effort put into this part of the build before disaster struck.

This is a major setback--I am now thinking I am going to have to strip the paint and start the entire paint process over--I can't see any other way to save this thing.

One thing for sure: I am going to do more research as to what sort of clearcoat works best over MCW paints and not assume every acrylic will be inert over every lacquer.

'69 Charger 500--MCW Paint

2009-03-22T17:45:00.001-07:00

After a few weeks of humid and wet weather things are finally clearing up. I figured I could try the paint on the 69 Charger 500 model without too much fear of the humidity causing the paint to "cloud over".

As I said last time, after some online research it seems that an outfit called Model Car World is where all the serious builders go to get their factory-perfect colors. Their website has an almost bewildering choice of paints....I played it safe and chose Hemi Orange since most of the 1:1 photos I have are of a red/orange Charger 500, so I figure this color to be accurate.

It took a few weeks to get the paint, but when the bottles arrived I was happy....the Hemi Orange looked perfect when compared to photos of 1:1 69 Chargers.

My standard rig for painting bodies is a Testors "Clear Blue" compressor, which is on loan from a friend, and a Badger Model 200 airbrush. I have to give the loaner back so I bought an expensive compressor but it hasn't arrived yet--next paint job though we'll see if the added advantage of a moisture trap and adjustable output help.

The Badger Model 200 is single action, so it's not a good choice for anything tricky, but for painting bodies it gets the job done, and is relatively easy to use and clean compared to my double action airbrush.

I was surprised that the MCW paint is hobby lacquer--I assumed it was acrylic based but it isn't. It is prethinned, and for me the paint went on perfectly without any sort of thinning or futzing necessary--just load up the brush and shoot. After each coat I ran a bowl of lacquer thinner (Ace's cheapo high-test lacquer thinner--I have read that I need "quality" lacquer thinners for good results, but so far I haven't seen any difference--and besides, I am just using it to clean things, not to thin the paint). After 2 color coats I broke down the airbrush for a quick clean, then reassembled and kept spraying. I had no issues with clogging, which I attribute to the paint being correctly thinned and repetitive cleaning of the brush.

I applied 6 color coats--the MCW site says not to use mist coats, so I didn't. I let each color coat dry for about 10 minutes then lightly sanded out any imperfections with dry 1200 grit sandpaper. It's always a bit scary to scratch a freshly applied coat, but I have found that lightly dry sanding between lacquer color coats doesn't hurt anything. The paint has surprisingly small amounts of orange peel, compared to say Duplicolor or even Tamiya lacquer, and it self-healed surprising well, spreading itself around and "deblotching" to a certain degree. Another thing I learned (or "re-learned"--I already discovered this but had already forgotten....): that for ALL spray painting, ALWAYS start the spray stroke while NOT pointing the can or airbrush directly at the subject you're painting! This seems rudimentary--since that first shot almost always leaves runs and blobs of paint--but somehow I always find myself forgotting this simple rule.

In spite of some minor issues along the way, the result is, so far, the best/smoothest paint job I've done yet. Some of the paint in the engine compartment chipped a bit when I test fitted the hood, but I can probably touch this up without too much trouble. And the orange does look like the right orange. Yes indeed--MCW rules!

69 Charger 500--More from the Mopar Basement

2009-03-08T13:42:00.000-07:00

The wife has been out of town for 5 weeks so that should make a perfect month to build, right? But for some reason I can't drag myself down the basement very often. Maybe I'm missing her too much?

So when I do make it to the basement I have been working prepping the body of an MPC "Vintage" 69 Charger 500....and it turns out the body needs a lot of work. Along with the older tooling comes sink marks, mold lines, and various bugaboos that need repair and TLC. Newer kits have these problems too, in my limited experience, but not as much as I am seeing here. Fixing up minor sink marks isn't hard but is time consuming. To get rid of the sink marks I used Tamiya Basic putty, followed by wet sanding with 600 grit, then a second coat of putty followed by 1200 grit. That seems to leave things flat and pit-free.

Only after dropping on the primer can I start too see more little problems. There are still a couple of sink marks on the hood that I missed the first time around, and of the 3 Ertl Charger kits I got for this project this hood was the best one! I glooped on a bit more putty after I grafted on the hood mounting "hardware" from the Revell Daytona Kit #85-2824. To thin out the putty a bit--making it flow better into the sink marks--I applied Testors Liquid cement right over the freshly applied putty. Right now the hood opens fine without having to alter the already modified interior/firewall/dashboard. I got lucky on this, since I decided I would put the hinges into place and prime them, and only then figure out how to make the hood swing open. This sort of pre-planning is critical usually; I just went for it and it worked.

I still have to put in some support towards the front of the hood so it doesn't sag, but that shouldn't be too difficult.

I wanted to find some "dog dish" wheels for this build, since they look great on the 1:1 reference photos, but I couldn't find any online so I gave up and went back to the kit's wheels.

I don't know if I like these older kits better than the new ones. On older kits there are far fewer parts, which makes assembly easier but painting harder. The exhaust/differential/springs has to be masked and painted with different metallics and flats to give me the look I want....

It will be body-paint-time before too long....after some research, it seems that MCW is the place to go to get good matches for 1:1 manufacturer's paint. Their prices are reasonable--$12 for 2 fl ounces of Hemi Orange seems like a fair price to me and to my eyes the color looks perfect.

The last problem is decals. Turns out the decals supplied with the MPC kit aren't correct--the 1:1 stripe goes over the rear side lights and what MPC supplied doesn't. This left me in a quandry--do I try to make "correct" decals myself? Do I use the MPC decals that look OK but that I know are almost certainly "wrong"? Making the replacement decals myself is beyond what I am skilled enough to do, probably, and if I use "wrong" ones it will bother me every time I see the finished model. So what to do?

Turns out there is a guy named Keith Marks who makes an aftermarket decal set for the Charger 500 that looks perfect. I dropped him an email to see if he can sell me some and haven't heard back yet. I hope he's still out there!!!

"Vintage" 69 Charger 500--Engine Compartment

2009-02-22T08:55:00.001-08:00

I haven't had a lot of time to work on hobbies this week but have been thinking about this build more than I should.....it's been bugging me that the way MPC tooled the engine compartment of the 69 Charger 500 looks nothing like the reference photos I have been using.

The engine compartment out of the Revell #85-2824 Charger kit doesn't look quite right either but it's closer, so I decided to chop the engine compartment out of the latter.

I have seen this done in hobby magazines but haven't done this myself, until now. I chopped up the body of the Revell kit....

...using a razor saw and the back end of a hobby knife I cut up all the pieces I would need.....

....and using Tenax7R glued the bits into the Vintage Charger body. It fit remarkably well--no need for any sort of putty or filler, really.

The firewall from the MPC kit didn't look that good with the rest of the new engine compartment so I dropped the Revell kit's in. Fits perfectly!

This whole process was a cause for much fear and loathing throughout the week--I was afraid of screwing this up and it taking all day to transfer the engine compartment from Revell kit to MPC. Turns out it was really easy and only took a few minutes. Which makes me wonder--why ever worry or be fearful about any of this????

69 Charger 500s--Breeding Like Rabbits

2009-02-15T14:38:00.001-08:00

On a quest to find 1:1 Charger 500 facts my brother had me contact a 1:1 Charger 500 expert. Turns out this guy doesn't build models--he wants the girls to actually date him I guess--but being a 1:1 Charger nut and apparently owning everything Charger he had the same vintage MPC kit, unbuilt, in his collection. To get myself a spare--I envisioned accidentally dropping and crunching the Coronet grill under my chair at the end of the build--I convinced him to sell his MPC kit to me. Which he did.

So now I have two MPC Charger 500's.

This same Charger expert informs me that AMT/ERTL reissued this exact same kit (not just the reissue Daytona but an exact duplicate of this Charger). So I've learned that my "Vintage" project is not as rare as I thought--in fact, it's not that rare at all.

I was going to build the MPC "box stock" but it wasn't meant to be--there were too many details missing that I couldn't fill in from my parts box and it was driving me crazy. So from Model Roundup I bought Revell's 69 Charger: kit #85-2824 "69 Dodge Charger Daytona". This is a "skill level 3" kit which means a 12 year old (as opposed to a 10 year old) has about as good a shot as me re: being able to build it. Thank goodness!

I wouldn't say building engines is getting old but it's getting easier. I am taking more time to line stuff up and am back to using Testor's red tube glue for a lot of the "normal" gluing. That seems to help. Consequently the engine is building up pretty well. Unfortunately the air cleaner isn't chrome (and it is on all the 1:1 cars I could find pictures of) so I might send it out for chroming, which would be a first for me. I am not sure what I am going to about the engine decals, like the "Hemi" sticker on the air cleaner. I will probably have to make it myself.

The interior is a combination of both kits as the MPC kit is low in the parts count department. The MPC kit has good looking seats, but molded-in seat belts which can be a pain to paint. So I tackled this a new way (for me) and it came out well. I first covered the already flat black seats with Bare Metal Foil, painted the belts with Floquil flat orange, then after the Floquil was dry, I cut around the seat belts and peeled away the BMF, leaving painted BMF just on the seat belts.

The result was 100% better than if I tried to hand paint or mask, and took about 2 minutes not including drying time. And of course the BMF over the belt buckles was left chrome as an added bonus.

Dashboards remain difficult for me. I am back to using a silver art pencil for the dials but I don't know--I just can't get that "forget 1/25th, it must be 1/8th scale" sort of look that better modelers can get out of their dashboards. I drilled out the dial backs and used a piece of brass to give the dials some "depth" which worked, sort of. The 1:1 car reference photos show a "textured" look to the instrument panel but not what surrounds it. I imitated this by painting everything with Tamiya Matt Black then offsetting the instruments with Tamiya acrylic clear. This did give me the basic look I was after.

On to the body next. I ordered "factory correct" colors from MCW paints and with my additional MPC acquisition have a decent set of decals now. I also got some 69 charger R/T photoetch from ScaleDreams, so getting some of the body details right will be a bit easier. We'll see if I can get through the airbrushing next time.

MPC 69 Charger--My First "Vintage Kit" Purchase

2009-01-31T09:02:00.001-08:00

After about a year of clandestinely viewing the model car section of Ebay, I finally decided to plunk down $17 on a "Vintage" MPC kit plus something like $8 for shipping. I won the bid!!!! Joy!!!!

It's an MPC! MPC lives forever! (Well, MPC/Ertl. Close enough.) When I was a youngster I remember my brothers and me thinking MPC always had the coolest stuff. We probably built every one of their kits at one time or another.

MPC is long gone of course, and nowadays, some MPC kits, in unbuilt/new in box form have become collectable. I see kits going for $70 to $140 to $200....not the price of a collectable Gibson ES335 or a Tiffany Egg, certainly, but for a box with a bunch of dumb plastic inside it seems to me a lot of money.

I am not one for collecting anything, really, but I wanted to get my hands on an authentic MPC kit for the first time in something like 35 years, so out came the credit card. Besides, I love '69 Mopars!

A few days later kit showed up at my door.

So off came the cellophane (I am going to build this, not just put it on the shelf! Go Ebay!) and guess what? The whole thing smelled like mildew inside. I mean: make your eyes water, nasty, stinky mildew.

The decals were dirty, filthy, old looking, and probably unusable. That's a problem, really.

But the biggest issue was that the entire drivers side of the body was tweaked about 20-30 degrees off center. It's as if the body was stored incorrectly inside the box and during the 20+ odd years of sitting around (the kit is copyright 1987) the roof and driver's side caved in. I'm not sure the picture above shows the true horror of the tweak, but, as it sits now, this banana-yellow Charger body is unusable!!

Out came the hot water and attempts to bend it back. Nothing seemed to work--even after bending it a bit a few days later the body would return to its unusable state.

So what to do? Go to the Internet of course. On the Scaleautomag.com site I posted my dilemma and the general response was: you'll never be able to bend the roof back. Stop wasting time and just get the Daytona reissue of the kit.

Reissue? So I didn't need to go through any of this "vintage kit" hooey at all?

Yep. The AMT/ERTL Daytona kit #31747 is the same thing as my beloved MPC with some extra "Superbird Parts". So I didn't need to get the vintage kit at all, eh?

Well, maybe, but maybe not. There are subtle and not-so-subtle differences between the two.

The Daytona kit obviously has parts the 500 kit doesn't, such as the rear wing and front nose--so the biggest difference is the front grille. The vintage kit has the correct Charger 500 Coronet-style "lights out" and the newer kit (which I am surprised has a grill at all since it's a Daytona) has the headlights retracted, non-500 sytle. The good news is the basic "body shell" on the reissue is the same as my vintage purchase. So I will build this kit "lights out" so anyone in the know will say--wow--that's a vintage kit! (In reality, if anyone ever really said that, I'd probably fall over....)

So what does this all mean? I think for a builder, as opposed to a collector, staking your build on the condition of an unopened vintage kit may not be the best idea. There's no way of telling which kits have unforeseen damage before you buy, at least not through Ebay, and I could easily see paying a lot of money for something that can't be built--maybe ever.

Maybe it makes sense to buy vintage kits to rob parts out of them that aren't otherwise easy to come by. For me the jury is still out.

55 Chevy Gasser--Finished!!!!

2009-01-25T11:58:00.001-08:00

After a few weeks and some time off for the holidays the 55 Chevy Gasser is finally DONE. Thank goodness! It's time to move onto something else!

It's probably been 6 months since I started reading up on 60's gassers and trying to figure out how to make something that's fairly accurate in terms of getting the right parts in there. So here it is. The finished build should have some decals I guess, as strip gassers from the 60's at the very least would have had their class (this would be a C/GS or D/GS I believe) painted on them somewhere. I couldn't bring myself to cover up the nice Tamiya paint with decals.

Even though the paint is a single solid color, right out of the rattle can, this build was a lot of work, but I am not entirely sure it shows. It makes me realize how much work some modelers put into their detailing on things like the engine compartment. I am not sure I have it in me to spend that much time on any one build.

The most frustration I had with this build, turns out, in addition to getting the glass to fit, was this: I lost an itty bitty door handle right before I was going to take the photos you see here. I looked for it for about an hour to no avail. I ended up going into my parts box and finding something pretty close. So the door handles don't quite match. How many times can I say "good enough" on one blog? Here I'll say it again: it's good enough.

One creative thing I did for this build is to use the hand grips from a drag steering wheel in the interior, as door pulls. Looks pretty gothic, and 1/24th and larger kits with drag type "butterfly" steering wheels are good candidates for this.

Is there a commercial kit like this--that would give me this look box-stock, and make all the kitbashing and customizing unnecessary? I remember building the Monogram "Tom Daniels Badman" kit about 10 times as a kid, which I am pretty sure has gotten rare and hard to find, which is pretty close I think if built box stock. However the big block Chevy combined with the retro interior, the huge difference between the "big and smalls" and the parts pack wheels gives this build a look of its own. But it's a subtle look and perhaps I was trying to get an "oh wow" look. It's not oh wow....oh well.....

Overall a very fun build, and I recommend any of the kits I pilfered parts out of to anyone except the Henry J kit--which is a good kit as a donor for retro gasser parts but not good for much else. I give an A++ to the 55 Chevy Revell kit that donated its body to this build--now there's a wonderfult kit. Also the Hilborn injected Olds engine in the "Simple Simon" Thames gasser is one of the coolest engines I've seen in 1:25 scale. It's now waiting in my parts box to be stuffed into a dragster that I will build before too long.

The big blower (see earlier posts for which kits were used....) is a perfect way to top off a fun build. It was extremely satisfying to glue on the Willys blower scoop and call things done.

Now I'm ready to put the hot rod thing aside for a bit....Next up: Mopar mania. Is there no end?

55 Chevy Gasser--Interior is finished

2009-01-19T15:45:00.000-08:00

The 55 Chevy gasser project is almost finished. After taking some time off from pretty much everything for the holidays I'd like to get this build done so I can start some new things.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, the interior is actually two interiors bonded together: the interior from Revell's 51 Henry J #2036, which was extended by grafting on parts of the interior from Revell's 55 Chevy #85-2069. I liked the look of the Henry J interior--it matched the look of some of the 60's gassers I found in some research material--but wasn't long enough for the 55 Chevy, hence the mods. The whole thing was painted with a combination of Tamiya matte black--a popular paint with modelers everywhere, showing up in many magazine articles about builds, and one of my own new favorites, Floquil Engine Black along with Floquil RailRoad Colors Flat Finish. Used in different combinations throughout the build, the end result is a multi-tone flat black, which is great because on a 1:1 car all the flat blacks aren't going to look the same.

The rest of the interior parts came out of one of the Gasser donor kits for this build (The Henry J, Revell 51 Willys Gasser #85-2350, the Ertl/AMT 55 Chevy #31931, and Revell Thames #7609) or the parts box. I bought an expensive photo etched 5-part seat belt for this build, but besides not being true to the 60's era sort of look, I also found myself too rushed to take the time to build the seatbelts "just right". Instead I went to the parts box and cut up some seatbelts from a 63 Corvette that got scrapped, and reused them here. And there's only belts on the drivers side because apparently on some older gassers only the driver's seat needed them--NHRA rules said you had to have a passenger seat but of course no one wanted the weight of an extra body on the quarter mile....Good enough.....who's going to look into the "window" of the build and really study the seat belts, anyway?

One of the hardest and most frustrating parts of any build in recent memory was getting the glass into the Chevy body and then getting the dash into the glass/body without making a mess. I had everything mapped out and it should have all gone together easily but it didn't. I ended up using bare metal foil for the windshield brightwork, and the "wrapped under" part of the BMF got in the way. I ended up using the glass out of the AMT 55 Chevy Bel Air instead, which sort of fit, and ended up creating special "pinning" on the dash so the thing would stick where it should stick. Overall it didn't come out too bad, but, there was one heck of a lot of cursing trying to get it all together. Not stress relieving, and not good!

Good news is I'm almost ready to wrap up this build. I need to do an assembly of the body/interior/frame, lay in the goodies like headlights and door handles, and do a final detail pass at the engine compartment. If all goes well, I can finish this this week. I have been having dreams at night about Mopars so that's probably where I'm going next.

55 Chevy Gasser--We Have a Roller

2008-12-26T12:39:00.001-08:00

It's the day after Christmas and I'm off work so it means a little more time to work on the 55 Chevy Gasser build. I have been told in the 1:1 world when the custom builder gets the frame/wheels/tires/axles all in order the project becomes a "roller".

Since the last post I've pretty much finished the chassis' basics. The front "skinny" tires came from Revell/Model King's 51 Henry J #85-2036 while the rears came from Revell Thames Panel truck #7609. The wheels are from a Revell Parts pack C1142 that I got off Ebay--expensive, but worth it--these are really cool wheels!

As I said last time, the radiator was from the junk box, I think originally from a Monogram 1:24 pickup. I scratch built the radiator plumbing by bending styrene rod and "pinning" the end of it (by "pinning" I mean drilling a small hole and putting a smaller diameter rod in, then drilling a mating hole where the hose needs to attach; sort of made it like a snap-together). I ended up having to further modify the exhaust headers as the way I had it before didn't allow the front wheels to be posed. Good thing to test fit! The hose clamps were simulated with some chrome 3M tape I got from Walmart.

Speaking of test fitting here's how things are looking with the body in place. I am leaning toward not using the hood at all--since enough work has been done on the engine that I want it displayed all the time.

So the question is: what color to paint this? I was thinking about some sort of radical candy thing, but, in the end I am going to experiment with an all-Tamiya finish, which I know some other modelers swear by, and it's something I've never tried.

Over the holiday break I went with my family to the local train store and stocked up on some more Floquil paints. The more I use these the more I like them! Using a flat Floquil color and then adding more Floquil flat clear on top is a good way to get realistic finishes; the gun metal and graphite paints are a good complement to the Tamiya colors with the same name. It goes on smooth and evenly, and doesn't stink too much. It's a bit pricey but worth it. Overall Floquil paints are highly recommended.

55 Chevy--"Engineering" for a Cleaner Build

2008-12-14T14:00:00.000-08:00

We're approaching the holidays and what better way to mentally prepare for the in-law onslaught then to get some quiet bench time. This month I'm trying to wrap up a highly customized 1:25 '55 Chevy Gasser I started a few weeks ago; I feel if I make a good push I'll be ready for final paint and assembly before too long.

I've found in the year or so since I returned to this hobby that I need to "engineer" my custom parts before paint and assembly and have a working plan to get everything to fit together before I do a lot of gluing. Once my plan is in place, only then should I do a final prep of the parts, paint, and assemble.

The fit of the exhaust headers is something I have struggled with on past builds. It's easy to mess up a good engine compartment build with headers that don't fit quite right. The 55 Chevy Gasser build is tricky in this regard because there is very little room to pass the "drag ready" headers out of the engine compartment without being blocked by a body panel, a frame rail, the front wheels, or whatever. The headers I ended up using are from the AMT/Ertl 55 Chevy kit #31931 (after many attempts to use others from different kits and my parts box). After a lot of test fitting and trial and error I decided to cut in two the headers I was going to use and reglue them to point the exhaust downward rather than out the side of the body. Looking at pictures of 60's era gassers, this look was pretty common so I am happy with this decision.

I have had serious fit issues in past customs with the radiator--this is something I don't think about until the end of the build, and then I usually make a mess trying to get something into an already-painted engine compartment. In this case, the radiators from the two primary kits I am "marrying together" for the build, Revell's 55 Chevy # 85-2069 and Revell/Model King's 51 Henry J Gasser # 85-2036, didn't give me the right look. I ended up going to the parts box and finding a radiator from a 1:24 pickup; then, I scratchbuilt the radiator tank using styrene strip. To get this to easily mount to the frame I "pinned" the part--drilled small holes in the radiator and frame and then glued in small-diameter styrene rods so the part could be installed as if it were from a snap kit.

I continue to find lots of uses for the "Samestuff" or "Tenax7R" or "Pro Weld" type glue, but I am finding limitations: you can't use it as a replacement for regular styrene glue--it works best when the glue is applied on the outside of the finished part and allowed to flow in and fill the joint you're trying to glue. Some of the rear suspension work I glued up with Tenax popped off during this photo shoot. It's back to Devcon Epoxy for this sort of thing.

Overall the build isn't looking too bad; I still have to figure out how to join the wheels/tires to the axles and what I am going to do about the front grille. The interior is going to be simple and the seats and roll bars are fitting OK. I am still not sure how to get the steering column in there, as the dash is scratchbuilt.

Painting of course is a lot of work but I look forward to it--it's one of the most relaxing parts of the hobby. Beyond that the final assembly should be fairly straightforward.

55 Chevy Gasser--Bodywork and Putty

2008-11-29T08:24:00.000-08:00

Back in the day there was only one putty to use--Testors. I remember it came in a grey tube, and sadly would not work as a substitute for glue (although my brother and I tried this when we ran out of Testors "Stinky Red" glue a couple of times).

Thirty years later there are more choices, and over the past year or so I've been trying to improve my ability to use putties to fill and customize model kits, just as I did as a youngster. I had forgotten how hard getting a good, smooth finish with plastic fillers can be....but after some reading and trial and error I'm improving....and can do things faster now which is always good.

For this week's build I need to fill some 1/16" deep cavities on the back of the body (Revell 55 Chevy #85-2069) of a 55 Chevy Gasser. On the stock kit the Revell tooling guys had dug out channels to accommodate the side molding strips. It's cool that Revell did this; it's easier to use premade chrome strips off the parts tree than try to use bare metal foil to get that "brightwork" look. But no C/GS drag racer in his right mind would have left trim in place on a 1:1 gasser; it's extra weight that's not needed, and looks a bit "pristine". So off they go.

Well, not so fast. Filling in 3.5" long and 1/16" deep channels that run the length of the rear of the body, are curved and oddly contoured, isn't that easy.

So here is my current thinking. First, always fill in as empty space as possible with plastic before doing anything else, so I used some Evergreen strips.

Next I laid in the first round of putty--Tamiya Basic Putty is what I've been using lately. This is straightforward; I just apply some where needed, right out of the tube, mold it with a toothpick, and let it dry for a couple of days.

When it comes time to sand out the dried putty things get a bit more interesting. As far as I can tell you MUST use something between your hand and the sandpaper to have your putty work sand out OK. I read this in two hobby books (so it must be true, right?) and first tried little blocks of balsa as my "scale sanding block", which was better than nothing, but not much. Not believing what I had read I went back to using wet sand paper applied directly to the custom body work....but it took forever to sand out and never seemed to get things completely smooth.

After trying different things I ended up changing materials for my "sanding block". That did the trick. The best block I found so far is a tiny hunk of foam rubber. What you see here was cut off a big hunk that came with a computer part I got at work. I wrap the sandpaper around the foam rubber, and then dip the whole thing in water with a bit of dish soap. I am not sure why this makes as big a difference as it does, but it's a HUGE advantage to sand this way--you gain about 100x the "sanding power". What might have an hour of sanding takes maybe 10-15 minutes. And the resulting body work comes out much smoother than if you don't use the foam rubber "buffer".

I have found that the first batch of puttying always leaves tiny holes and imperfections, no matter how carefully I try to sand it. So the "finishing" step is to prime the body (I use Duplicolor Primer/Sealer, straight out of the rattle can, but I imagine any sort of primer that isn't enamel based will work fine) then use dabs of Model Masters red putty mixed with Testors liquid cement brushed over. The liquid cement thins the putty out and makes it easier to spread around. The touch up putty dries quickly and is ready to sand in a couple of hours. I sand it again (usually using 400 to 600 grit wet and dry) using the "foam block" method.

The result is this cool patchwork sort of look. What you see here is almost ready to go--I will prime it again to see what else I have to do, but it's looking like it's getting close.

55 Chevy Gasser--DecoArt Dazzling Metallics and the Frame

2008-11-19T10:32:00.003-08:00

Since being reintroduced to this odd hobby about a year ago my basic techniques are changing--for the better I think.

I have turned my attention to try to build "cleaner" this week and have found that some of the things I keep reading in the hobby mags are true:

First: clean all non-chrome parts with soap and water and a toothbrush before doing anything with them. I have read that this removes a "mold release agent" on the parts, and makes paint stick better. I ignored this after reading it about a hundred times but finally saw it (again) in the "tips for advanced modelers" on some AMT instructions--I figured if those AMT ERTL guys thought it was important I'd better do it. I didn't believe it until I tried it, but: it's true. I can't see the release agent, and I can't smell it, but either washing parts helped make the paint go on a lot smoother or it's a placebo. Don't know which....

Second: Prime everything. I have now done a lot of a/b's with primed parts vs. non primed, and primer does seem to help the finished part look more real.

Third: Spray or airbrush everything you can. Brush strokes, no matter how small, give away that you're doing something at scale.

Fourth: Respect drying and recovering times for enamels. Although I use acrylics and lacquers most all the time, enamels have a place in our hobby--I have become a fan of Engine Black Floquil, and Model Masters FS1038 Gloss black as an undercoat for Alclad II, for instance. But don't forget: enamels take a really long time to dry and gas out! And if you need a second coat, put it on right away or wait a week. If you don't the paint you cover the enamel with (Alclad 2 for instance) will mottle and look bad.

This week I tried to follow these tips for the construction of the 55 Gasser frame. ....I think it helped. The frame is looking (for the first time) like some of the pictures that "serious" modelers put in the hobby magazines--maybe? Good for what I do anyway. So will I do this every time? I don't know--I am usually impatient and in a rush so maybe and maybe not. But if I want things to come out looking good I will.

Decoart: In a back issue of Scale Auto Magazine the author recommended checking out the "Dazzling Metalic Elegant Finish" acrylics by Decoart as a substitute for other metallic paints like Alclad.

Always anxious to try new things, I went online and bought a few bottles of the Decoart paint--it was inexpensive, about $2 for a 59ml bottle. Right out of the bottle it's really thick, like white glue almost. So the question is, to airbrush it, what do you use as thinner? The paint is water soluable, but I haven't had a lot of luck using water or soap and water to thin acrylics. Again I turned to Scale Auto Mag, this time their website's forum, where an experienced painter said to try windshield wiper fluid.

Hello? This seems counter intuitive to me: wiper fluid is a disgusting blue color, not good for mixing with paints, right? However, my wife was going to Kragen and I told her to pick me up some windshield wiper washer fluid, and to my surprise she did....the bottom line is: it works great! I mixed up some Decoart metallic gold, copper, and green, added about 50% wiper fluid, and airbrushed it on the springs and shocks for this build, and it looks really good! I wiped off a bit of the paint here and there to make it look "used" as I can't think of a gasser that would ever have pristine leaf springs. I'm pleased with the results. Add this one to the toolbox! It really works!

As I said last time a lot of the parts for this build come from the 51 Henry J, by Revell/Model King, #85-2036. It's a nifty kit, with a lot of (to my eyes) retro looking gasser parts. But it's also a dickens to build--definitely not for 10 year olds. The rear suspension/leaf spring/tie bar setup is 100% how it was done in the 60's from my research, but building it was tricky--you're fighting gravity all the time, and the back end is held up exclusively by the shocks. I ended up using Tenax7R to bind everything together, which is a first for me outside of scratchbuilding. It worked--it cut through the paint so I didn't have to do a lot of scraping and dried quickly but not so quickly that I couldn't position things first.

Another first for me is using Alclad stainless steel on the frame instead of chrome. It looks GREAT--it really does look like stainless! The "normal" Alclad steel is pretty good looking too. In general I tried to use different metallics here and there to give things a more "show" sort of look.

And here's the frame BTW. Looking good, I think anyway. It was lengthened a few scale inches to accommodate the Chevy wheelbase (longer than a Henry J) then finished with Alclad, Decoart, and Floquil paints. I'm not ready for the big time, but at the moment I feel that I'm improving.