Damn, LM14, I absolutely love that '36 5W – a super clean build and stunning color! Would like to hear more about the paint you used on that one.
Well, got a cowl vent installed in the '58 Fairlane, fixing that little detail that AMT missed. It's a bit of a compromise, since it's from the new-tool Edsel Pacer, and so isn't entirely correct, with four slots in each front-to-back row where the real cars had five. Nevertheless, I chose it over the more-correct AMT '57 Ford piece because the wipers are separate. I drilled a series of holes in the Ford's cowl and carefully carved it out while preserving the original windshield molding in place. Then the vent was roughly sawed from the Edsel body and trimmed to fit in place. Before & After And on the left an early attempt from around 1980 to scribe the vent in... Also replaced the vintage AMT glass with PVC sheet. To do this I created patterns by covering the outside of the kit glass with Tamiya tape, then installing the parts and tracing the outline of the window openings onto the tape with a fine black marker. Then the glass was removed from the car and the tape was carefully peeled off, after which the tape was applied to a piece of file folder stock and the pattern cut out with a #11, being careful to cut about 3/32" outside the marker outline – this makes the pattern slightly oversize which will allow the new "glass" to overlap inside the window opening. I then installed the patterns in place of the glass and traced their outline inside the body with the fine marker. After removing the patterns I cemented styrene strips inside the body to hold the new glass in place. With the strips cemented in the fit was tested using the patterns. The patterns simply pop in place without cement. Then the new glass was cut out of .2mm clear PVC sheet from the art supply store and snapped in for test fit. A HUGE improvement over the kit glass!
Thanks so much for the high praise, Quick! While it may seem silly to many of the Hambers whose work on real cars I admire so much, since these are the closest I can get with my current resources to building a series of late '50s custom cars, I try to approach my scale builds with a similar attention to detail and design.
Wow......froghawk you are at a level of attention to detail greater than a lot of real cars that are put together....you and other's on here are building some very nice stuff....with all that said I got to show you guys some stuff that came my way...thanks to my brother and the master modeler that the stuff once belonged to ...a stock pile of model parts ...a lot of vintage parts and some nice detailing items here is a sampling of some of it....chrome bumpers to fuzzy dice.....this is just a start..... Sent from my QTASUN1 using The H.A.M.B. mobile app
I have to say amazing work! I do have a question on the glass though. How do you go about bending this pvc clear plastic? I have so many chops that I cant get the kit glass to work anymore(59 ford, 55 chevy truck, 50 chevy truck to name a few) and ive tired a few things but nothing seems to work. Do you warm it up and bend it or is this stuff so thin and flexible that you just slide it in place and it shapes itself?
Thanks, Stude! That's quite a haul, man! Definitely some great stuff in there. Thanks, SD! Re. bending the PVC, at .2mm thickness (thin-ness?) the pieces here pretty much bend to shape when they're popped into the channels I made. However, to avoid getting gaps at the top corners of the windshield I rolled it carefully around a paint brush handle to bend it slightly. One does not want to be too aggressive bending this stuff to avoid internal stress marks and kinks in the material. The stock I used here should work on your '59 Ford and '55 Chevy. Because the '50 Chevy truck glass isn't curved you might want to use thicker material that won't bend. Hope that helps.
Are there any model makers here who have a 3D CAD CAM software program who would like to do a "just for fun" project of producing a 360 degree view of the attached images? To take it one more step, does anyone know the apx. cost of doing a 3D printing? Thanks in advance for the consideration.
It has been years since I've posted on Sunday Models, but I stumbled upon a photo of an old project of mine earlier this morning. This one was for a model contest here on the H.A.M.B. in 2010 (!) and, as I can recall, everyone had to use a Hemi of some sort. What could be wilder than a blown, 426-powered AA/FA? One with a Turbonique drag axle!
Having just acquired a pristine bed floor for this old truck from one of the eBay parts purveyors, I took a break from the '58 Fairlane to fit it to the model and resolve some other issues. The new floor was shortened to match the modified original one. When I originally shortened the bed I wound up with an extremely fragile joint at the front corners of the pickup box where it attached to the cab. So I worked up a new joint method by first cutting the front wall of the bed away where it was molded to the cab, then cemented it to the box. After which I cemented in a new sheet styrene rear cab wall and cut a large notch out of it. Then I cemented the piece cut from the notch to outside front bed wall so that it would fit into the notch when the cab and bed were put together. A larger sheet styrene tab was cemented on top of the piece from the notch on the bed which would overlap the inside rear of the cab wall when the cab was slipped over it, locking the two together. Hopefully the photos illustrate this better than I can explain it. I also tweaked the wheelbase a bit to get the rear wheels centered under the high point of the rear wheel opening and lowered the rear to get rid of the jacked-up stinkbug stance and get it a more subtle rake. The bed was also dropped down a tad from its original position to get the upper body crease lined up through the cab and bed, after which it was necessary to shave a little off the lower edge of the bed forward of the rear wheel opening and too reshape the rocker panels.
John, that's an ingenious solution to hooking up the cab and the bed. Plus, it has just the right amount of forward rake. Nicely done.
Sorry for jumping the gun here folks, but I'm gonna be gone from home Sunday, and I've been itching to do this for some time! Sorry for my amateur photos, this is a 1/8th scale scratch built using a lot of Lindberg parts. A true work in progress that I will spend some time on, put it back on the showcase, get down maybe years from now and work on again. I know my stuff is way crude compared to a lot of you folks, but you inspire me to do better. Even though I started this hobby when the AMT annual kits started in the early 60's. Thanks for indulging me....Mike
Crude? I sure wouldn't say that. In the right setting that FED would look like the real thing. Hell, it does look like the real deal.
The problem with 1/8 scale is that it creates a need for detail I don't have the talent to do. I was working on a scratch built Super Modified, but got lost, so it went back up on the shelf as well. I do work in other scales, but at 69, and with diabetes, the shakes keep me from doing well with the smaller stuff.
One more ,and I'm stepping back into the audience. This is a 1/16th altered Thunderbird that I have been working on for years. Got the inspiration from a Bonneville car I saw once in a magazine. I really get a lot of satisfaction from modeling, but the talent I see here on the HAMB intimidates me so that I step back often and wonder why I even try.
The Jalopy Journal
