I happen to live where the weather is nice nearly year round. You could almost always work on your car. But even here in Southern Arizona, we get a cold spells….HEY…36 degree (morning temperature) is cold!!!!
Ok…enough whining. There are many of you that live a bit North of here and driveing much less working on your project car is more like Man vs. Wild in the Antarctic – I know I’ve lived in Nebraska and up-state (way up) New York.
So one cool way to spend the winter it collecting model cars (actually you can do that any time). I wrote a piece about 3 years ago (Yikes I’ve been writing this blog for that long!!!) about collecting model cars. Here a link: When You Just have to have that Classic/Muscle Car?…Think Small!!!! http://wp.me/p2YxYx-1rV
As you can see (compared to 3 years ago) my collection has grown a bit.
The Mustangs
The Vettes
Few others
More of the collection.
These are only a few that I have room to display. Of course these were all purchased and unless you are big in to dusting, this isn’t really going to help those winter months speed by.
But building your own can be rewarding. Here are a couple I have on deck for building.
This is a 1963 model kit of a Stutz Bearcat and a Model T
The Stutz model pieces are not there, but yes I’m gong to but the Model T together.
After that I have this one coming up:
1930 Packard. This is a 1960’s model – the original box is long gone
What am I working on now?
How about an Edsel? Yup love those cars.
Here’s the body in the first stage of painting:
Edsel in paint
This is an experiment. It’s the first model car I’ve painted by spraying on the paint. This is the first coat and it will be sanded and re-sprayed. I want this two toned with the rear quarter panel inserts will be black or white. So I experimented with some liquid masking that my wife uses when she is doing her rendering.
Art Masking Liquid
This actually worked very well. After it’s applied it rubberizes and protects the area from paint spray. It comes right off when you are done. I used a pencil eraser (exactly what my wife uses on her hand rendered drawings and I used a tooth pick to get around the lettering.
So spend you winter building a classic, or a hot rod, or a muscle car!
Thanks for reading.
Tim
I’m interested to hear how your sanding works out. I assume you are going to spray a few ‘rough’ coats, ‘wet’ sand, then spray a heavy coat, correct? Let me know how that goes.
The Cuda I just completed has a 8 out of 10 paint job. I sprayed three really thin rough base coats, waiting 3 hours between coats of paint. Then I sprayed the ‘wet coat’ fairly heavy. One section has slight orange peel, and a small duct spec got on another area, but otherwise the color is deep and uniform and a great shine.
I think the quality of these model kits today is poor. I test fitted each and every piece before gluing, and was surprised at how much trimming and modifying was required to get a good fit. I had to ‘egg out’ holes to get the exhaust manifolds to fit, open the valence cut outs 50% to get the exhaust tips to fit through, and even had to cut down some of the frame rail areas to get the body and floor pan to have contact for gluing. I know it has been 30 years since I built one of these models, but I do not recall having so much fitment issues. I remember REVELL models always being the better quality over AMT in having stuff go together easily.
I will say that the Model Masters brand paint from Testors is excellent quality both in brush and spray. Easy to apply and excellent colors. Better quality than I used years ago!
Where are you getting these OLD STOCK kits? I’d like to find an Avanti old stock model kit to build.
Do you remember a company that built 1930s model car kits (Cord, Duesenburg, Model T, etc) that were metal with working steering, doors, etc. Only the interior was plastic. The instructions were great in that the paint colors were explained and example photos helped assembly. These models were like triple the price, but the quality was worth it. I built the ‘Bonnie and Clyde’ Model T V8 that was really nice.
I wish I had some of my assembled model kits from my youth. I had built every Plymouth Duster model available in 1975. Salnt Six ‘Feather Duster’, 340 Duster with blower, Drag Pac factory race Duster, and on and on. I think in my model collection I had 8, or 10 Dusters. Of course there were Chargers, Road Runners, a few Camaros, and the occasional Studebaker Avanti and Hawk. Interestingly enough, I never built a Mustang, or Corvette model.
I’ve already sanded the roof once (had a run) and spayed it again. I’m using the same techniques I was taught a kid working in my Dad’s body shop. It works very well.
Oh…bragging a little. Those trophies you see in one of the pics for the models, those are for my real cars the ’70 Mustang you see here often and the ’84’ Corvette that I restored and babied.