here's one i hadnt seen before
60jerry,
I have been finding since I work as a mechanic for a living doing aviation sheetmetal and riveting panels for 25 years that my hands are not as steady as they used to be. Nerves are somewhat shot.
I bought an AMT petty short track dodge dart at hobby lobby with a 40% off coupon and got to working on it. Now I have to put the parts I need to do fine paint detail in a fixture, and hold my painting hand with my other hand braced against the table. I have not had much time lately to finish it as I am sheetmetalling my sons 1-1 69 barracuda that we are working on.
The plastic quality on the newer kits seems very weak compared to the plastic used in the 60s,70s,and 80s. I loved the JoHan kits especially the MoPars. It's a shame johan went out of business. I regarded their kits as something special. I am getting my son into plastic kits as well. He finds them fun to do.
Yes, it seems my steady ness is quite reduced these days. I might build me some kind of device to hold smaller parts for brush work. I hadn’t considered that. I’ll probably not try to silver-paint the side chrome or windshield/back glass trims anymore. Even with two hands it would be challenging. In high school in the early 60’s my model builds were among the nicest of the “hotrodders”. My builds of those days aren’t as nice as some I see these days.
The early kits didn’t have opening hoods and I’d really like to be able to get them like that nowadays. I’ll probably cause a riot on this thread, but the engine compartment and steering has never been of much interest to me. I build for the appearance of the body design and my custom bodywork I performed. When hoods came off I went ahead and made the compartment and engine look good and even wired som ignition systems (secondary only). My real “gripe” is the front suspension and steering that involves tiny parts of plastic that need to operate. I could never get ride height and steering to be right. Small parts are so fragile that they break easily. I find it’s hard to even stabilize it with big-*** glue blobs. I likes the steel rod stuck through the oil pan partially because ride height was easy to modify. The plastic “lowering blocks” sometimes weren’t low enough but that’s an easy fix. When I wanted to have the front wheels turned I just bent up the axle rod. Fixed position was fine with me. I really do understand why the newer kits have this steering build-up. Today’s builders are more sophisticated about kit building than I was. Some are just amazing and I say more power to them. Whenever I build another with that little parts problem, I think I’ll work up something to make robust lock-downs of some sort.
Not car related, but
I’ve always enjoyed building the balsa Wood airplanes. You know, the kind with jillion’s of little balsa parts and pinning everything to the printed layout. After all that work to build I could never allow one to go for a flight. As with model building, I could never mistreat my 1/1 cars either. However, being a custom car fan I do tend to cut the cars up a bit. As I get older I cut less and less. I’m realizing that the original designs are pleasing.
My first noticing of quality issues was a few ‘65 Chevelle wagon kits I got some years ago. The bodys werekinda cheesy and small parts were sometimes almost useless. I got four of the wagons that were all missing the red plastic taillights. A note to amt did not even rate a response. Disappointing. I like the early (‘64-‘66) Chevelle a lot. The ‘67 was not bad but a little sharp-edged for me. Would I build one? Yep, they ain’t that bad. I’d probably build it and try to trade for a ‘64-‘65 of any body form. Heck, I have always liked some of every manufacturers’ designs like Ford squarebirds, ‘60-‘61 Starliners, ‘’55-‘57 Fords, AMC Javelin and AMX, ‘60 Chrysler, Dodge Darts (‘63-‘66 the most) and one big favorite is the 1972 Plymouth Satellite Sebring. The Sebring is too expensive right now. However, I did score a red promo.
I always liked JoHan kits but their variety was smaller.
I gotta stop this and go to the garage and work on my ‘63 Dart wagon. Kind of a barn find and not too bad. Slant with exhaust manifold with glass packs and three on the tree.
Jerry
