noelsmith

Very nice scratch build project.

The Paasche H appears to be a very good, reliable and robust workhorse for the scale modeller. Over here in the UK, the Paasche company never really bothered pushing their airbrush products, even when Badger was becoming popular and aggressively marketed to the UK model making community back in the 1970's. In my opinion Paasche could have done well at that time and have gained a good slice of the UK market. Aerograph branded airbrushes were made in the UK by DeVillbiss back then. High quality but only pushed toward the graphic design and art markets. They realised a little late and developed the Sprite aimed for scale modellers. Since then Iwata and Harder&Steenbeck appear to be favoured more than most others. There are of course other good quality airbrushes out there, but also a lot of cheap and nasty stuff too ! Lots of suggestions about where to obtain Paasche spares, but no mention of the Paasche Company itself as a source ? I guess they must have a spare parts sales ?

Learned that Model Motorcars Ltd was placed into voluntary dissolution on March 18th. The company traded for more than 25 years supplying CD instructional roms and books and a large range of after market items for builders of the 1/8th scale Pocher brand, both older Rivarossi and newer Hornby kits.I Marvin Meit the principal owner passed away in December 2025, probably triggering the eventual closure by any partners left in the business.

Very nice build Ron.

Any museums maybe in the Detroit area ? There may be archives of factory drawings tucked away somewhere. I would imagine though that it there is as I suspect a Packard owners club, contacting them might be your best bet.

Ward, if you have not got it already there is another old style book published by MAP during the 70's in the UK that might be worth seeking out It is about scratch building Model Aircraft in Plastic by Harry Woodman.

Fascinating reading. IPMS UK has a similar membership and runs as a limited company to protect its members. Comparing the IPMS UK with the USA's end of year statements of expenditure would probably make interesting reading. Both have high budget annual expenditure with Scale Modelworld and the US Nationals to fund as well as a quality magazine to publish and distribute, besides all the other sundry expenses like annual accountancy services etc.

Those kits were marketed under a few names over the years Ward. Firstly Hubley, then Gabriel but cannot remember the third name they were marketed under. Scale Models possibly ?

Might sound too obvious, but have you tried to contact Italeri to see if they could email you a copy ? Some model kit manufacturers have downloadable instruction sheets to access on their sites .

Sounds a bit odd to me that a large plastic kit manufacturing company would be approaching individuals directly ? How would a company like that have your email address anyway ? Don't they have distributors who they are contractually obliged to export to in the US or anywhere else for that matter? To do what is being suggested means that a payment from s personal account would have to be made at some point to purchase said kit(s) ? Hmmm! ??? One should be wary.

Thanks for that tip Ron. Will give Atlantis a try. Who knows as they are certainly hoovering up many old kit moulds to put back into production. Apologise for late reply. Not been on the site for a bit.

Thanks for the comments guys. It's been a while since I checked out my thread.

Nice conversion taking place here. It makes a refreshing change to see a vintage kit bash for a change.

This is where the I in IPMS might be useful. Not everyone is being hit by the effects of tariffs. So members of IPMS in those countries might be able to obtain stuff and post it on. Who knows ?

The new owners of FSM have changed the website completely. Personally I think it is a bit of a mess compared to the original to navigate, although apparently some like the new one. The gallery that so many contributed to over the years has been deleted completely. This was confirmed by Tim Kidwell when I emailed FSM to ask where I could find the gallery on the new site. Thought I would look out FSM at a local bookstore.The paper magazine is but a shadow of its former self. About half the original thickness that I can remember and priced at around £8 here in the UK. It stayed on the shelf ! Wasn't Scale Auto supposed to be 'absorbed' into the FSM magazine ? Seen it time and again when a magazine gets integrated into another, after the fanfare of its integration the old magazine may as well not have existed. Far better for publishers to just come clean about discontinuing a magazine and just put a line under it instead of building up readers expectancy. I certain!y was not aware of any SA stuff ever bolstering FSM content when SA closed !

Bump! Still looking !

Try Posca 0.7 mm Acrylic Paint Pens. Dense Matt finish and very good for fine work. Alternatively. Titanium White Acrylic Artists Paint applied with a fine brush, or if thinner a calligraphy dip pen could be used.

Nice model taking shape here Ron. Looking forward to seeing the finished result. I built the Hubley Duesenberg a few years back. You have to adopt a different mindset when building one of those old Hubley kits as they are quite wanting in places. When built they certainly have a very different 'feel' to them due to the sheer weight alone.

Ro Your last post made interesting reading as IPMS UK is also a non profit making organisation and also run by volunteers who run the society and do not receive payment for their services. You pointed out that there would be a reluctance on your part to pay volunteers. The IPMS UK Magazine is also produced by unpaid editorial and general management volunteer staff. However, let's not confuse volunteers who run the society with article writers who generally are not. As I previously mentioned, the payments made to UK writers is very modest compared to commercial magazines. More by way of a thank you for your efforts than a hard cash incentive to write articles. Your view is different and I accept that. If contributors are happy to offer their articles free to see them in print, there is nothing wrong with that approach either. I used to edit the UK magazine way back in the 70's, long before contributors got any payments, and contributed a number of articles long before any payments were made to writers. It's encouraging that the Journal has many free article contributions to fall back on, and long may it continue if writers are willing. Our respective magazines just have different approaches, neither of which is right of wrong.

My life span used to outlast my stash. Now it is vice versa ! Lol.

As a UK IPMS member and contributor to IPMS UK Magazine this discussion has made interesting reading. How the Journal differs big time from IPMS UK Magazine is that contributors to the UK magazine get paid a nominal amount per page as an encouragement to make submissions, payable when their articles go to print. Articles of mine included in the UK magazine because of its nature cannot pay me like writing for commercial magazines. But, my view is that although the payments are very modest, considering the work involved in writing and preparing photographs, I consider it a better appreciation and recognition for my efforts than expecting my work to be submitted for free. I would guess that some of your contributors must feel torn between submitting work free to the journal or getting remunerated for their work in the commercial magazine sector. Looking at the IUJ logo on the new style cover does not make it obvious that it is IPMS unless you read the small print banner underneath it. Just reading IUJ in bold I found confusing at first as IPMS has no prominence in the title logo any more.

I submitted an article to Chris when he was editor. Must be a couple of years back now. It was about a custom van model I built for the IPMS UK 50th Anniversary at Telford in 2013. Thought it would be nice article to run during 2023 in the Journal during the 60th anniversry. Don't know to this day of it ever got used or not. Chris said it was 'ready to go' shortly before the upheaval and his resignation. Whether it gets used or not is still in the air as far as I am concerned. I would like to think so but who knows? The model is now on permanent display at the International Model Car Builders Museum, Sandy, near Salt Lake City, Utah. There is a lot of debate about the new Journal format, but I guess things will settle down when members get used to it.

Very impressive build. Original and different !

That is a neat little tool you made there Mark. The finished effect would be similar to my divider/springbow compass method so the surround being scribed is still flush with the main surface around it. Mark's special tool has the advantage of being rigid but the width would not be adjustable. But that would not matter too much if working in a similar scale all the time, so could be used on numerous models in 1/25th or 1/24th scale.

To those not familiar with ABS plastics in model making, EMA (Engineering Model Associates) produced a large range of ABS extrusions and mouldings aimed at civil engineering and petrol chemical industry model makers. Hence the special cement used for them. EMA later started to produce extruded shapes in polystyrene plastic aimed at the model maker like you and I, and developed the EMA Plastic Weld cement that will join a number of plastics. Unlike in the ABS range they did not make things like inspection covers, pipe valves etc in polystyrene.