Schmitz

I ended up with the first release of the big Tamiya Mustang, and decided to build Shomo's F-6 (photo recon plane). I scratch built a camera port, but I'm not happy with it, compared to the kit it isn't as crisp as I'd like. Of course the second release of the kit has the F-6 parts in the box... If anyone is building that kit and is not using those parts, I'd be happy to take them off your hands for some small honorarium - say $10 plus shipping? Please let me know if you can help me out! Thanks! Don

just type "woodland scenics" into google or go straight to "ebay" and you'll find lots of online sellers. Tower Hobbies is one of the bigger mail order suppliers out there who list it - look about halfway down this page: www3.towerhobbies.com/cgi-bin/WTI0094P?&N=N&F=BACU2716&L=WOOU1134&C=UPDWOO&P=FR&S=

Hi Matt, I have a bit more time to think and type - I'm sitting here waiting for the snow to stop before I pull out the snow blower :( Like I said, new releases and re-releases of kits that have been out of production for a long time are where the excitement is. Kits from the 1970s are popular with us old-timers who remember building them when we were kids. One thing that makes a kit popular is high parts count; a 1/25 car kit with 100+ parts is usually a sign that the kit maker went all out on designing the kit. Some of the old kits with lots of parts like the Johan Turbine car and the IMC Ford GT cars and Fujimi Enthusiast Porsches are still sought after. When it comes to foreign made kits, kits with engines tend to be more popular than those without (for a lot of car modelers building the engine is their favorite part). I think there are differences between the modelers who buy American kits/subjects vs. foreign kits/subjects; those with a focus on American kits tend to buy a lot of kits of different subjects and knock them out pretty quickly, while the guys buying foreign kits are more like collectors: they focus on a particular brand, era, racing-series, etc. and want to have one of everything in that subject area. Of course that's not 100% accurate, but something to think about. Since you have clubs meeting in your store, I was thinking you might want to offer them a discount for pre-ordering (and pre-paying) for new kits - both to build up a good relationship with the club and to get an idea of what people are interested in. For newly released kits, maybe you could open one up and keep it behind the counter so customers could check out the parts before they buy one. My IPMS club has had a few build-sessions in a hobby-store during store hours; over a Saturday afternoon about 10 people would stop by to see what we were doing; I don't think we ever got any new members that way, but maybe we encouraged a few people to buy a kit and give it a try. As far as detailing parts - probably the most useful, general purpose thing would be various sizes and types of wire - for sparkplug wires, brake lines, hoses, etc. Detail Master and Model Car Garage are probably the two biggest photoetch makers; Both have generic stuff (seat belt buckles, radiator fans, header flanges, bolt heads), MCG does a lot of detail sets for specific kits. I don't know how popular these would be; retail cost is $10-20 for a fret of PE, and they're not super popular with builders. Also paints - no one wants to wait for mail order when they discover a bottle of paint is empty/dried-up. In addition to the standard Testors and Tamiya paints, I'd suggest you stock some of the Alclad metalizer paints; they're becoming popular for painting things that are supposed to be chrome (if done well it looks a lot better than the plated parts in the kits). Oh well, looks like its time to clean the driveway... I'd be interested to hear what other opinions you get - Good luck! Don

Model cars go through phases. I'd suggest you stock a car model magazine (Scale Auto or Model Car) and browse them to see what kits people are building and talking about. There are also a lot of online forums - both magazines I mentioned have them - where you can take the pulse of the hobby. Subjects that are almost always "in" are: 60s-70s muscle cars (the new Revell 70 Cuda kit should be hot) classic hot rods (32 Fords, 50s Mercurys and Oldsmobiles). any Corvette, Mustang or Camaro Right now nostalgia kits are big: Tom Daniels show-rods and Deal's Wheels cartoon cars Beyond Revell/AMT, you want to look at Tamiya and Fujimi. Subjects that are always popular: any Porsche, Ferrari, Lamborghini F1 racing cars I'd suggest you concentrate on new releases; once a kit is out for a while it gets into the discounted kit channels and no one will want to pay retail prices when they can get it for 30% off from their favorite vendor at a model show - you want to catch buyers when the kit first comes out and there is lots of excitement around it. My 2 cents... Don

TRICON is back for 2014. Join Three Rivers IPMS when we host our one day show on March 22nd, from 9AM to 4PM. Same location as last year: Beattie Career Center, 9600 Babcock Blvd, Allison Park PA. You can visit the TRICON web page for details at: http://www.tripms.org/TRICON/index.html Feel free to ask me questions here, or contact Scott Scariot, club president and show chairman at trekmanscott@outlook.com. I'm the vendor chairman, so you can also contact me if you want info on vendor tables. Hope to see you there! Don Schmitz

Only other bit of advice for sanding: if you're used to the way sandpaper works on wood, you have to recalibrate your idea of what is "coarse". 220 grit wet-or-dry sandpaper will chew through styrene surprisingly fast; you only use this when you're intentionally trying to reshape parts. If you just want to smooth out seam work, start with 320 or 400 grit to knock down the putty, then move to 600 or 800 (and beyond) to remove the scratches. Don

Sure I can ! Thanks for the info Mark and GIL. I could probably live with the wrong wing shape, but I'm not sure I could overlook not having the slats. I think the take away is, buy the cheapest F-86F kit I can find (probably the Italeri), then put it on the shelf and wait for someone like Dragon to do a new kit of an A or E (of course buying a really expensive out-of-production Hasegawa kit would probably increase the odds of getting a new kit ). I'll have to think on this one. Don

I got the book Aces Wild for Christmas (I'm starting to like Amazon "wishlists" - I add books I'm too cheap to buy myself and they magically show up under the tree); its written by Marine/North American Aviation test pilot Al Blackburn and tells the story supposedly well known within North American that test pilot George Welch took the XP-86 prototype supersonic in a dive days before Yeager got the X-1 past mach 1. True or not, I'm thinking it would be cool to build a 1/32 XP-86 to display with the Revell X-1. I'm mostly an auto modeler who dabbles in aircraft when something catches my fancy, so I'm not an expert on what kits are out there. A quick look on HLJ and Squadron.com suggests that the kits available now are the F-86F-40 flown by the JASDF in the 1960s, which had a different wing than the early models. Is there a 1/32 kit of an early model F-86 that I should look for on the vendor tables? Are the wings that different between the two? Any info appreciated! Thanks! Don

Hi Kevin, I've seen some of the TDR parts on vendor tables at local shows; the detail is fantastic but some of the parts (1:8 427 FE engine block) seemed impossible to sand the surface texture off without ruining the detail. I'd love to be wrong, as I love their 6 cylinder Jaguar engine. I just checked their website and see they have a flathead Ford with Ardun heads available now; I got pretty far along mastering a head for my "Big Deuce" before realizing I had no way to add the cast in "ARDUN" name - guess that was a waste of time... Don

My new boss took me out to lunch today and when we got in his car he showed me a bracket he'd made for his cell phone using a low-end 3D printer. He said it was a "Chinese knockoff" of some more popular brand - it costs about $1300 from Amazon. Unlike the commercial laser cured "stereo-lithography" systems I heard about years ago, these apparently use spools of ABS string that is melted and sprayed onto the part through small nozzles (much like an inkjet printer) to build up layers of plastic. The layering does make the sides of the parts a little rough, but nothing a little sanding wouldn't fix. I was surprised at how crisp the parts were and how strong the material was; I didn't think the hobby-quality machines were this good or this cheap yet. Just wondering if anyone is using these for modeling and how hard it is to design parts. Don

Chris - when were you in Pittsburgh? Ever make it to any of the Three Rivers IPMS shows? Don

Mark, Some chrome parts may have a clear coating over top of the plating; that might take a little more time/solvent to strip. I've always had good luck using laundry bleach (Clorox) to remove chrome; usually the plating dissolves in seconds - just be careful to keep it out of your eyes and rinse the parts before handling, and be careful not to rinse small parts down the drain :( One of those little mesh kitchen strainers comes in handy here. Under the chrome you'll probably find a layer of gloss clear laquer that is sprayed on as part of the plating process to give the part a shiny finish (sometimes you'll see runs in this coating). I you want to get to bare plastic (to get a perfectly smooth finish for some kinds of metalizer) you probably want to use oven cleaner or some other paint-stripper once the chrome is gone. There is something called "Castrol Super Clean" (check auto parts store - I think its a part degreaser that contains lye) that is alleged to do a good job all in one step, but I've never used it. I agree that Alclad gives the most believable (to scale) chrome finish, but if you want to recreate the super-bright chrome that comes in the kit, there are companies (chrometechusa.com) that can apply that finish (after you've stripped the original chrome and cleaned up mold-lines and such). Don

Car models tend to go through cycles. 10 years ago NASCAR was really hot among modelers; the markings were cool and the racing teams were constantly coming up with special schemes for big races so they could sell the same diecasts and model kits (and T-shirts, coffee mugs, etc) multiple times by just changing the decals. Modelers bought way more kits than they could build just to have all the decals, and then reality set in and suddenly guys were bored of building essentially the same car over and over. At the same time NASCAR and the car manufacturers and advertisers tried to squeeze royalties from the kit-makers, pushing up the prices and discouraging truly new kits from being produced. And then Revell and whatever is left of AMT/MPC started reissuing kits of hot rods and vintage drag racers from the 60s and 70s - kits with nostalgia value that modelers had been chasing for years. Combine those and you get a glut of NASCAR kits filling up closets... Don

I had to google it. An F-550 is a medium truck (somewhere around 15,000 pounds gross weight) built around a standard Ford pickup cab, hood, fenders, and (optionally) the bed. You can buy just a cab-on-frame and add your own bed to make a mini-dump, tow truck, etc. I think they all have dual rear wheels, and if you get it with a standard pickup bed there are big fender extensions to cover the extra tires. According to wikipedia at some point the front track was widened and the stock front fenders have wheel flares too. There are some heavy duty engines available that probably aren't in any kit of a street pickup. The frame and suspension seem to be heavy duty parts - they have a lot more ground clearance and bigger wheels and tires than an F-250. I didn't find any details on the F-550 frame, I'm not sure you could tell if you just reused an F-250 kit frame. You''ll have to find more info (model year and equipment) to see if there are any kits of that year available and what you'll have to scratchbuild. Don

It was more complicated than this... The SuperBee was meant to be the low-cost, sporty-version of the Coronet family sedan in the same way as the Plymouth Roadrunner was for the sister brand's mid-size Satellite. Since Dodge was meant to be more upmarket than Plymouth, compared to the Roadrunner the SuperBee had a bit more chrome on the outside and faux wood on the inside, Both cars were available with the "little" 383 4-barrel engine as well as the Hemi; the Roadrunner could also be had with the big 440 V8. Both Dodge and Plymouth also had more expensive muscle cars based on the Coronet and Satellite: these were the Coronet R/T and the Plymouth GTX (the R/T was available with the 440). And then to really confuse things, many of the big motors (including the Hemi) were also available as options in the base Coronet and Satellite. The ebay part looks like a stock Coronet hood - it has none of the vents/scoops that were available on the SuperBee - maybe this is the part you would cut-out to build the blower version? Best way to find a replacement part: go to a model-car show, there are often vendors there selling old builtups for cheap and hopefully they have one. Or try one of the other model car forums online (try http://cs.scaleautomag.com or http://www.modelcarsmag.com/forums for starts) and see if anyone has one in their spare parts box. Don Hi Mark, Didn't mean to step on your toes - just the usual IPMS obsession with trivia. I was one of the teenagers in the mid 70s who bought used muscle cars when no one else wanted them and they were all we could afford. Remember - gas was a ridiculous $1 a gallon! - normal people were paying top dollar for slant 6 Dodge Darts! I had a 383 RoadRunner - I paid $500 saved up from my paper route. My high-school friends had a 350 Cutlass Ralley, 350 Chevelle, a Mustang Mach 1, and those were just my friends; the school parking lot looked like a scene from American Graffiti. We patched the rust as best we could, tried to figure out how to make them go faster and drove 'em like something out of a Burt Reynolds movie. My dad was a career mechanic and a bit of a gear-head himself; there was no sneaking a cam or headers past him - at least not while I was on his insurance policy. The collectors should thank us, because if we hadn't beat them into the ground back then they wouldn't be so rare and expensive today! I graduated college in '82 and needed reliable transportation; I sold the RoadRunner for the same $500 I paid for it and was happy to add it to the down payment for a new 5.0 Mustang. After raising a family for the last 25 years I finally scratched the itch for an old car in the garage - I ended up buying a '74 260Z because I couldn't afford any of those big V8 cars we were driving back in '77! Don

It was more complicated than this... The SuperBee was meant to be the low-cost, sporty-version of the Coronet family sedan in the same way as the Plymouth Roadrunner was for the sister brand's mid-size Satellite. Since Dodge was meant to be more upmarket than Plymouth, compared to the Roadrunner the SuperBee had a bit more chrome on the outside and faux wood on the inside, Both cars were available with the "little" 383 4-barrel engine as well as the Hemi; the Roadrunner could also be had with the big 440 V8. Both Dodge and Plymouth also had more expensive muscle cars based on the Coronet and Satellite: these were the Coronet R/T and the Plymouth GTX (the R/T was available with the 440). And then to really confuse things, many of the big motors (including the Hemi) were also available as options in the base Coronet and Satellite. The ebay part looks like a stock Coronet hood - it has none of the vents/scoops that were available on the SuperBee - maybe this is the part you would cut-out to build the blower version? Best way to find a replacement part: go to a model-car show, there are often vendors there selling old builtups for cheap and hopefully they have one. Or try one of the other model car forums online (try http://cs.scaleautomag.com or http://www.modelcarsmag.com/forums for starts) and see if anyone has one in their spare parts box. Don

I think its more accurate that Testors and Rustoleum are both owned by RPM (a holding company specializing in companies that make paints, glues and other coatings). But that has been true for years (according to wikipedia, Testors was bought by RPM in 1984 and Rustoleum in 1994). I can imagine RPM is trying to unify products across the company lines (RPM owned the bondo brand for a while, and sold Bondo glazing putty as "Model Master Red Putty" - same stuff, same tube, different label, higher price), but I've heard from allegedly "knowledgeable sources" that Testors cutting the various paint lines is because they can't buy the raw materials anymore due to tighter environmental regulations.

Hi Phil, Thanks for the offer! I can get a ride to the airport with my friends, but I was trying to avoid getting up at 6am and spending a whole day at the airport. If you're leaving the hotel later than 7am I may look you up. Don

This made me curious so I looked up the National Model Railroader Association's convention info (http://www.2014cleveland.org/). Their national convention is in Cleveland next year, and early registration cost was $145. A "companion" registration was $60, which I think is meant for a friend/family member and doesn't include entry in the contest. That is on top of NMRA dues of $66. The info doesn't mention the cost of tours or banquet, but looking at the page from this years convention in Atlanta (http://nmra2013.org), those are extra, with tours costing around $30 and various banquets $50-75. Roughly $100 more than the cost of registering for the Colorado Nats. I'm wondering, how much that kind of price would hurt the turnout at an IPMS Nats? An extra $100 sounds like a lot, but when you figure in airfare, hotels, etc. it isn't all that much (I grew up with the inflation of the 70s and 80s, so it doesn't surprise me when prices keep going up and up). Don

I have a ride with friends from the airport to the convention hotel, but our flight-times don't match on the way home. Before I buy a $32 shuttle ticket thought I'd see if I could hitch a ride from the Embassy Suites to the airport sometime early Sunday afternoon. (my flight out of Denver is at 6pm, so leaving the hotel sometime around 1200-1400 would be fine). I'd be happy to share gas and buy you lunch for the trouble. Please let me know if you can help sometime in the next few days. Thanks! Don Schmitz

I pretty much agree with Ron. My family long ago decided that sitting in a hotel room in a second-tier convention town while Dad eats, sleeps and breathes models from dawn til last-call in the hotel bar, for 3 days straight, is not their idea of a vacation. My family did go with me to the Orlando Nats (twice), but even then they grumbled about the heat and when was I going to stop looking at models and go with them to the parks. For me (and many of my friends) the Nationals have become a long weekend away with the guys, and my family is happy not to be dragged along. The idea of having a fixed location breaks down for lack of members willing to provide slave-labor year after year; I think experience has shown that you need boots on the ground. One idea: every few (4?) years, we could have a "Mega Nationals" at some prime vacation city like Orlando. I'm not sure where else might work - you need a combination of touristy stuff, cheap air fares and lots of convention space - maybe Las Vegas? If it was a repeating event, we could schedule it many years in advance and (hopefully) better compete for prime dates and venues. A repeating event could also "reuse" previous planning, maybe making it possible for a remote chapter (or two) to host and just show up the week of the show to provide labor. Everything would cost a bit more and be done on a bigger scale, with the thought that these would be the must attend events, while preserving the current (smaller,cheaper,rotating) Nationals for the other 3 out-of 4 years. Don

Pete, I appreciate the message, but I don't see a link in this one either. Don

I was just about to send an order for decal paper to the bare-metal-foil folks and when I looked up their site with Google I saw a warning: "This site may be compromised." If you click on the warning you get a wishy-washy explanation from the Google folks that there "might" be something wrong with the site. I was wondering if anyone has bought from the site lately and whether you've had any problems? I would just call in the order tomorrow, but I can't find a phone number... Don

True scale plug wires would be about .015 in diameter, the only thing you can find that small is "wrapping wire". I think Radio Shack still sells it, it comes in a couple of colors, although the colors are too bright to represent real plug wires - plan on painting or at least dull-coating them. If you're not obsessive about scale, the individual wires in old fashion 4-wire telephone cable has more realistic colors (usually red, white, black and yellow) and is just a little on the too big side (about .030 inch diameter) for plug wires. Remember that real plug wires are "floppy" - whatever you use on your model will be way to stiff to drape naturally so be sure to sculpt in the effects of gravity. Radio Shack (and other electronics supply places) also have "hookup wire" in assorted colors - 20 or 22 gauge should be about right for a radiator hose. Some of the aftermarket guys offer wiring with tiny lettering that simulates the part numbers that are often printed on real hoses. You can also find fine gauge wire in the jewelry section of craft stores, but it is usually un-insulated so you'd have to paint it. Don

Just a heads up if you're in driving distance of Pittsburgh (PA); the annual Vintage Grand Prix is July 13/14 and 20/21: http://www.pvgp.org/ The first weekend is "big-bore" cars at a paved track north of the city, the second weekend are slower/older cars racing on park roads in the city. Also at the park are some big car shows and car club get togethers; just acres and acres of "Little British Cars", plus separate gatherings of German, Italian, Japanese, etc. Definitely worth the trip for old car fans (unless it rains :( ). Don