wagoneer

Thanks Matt. As soon as I get my son to sit still and do some more, I'll get some new shots. Wish I'd known about the Hobbycraft offering, we got this in Modelzone for £17.

Looking good so far. I've the same kit in the stash with a home made front push bar that I saw in an issue of Scale Auto Modeler. I must finish it someday! Are you going to wire the engine up?

I forgot this dodgy phone picture. This is my painting jig including the Peg-o-ramatm multi part holder.

Hello all. This is my first WIP anywhere ever. My son got given some aircraft models for Christmas but his heart lies with cars and like most 8 year olds, he was soon pestering me to build one of mine. I suggested a trip to the model shop to choose something we could build together and this was his choice. On the way home from the shop, we stopped for fuel, there in front of us was a real Cobra, not a kit car, the real thing! Thank goodness he didn't choose a tank...... Anyway, here's the box contents. As it's his first proper car build, we're going out of the box, just taking our time and doing it as well as possible. This is a very clean moulding, flash is minimal and the body itself needed hardly any preparation. I removed the moulded in 427 badges from just behind the front arches as there was no way I was painting those and the transfer over the top would be fun enough without making it go over the badge. My son started on the engine, doing the trick that most of use do and ignoring the build sequence. The tyres (front and rear shown) had a lovely mould line around them, he set to and sanded that off. A quick trip to Halfords and he chose colour, in this case Rover Metallic BRG. I got him to prime the model in grey spray primer first, his little hands struggled a bit with the large can and pressure required to hold the nozzle down though. We moved on to the green which was in a smaller can so he managed that OK. Not bad for a first go, just a few passes with the paint from me to even it out. We did the wheels too, they came on the chrome sprue but I'm sure they were magnesium Halibrands with the centres painted so we went that route. Transfer time. Now, these were fiddly, probably the hardest transfers I've ever placed. He put all the flat ones on whilst I did the sides using a bit of Microsol to help get it into position around that rear arch. Thankfully the quality of the decals was spot on and they went down really well. I got him to put a coat of Klear over the top using my spray gun, resisting the temptation to put the Klear on Ebay for a profit. After taking this photo I realised we'd missed a tiny transfer over the offside headlight, that'll get fixed tonight. The white ribbon over the nose aperture was cut down from that supplied. The original had a wide green stripe on it that would have to have been persuaded to wrap into the nose intake area, apart from the green being too bright to match our metallic colour choice, it looked like hard work so I trimmed the green off before soaking the transfer for application. So, reasonable progress. Below you can see the tyres, one done, the others part done. There's a groove on one sidewall of each tyre and transfers of a fine blue line to go in it. No thank you, too fiddly. Out with some baby blue enamel and a fine brush. I made sure I filled the groove well, let it dry then polished the excess paint away with a bit of 3600 grit paper. That's it for now, chassis under construction and engine coming along. Will update after tonight's session.

p-26luvr, that's a amazing thread so far. I've never tried a vac form kit but am now inspired to do so. On the plans front, having made a few balsa models from purchased kits, getting interested I found plenty of detailed aircraft plans online, free to download as PDFs. Many came from articles in air modelling magazines from the 50's/60's. It's worth a google to see what's there to be found. Wag

Goodness me! I swear you're one of those with a real miniaturisation ray gun. That's so finely detailed, I'm convinced it's full size. Simply inspirational. Kel

If you want to let me know the number you're after generating, I can do you some artwork, print and post some reasonable paper plates (not the party ones!) to see if they're OK. I have the correct typeface and a good colour laser printer at my disposal. If you have a good printer yourself then I could email a file or post it here for all to see the style too. Looking at the demonplates site, they have a fade on the yellow background to make it look more 3d online, I'd do mine solid. when printing a fade you will often get a rough line where the printed cannot produce a light enough colour near the paler end of the colour fade. Regards Kel Edit - I made this, any good for style? It's based on the correct spec for a motorcycle.