Pascal

Bought this lovely kit : The wings are meant to be "butt glued" to the fuselage. Ik glued a small block on the inside of the fuselage and drilled small holes to attach needles for extra strength : This little shelf sits behind the rear seat. I filed the top to let it fit over the blocks : The inside of the fuselage got some medium grey color : Made the seatbelts from tape and copperwire : The pedals were made from 0,1mm copperwire (they look huge in this photo) : Sincerely Pascal

An absolute masterpiece. Stunning work !

Hi, This project is on hold. All the parts are tucked away in boxes, but the plan is to finish this build. I see that most photos are gone, I will correct that next week. Sincerely Pascal

Stunning work ! That jig for the wire wheels looks interesting. Do you think you can design a similar jig for Boranni wire wheels in scale 1/12 and 1/18 ?

Looks perfect. To remove paint from plastic parts from diecast models, I use cotton buds soaked in acetone.

Been quite a while, but here's a summary of the work that I've the last months. Minichamps made this model as a kind of "generic" version of 956 Rothmans Porsches from 1982 till 1986. It's even stamped on the underside of the floorboard. So a lot of modification need te be done to make this a 1982 version. The engine and gearbox will get quite a few mod's, this photo shows the starter motor in the middle, this will be replace by a scratchbuild one : The rond part - with the flat bottom - will be removed and replaced : First test of fitting an alu ring to the front of the engine, the final version will be a lot wider : The supports for the rear suspension are massive and don't have the right shape. Before : After : I started by modifying the top part of the rear frame : But it still didn't look right and was'nt strong enough. So I started making a new one. A first version : The plastic tubes were replaced by brass tubes : The plastic tubes on this part were removed : And replace by 5 alu rods : Not quite the same as on the real car, but the tubes will be hardly visible and they have to fit inside the body : Minichamps didn't add the turbo's on their 956 models, here the start of the homemade turbo's : A lot of hours later : The turbo's will require some extra work and they will get some small details, but I'm quite happy with this first version. I could have bought aftermarket turbo's, but they also require some mod's and I find them to expensive. That's it for now. I made a ton of other small parts, these I will show in future updates. Sincerely Pascal

Absolutely stunning work M. And what a beautiful airplane.

Last week our American CO moved to another base. For his farewell ceremony, I was asked to build an aircraft that was stationed at our base in WW2. I chose to build the aircraft of Lt Col John C Meyer, SN 44-15041 Petie 3rd. The kit is from Tamiya, first step was to spray the non standard black stripes : For the silver I used a € 2 spraycan : After the removal of the tape : The seatbelts were made from copper wire and tape : These photos show the variety in silver color, I used Rub n Buff gilding wax, silver plate and pewter : Finished model, decals are from Kagero : The Trumpeter display case has an ugly black baseplate with sinkmarks, so I chose to put a US flag under a piece of clear styrene to cover most of the base plate. Without the clear cover : With the cover : Luckily our CO was very happy with his gift. Sincerely Pascal

What version of the car are you building ? Looks like the Italeri kit might be based on this one :

I sanded the rims to remove the chrome and used metal powder from Uschi van der Rosten to give them a metal look : The tires were sanded to remove the seam and shine : The interior received the homemade gear lever and rectangular plates with rivets. The seat belts are from Uli Nowak : On the right side of the pedals I installed a homemade footrest, the interior received some strips with rivets, made from the metal cap from a wine bottle : These photos show the white Joest sun shade, it's way to big and that is sadly the case with all Solido 956 Porsches : Comparison with the decal made by Tim (thanks again my friend, you are a lifesaver) : The new sun shade, wheel covers, headlights and antenna : I'm very happy with the way the new wheel covers look on the model, big improvement : Still some minor things left to do and then this model will be finished. Sincerely Pascal

Because I have the Minichamps 956 on my workbench, I thaught it was a good idea to add this one because a lot of parts are the same. I wanted to buy the Minichamps version of this car, but they are way too expensive. Got this one from CK-modelcars for around € 40, pictures from their website : First thing I'm gonna do is change the covers for the front wheels. Solido did a poor job with these : The real ones look like this : The spokes need to be a lot thinner and the hole in the middle needs a smaller diameter. Started by making 2 circles with the lathe : To fix the plasticard in the lathe chuck, I drilled a hole and used one of these to fix the plasticard in the lathe chuck : Used a pipe cutter and a punch & die set to make the alu tube and plastic cover : Removed the Solido cover from the wheel : And drilled out the wheel nut : The new cover fits nicely : What's on the to-do-list for this project ? : Remove the oversized windshield decal and replace it. Use 3D printed vanes for the wheel covers. Add new wheel nuts. Replace (if I can find a good replacement part) the windshield wiper. Add details to the interior, because the doors are functional on this model. Modify the headlights, Solido always forgets the clear round lenses. Drill out the exhaust tubes. Various modifications that will (hopefully) improve the look of the model. The spokes of the pink "stars" were to wide, Dominiek made new ones with 0,3 mm spokes. They are very fragile, out of 20 made just 3 survived transport. Luckily they're strong when they are glued to the discs, each spoke was given a tiny drop of CA to fix it firmly to the discs : After painting the assembled cover white and attaching the decals made by Tim (Thanks again Tim, excellent job !) it was given a HG non gloss clear coat : Looks so much better then the Solido version : The hole in the middle will receive a disc (not yet painted white in the photo). I've drilled 6 tiny holes in the disc and glued pieces of stretched sprue to simulate the nuts : Solido has made the rod running from the gear lever to the back of the cockpit in 1 solid piece. I removed the rod, but this also removed the rivets : Made a new strip from the metal from a wine bottle and made the rivets with an riveter : The gear lever and rod will be replaced with a scratchbuid parts : Used alu tape for the interior, on the left and right side I removed some plastic to fit the modified radiators : The radiators are ugly, I removed them on the one on the right : Use alu tape to box in one of the holes : PE radiator mesh was cut to size and glued to the back. I also made an extension behind the hole on the top right, because Solido had made this without the tunnel : The inside of the radiator assembly received a piece of plasticard (will be painted black) to box in the sides : Sincerely Pascal

Great project and top notch work. If only Pocher (Hornby) would make 1/8 scale classic roadsters ...

Excellent eye for detail and simply stunning how you make all those tiny and fragile parts. Looking forward to the next update. Sincerely Pascal

Nice to have you along Keith. Update : I've started making the pieces for the fuel pump construction. Reference photo : Made 4 cylinders with the lathe and added a hex nut : They will be polished and the shine toned down later : Dryfit with the tubes that are attached to the bottom of the cylinders : Added some details and weathered the interior. The light on my workbench make it look way more shinier then it is in daytime : I used PE buckles from Uli Nowak, first time for me, but I'll use them again in the future because they look very good : Used the lathe to make 2 fire extinguishers : The left side will be sanded to a more rounded shape : Sincerely Pascal

I bought this model some 15 years ago. It was damaged, some decals had yellowed and the Rothmans decals were missing. As usual, I forgot to take photos of my model before I started the disassembly, but this is how it looks when new : Photo from Carmodel.com, for reference purpose only The interior : Photo from Carmodel.com, for reference purpose only As with most 956 scale models, this one has a seat for the passenger : I started by enlarging the space for the driver's legs : And cut the passenger seat from the frame : I'm covering the interior with aluminium tape. But the result is to shiny. I used Commandant 4 polishing compound to make it more dull. This compound is used to polish, but if you use it with a cottonbud, you can make the alu tape less shiny : The beam in the middle of the floor was enlarged and covered with the alu tape : I still have to add 2 triangles to the beam, you can see the right one in this photo : This photo shows the new panel I made, the hole will receive the scratchbuild fuelpumps : The panel has not been treated with Commandant 4 and shows how shiny the alu tape is before treatment : Will be quite a job to make the fuelpumps, 1/1 scale reference photo : I did a lot of sanding to the bottom plate, removed some plastic and added some strips : Sincerely Pascal