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Hi, One of my friends asked me about how to paint 1/24 scale female figures such as those made by Master Box... http://www.mbltd.info/figures/1-24-scale/spaceport/24052.html She was curious about how to paint lace on chlotes, fishnet stockings etc in such small scale. As I never have built or painted such figures I didn't have any clues concerning painting lace etc. Is there any experiences or advise to get? I remember those Airfix figure kits of British Queens with fantastic dresses and lots of lace. Was it possible to paint those figures according to instructions/boxpictures? Cheers / André

Hey everyone As I'm waiting for some bits to arrive for my Airfix 1/72 Lancaster I was having a mooch around the man cave and hiding in plain site were two, yes two Airfix 1/24 Typhoon kits with after market and three yes three part built engines! I originally started the build way back in 2014 with grand ideas of super-detailing the kit into within an inch of its life, well I wasn't a master modeler back then and I sure ain't one now so I'm going to set my sights a little lower and just aim to complete the kit. Why I have two kits has been gotten lost in the midst of time (I probably had a mad Ebay moment whilst I was still prone to a tipple) and as to the three part butchered motors I can only guess that in my attempts at super detailing (two of the motors are missing their spark plug ignition leads and coffman starter). So my plan is to salvage what I can from the three motors and complete one OOB and from the other two and create a stand alone model just of the engine and radiator (and try my hand at super detailing to replace to missing leads etc). The Typhoon I want to recreate is Babs VIII in 1/24, I built the rather splendid 1/48 Hasegawa kit back in 2017 and finished it as Babs and I just really like the look of the Typhoon in this particular scheme.. ..So I have the Kit.. ..and the after market... ..now all I need is the patience to finish the darn thing! Here are a couple of pictures of what I have work with with regards to the engine / cockpit frame work, the engine I'll leave out for now, until I have an exceptable work in progress to show.. ..I should be able to spend a little time on her later and hopefully the masking set that I'm waiting on for my Lanc should be here today (with any luck) Cheers Iain

Hi All, Another 'new' one. This was bought a very long time ago, and started a long time ago, and now resurrected in an attempt to get it done as well. So, the box art: I'm not sure if it ever raced outside Japan, but these single seat sports cars are fun to build. I have quite a few in my stash. And what with Tamiya releasing the Gazoo Toyota hybrid, and re-releasing the Mazda 767, well I feel my bank balance lightening as I type.... This one had a 4 cylinder turbo engine, and that's where I have got up to. Assembling the engine: I decided long ago to wire up the ignition, and this is the result. Don't look too closely at the distributor, trying to fit 8 itty-bitty teeny-weeny wires to something about 4mm across was, shall we say, challenging... It's a four cylinder engine, but with two plugs per cylinder. As I don't seem to get on with CA glue very will, I tried using a high-tack PVA glue. It sets a bit slower, but doesn't prefer (on the whole) to stick to me... Thanks for looking. More to come soon, Cheers, Alan.

Hello All, I have had this one on the back-burner for years. I have finally decided, what with the FIAT 500 nearly done and another couple of cars nearing completion as well, to resurrect this one. It's the Fujimi 1/24 246 Dino. It's one of their 'enthusiast' kits, meaning loads of fiddly tiny parts. I have already done a couple of the Porsche enthusiast kits and apart from a few niggles, they went together well. I just wish I knew where I had put them in the loft for safe keeping. I started it a while ago and then put into storage, where it got forgotten for a long while. I have painted all the major body parts in Halfords' 'Broome Yellow'. It has come out quite well, even gloss cover and no serious imperfections. This is the dinky little engine: I have put a few more parts together since these photos were taken. I am planning to add ignition leads as it looks a little bare without. Thanks for looking, Alan.

Hi All, This is the second in my "Promise Made, promises fulfilled" project. I had this model over 30 years ago when it was first released. When I saw that Hasegawa had re-released it, I knew that I just had to get it. My memories of the first time was that it was a rather good model, with crisply moulded parts, and reasonably easy to build. My biggest mistake was to use automotive cellulose paints to paint it. The end result looked very good for about 6 months... Then it started to crack, and look rather shoddy. I removed the body from the floor pan, stripped the cellulose paint, can't remember with what, re-primed and sprayed it with enamels. However, that cellulose had attacked the plastic rather badly, even though I had primed it first. I could never get a good finish on it after that. Still, paints have moved on. I tend to use Zero paints these days and with care, they are much kinder to polystyrene. So, here we are so far: The obligatory box top. This kit comes with a finely detailed engine. Here are the first stages of the build. That's just eight parts to get to this stage, The fit is superb. I painted the block and cylinder heads with Tamiya XF-16, and the cam-covers with my own satin black concoction (One part Tamiya X-1, Two parts Tamiya XF-1 + three parts Mr Color levelling thinner). This seems to make a satin black that is easy to paint and with a finish not as glossy as X-18. I mix up about 25 mL and store in a glass bottle. This gives me enough to spray, if I need to, and it will brush paint well as well. One thig that I though looked a bit naff about the kit was the front disc brakes. For some reason, Hasegawa had moulded them on the 'chrome' tree. Some parts look right in high chrome, like the bumpers, and headlamps/tail lamps. But the front discs and callipers? I think not. This is what they looked like: A touch garish, I think. So out came the tub of caustic soda solution I keep in the garage, and I popped the offending items in it for about 50 minutes, and the result was: Completely stripped. They do seem to be coated in some kind of high-gloss varnish which the caustic soda won't touch, but the removal of the "chrome" seems to reveal more of the moulded detail. So, a quick priming with my 'grey primer' concoction followed by the right kind of colours, will make them more realistic, I think... That was where I stopped taking pictures, as I was making such good progress on the model. Anyway, this where I have got by early this morning... The sharper-eyed of you may have noticed that one of the air filter chambers is not yet fitted. That's because I forgot to cut it from the sprue and fix it on. For small parts, I tend to prime and paint them on the sprue then tidy them up on removal before attaching them to the assembly. This is nearly done. I'll show the images soon. Thanks for looking. Cheers, Alan.

My newest project is a bit different, maybe not. I have had a 1/24 UH-1B Huey lying around for a few years(bought back when it was $34). I was looking online at forget what, just going further down the rabbit hole. I come across an art project made from an actual UH-1D called Take Me Home Huey. https://takemehomehuey.org/ I'm not American, well I understand my original dad was, but he died before I was born and mum don't talk about it so I don't really know. I have some strange draw to the Vietnam war, I don't know what it is, maybe because I was born a little after the official end of it. Perhaps it's because I grew up hearing about it. Anyway I did want to try to make a D-model from this kit. Turns out it's a bit more than I had hoped. Also there is no conversions for it. I also had the idea to put this on a semi trailer as a fresh restoration or derelict. I also thought of making it a Canadian CH-118 Iroquois. It's a good kit for a 1969 design. This will have the trailer and the Freightliner. I dug around online for whatever pictures of this one and side profile views. I found a couple of ok pictures and some rough when enlarged drawings and did my best to make them 1/24 for a pattern. I made the first mistake of cutting the fuselage in half through the door to lengthen it. Turns out, the door opening is longer and the rear of the fuselage up to the tailboom is moved back and reshaped. The belly is also deeper, the cowling is quite different from the tailpipe shroud forward. I decided to make a rib structure much like a wooden airplane or house walls and then sheet them. After I thought I could have glued on a block of wood and took a belt sander to it. I cut the tail boom off to make it easier to finish the rear joint area without damaging the tail. The floor was started but will be replaced with new sheet plastic. I don't know how yet to remake the texture on the floor. I'll let the first pictures speak for themselves. I have a couple of ideas for reproducing the decals. The real one is a wrap. I've been in touch with the Huey group but I'm still waiting for certain pictures, namely the roof I need, because it's so tall, no one gets that shot but I need it. I'm not sure if it will be 100% accurate when done, but it'll be very close. It is a big model, about 20" just for the fuselage.

With the Charger finished, it's time for me to jump straight into the next project. This one is going to be a much longer project and I expect it will take most of the summer to complete. As usual for me, the kit is going to be pretty much straight out of the box, and is Tamiya's custom Nissan Syline GT-R from 1970. First impressions of the kit are very good, and appear to justify the excellent things I've heard about it. However, as this is going to be my first attempt at using photoetch parts, there is plenty of opportunity for this one to go all pear-shaped. In truth, work on this started back in the autumn when I set about trying to get the body ready. Fortunately, there were no noticeable sink marks on it, and only small, well-placed mould-lines which took only a little removal. This is the body straight out of the box: Needless to say, after a little clean-up, it got a coat of white primer (obvious choice of primer colour since I'm doing this as the white version): After that, it got a coat of Halfords Nissan Arctic White. Not really sure why I bothered though, as the colour is near enough identical to the primer. To think white is usually a nightmare to match, and then I go and pick something which is a perfect colour match to the undercoat But, for completeness here's the body as it was before the winter weather stopped progress: As of today, it has had the decals added (all two of them) to the main body and just wants its clear coat now. Can't say I'm looking forward to polishing it though with those creases - they look like prime territory for burning through the paint. The other sprayed parts have had similar treatment, with the bonnet and spoilers having received their clear coats last weekend. The chassis is body coloured on this one, and it has been bugging me all winter that it just looked too bright in this white finish. So today I've had a go at going over it with a dark grey wash, then rubbing off the wash with an old cloth before it dried (I presume this is the correct way of doing it?) For a first attempt, I'm reasonably satisfied with the outcome, and at the very least it's dulled it down a bit: With all that done, it was time to make a start on the instructions. Not major progress, just the engine block/gearbox assembled and some paint on that, the sump and the engine cover. But at least it's a start... That's where I am at the moment, but that engine cover still needs a bit of detailing prior to fitting onto the engine.

Well after completing my first build, (a 1/72 Mk1 Hurricane) its time to give its big brother and my xmas pressie a good crack. I have definitely caught the modelling bug and im looking forward to putting some of the techniques learned to good use as well as trying out some more! Please forgive any boring photo's that you have all seen a million times before, just kind of want to see the whole journey from start to finish (Humour me im a newbie lol) Here goes nothing! The storey so far (In my head i have the opening bars of the Star Wars theme tune playing )- Firstly the sprue shots Untitled by andrewbudd2, on Flickr Untitled by andrewbudd2, on FlickrUntitled by andrewbudd2, on Flickr Untitled by andrewbudd2, on Flickr So according to the instructions the first thing to tackle was the merlin! so a bit of dry fitting and a load of flash removal commenced (Think there could be alot of this required in this kit) Untitled by andrewbudd2, on Flickr Untitled by andrewbudd2, on Flickr Untitled by andrewbudd2, on Flickr Not sure if i missed something at this point but was slightly confused regarding the pin that holds the prop in the engine, The instructions say to place the pin inside and then but the top of the engine on meaning the prop would then be permanently in place before painting as the pin would just push out if adding the prop later? Anyway i solved this by glueing some old sprue in behind the pin so it cant drop out when adding the prop later. (Go on somebody tell me what i missed :-)) Untitled by andrewbudd2, on Flickr Untitled by andrewbudd2, on Flickr After a spot of priming i sprayed the engine black as per instructions except for the cam covers which i thought would look better aluminium (Have seen pics of both so i thought its not gonna look to out of place!) Untitled by andrewbudd2, on Flickr Then picked out some details Untitled by andrewbudd2, on Flickr Untitled by andrewbudd2, on Flickr Painted up the engine mounting frames Untitled by andrewbudd2, on Flickr Next my first attempt at dry brushing (Think i was a bit heavy handed in places) & glued all the other engine parts on. Untitled by andrewbudd2, on Flickr Untitled by andrewbudd2, on Flickr Untitled by andrewbudd2, on Flickr Untitled by andrewbudd2, on Flickr Untitled by andrewbudd2, on Flickr Overall pretty pleased with it, think i want to put a bit of a wash on the cam covers to make them look a bit more oily but other than that all good. That's were i am folks, thanks for looking and any comments/tips/observations gratefully recieved Cheers Andy

You al know how it is. Once in a while, it doesn't matter that the stash is filled to the brim, that there's no more room on the shelf of doom, and the modelling table is filled with 1,2,3 - many ongoing subjects, sometimes you just need to clear everything, and take the latest and greatest purchase and go with the flow. In my case this happened with the enormous Typhoon. I've never built anything in larger scale than 1/48 before, and there was nothing in the stash of that sort either, but it didn't matter. I needed it, badly. It wasn't possible to resist a view like: Trying to battle the AMS didn't work either, which is why I've got the Airscale instrument decals and some Eduard goodies Let's make a start at it then! what could possible go wrong? Well, since my previous attempts at building Typhoons has been less than successful, my track record might not be the best, and its a BIG model! No matter, I'm filled with cheerful optimism, and neither the dreaded crack in the hood (got a new clear sprue from Airfix last week, which was as good as one can hope), or a rather nasty short-shot: will stop me this time. Everything is possible! Lets cut off a few pieces, clean them up! Rear spar is a little bent: Some heavy persuasion with brute force and glue should sort that out later on. I hope :-) Also decided to drill out the holes in the rear form(imf=er, just because I could. Edit: ARRGH! It's post preview one should click on, nothing else! Story continues: Well, all parts were cleaned up an glued together, and after a quick coat of Vallejo black primer, it looks quite ok actually. Quite a lot of parts was left out of the initial assembly, but also primed Citadel chainmail was sprayed next and I hoped that all ejector pin marks on the engine firewall is hidden later on... On to some other fun stuff. The floor boards were drybrushed and received a couple of washes: Main instrument panel was painted too, and prepared for a long session of small small decals from Airscale. A really large sinkmark in the middle of the compass was a cause for concern: but since it will all be painted anywway it was filled and sanded flat. After half of the decals had been added it started to look nice! Finally, all was installed in the cockpit And there we are! I've started the most challenging build ever, but I'm having so much fun! Luckily, I have 3 weeks of christmas vacation coming up and hopefully I'll be able to sneak of to the modelling den more than once, so even with my usual geological modelling pace continues, some progress is expected! //Christer

So I have had this kit for quite a few years now, and after getting a few kits under my belt I thought I would make a start. I ordered a Photo Etch kit, and just used a few pieces from it as I am new to photo etch parts. Paint wise I used a Ford Automotive Purple straight out of a rattle can.

Hello fellow modellers! Here is my interpretation of the Trabant Universal. Chassis is nearly finished, pictures of the body will follow. It is a little bit beaten up and dirty, but the engine is still in good shape Thanks for having a look! Dieter

Hi All, This is the first of five projects I have just started. I am titling it 'Promise made, promise fulfilled' This is the enormous Revell AEC Routemaster bus. Revell just call it 'London Bus'. Trying to avoid licensing issues maybe? I don't know why, since the box top picture has 'Routemaster' on it. One initial observation: It is BIG. On the box, it says 38.1 cm, that's about 15 ½ inches in old money. Anyway, pictures: The box of bits: It's rammed full of parts. The sprues on some of the parts, notably the floor-pan, was attached to massive sprues, about 6mm in diameter! Probably, to stop the floor-pan from warping. I recently re-discovered a fantastic solvent cement. Cellulose thinners. It smells a bit, is rather hot, but does weld styrene together well. It's biggest advantage is that it's cheap! The engine starts here. Revell offers the original Leyland engine or a new Scania engine. Now, I have read somewhere (maybe here) that the Scania engine was not fitted, but a Cummins. However, I have opted for the Scania engine, wrong or not. After a bit more fettling, we get here: The fit of the parts so far is very good indeed. I am impressed. Next is priming and painting the chassis. Thanks for looking. Alan.

Hi chaps. Been away from my bench for too long, one thing and another has prevented me. Found this kit going cheap on hannants website, and I felt a spark, so duely purchased it. I can feel the interest coming back, and thought I'd have a crack at it. Caught my eye, as it's a rather odd looking car, and rather rare in real life. Hope to post some progress in the next day or two. Matt

This one feels like it's been going on a long while but I've finally got it finished. Actually, it was only 5 months, but as I tend to do one build at a time that has been 5 months of a grey car where Revell have done a much better job than the real thing warrants. If you want to read the build thread, the link is below. The design of the kit is excellent, probably the best designed kit I've done so far (including Tamiya kits) with the only minor issues being a misplaced tab on one of the side trims and the washer bottle perhaps could have done with a more obvious placement. But that really is it for design issues. The moulding wasn't quite up there though with some flash and mould lines to clean up. And I'm not convinced that the instructions really give you the best order to built it in - certainly towards the end I pretty much ignored the sequencing as I couldn't see how it would work following Revell's instructions. The build itself isn't perfect, but I think it does give a pretty good indicator of where my level is at the moment. But, enough waffle. On with the pictures (sorry, but there are quite a few). First up, as the roof doesn't have to be cemented in place I left it loose so I can show the interior. The kit also comes with a very nice representation of the two-stroke engine, including the fuel tank mounted right on top of it! Here's a couple of shots of it with bonnet open and roof off: And finally, at the risk of being a bit repetitive here's a few shots from all angles of the car as it is displayed. Hope you like it. All constructive comments (good and bad!) are welcome.

Completed this one end of last year, so it's my most recent completed build (I build slowly, even though I build as the kits come). The kits goes together pretty well, apart from a few minor bits which I'll mention as I go through the pics. Hard to believe the kit is over 30 years old - it's much better than the Corvette I did before it. I'll start with the engine bay. Sadly, this is the only time it will be seen as there were 'negative clearance' issues with the lid so I had to superglue it down to stop it popping up half a millimetre or so. I'm not sure whether that is down to an issue with the kit or with my building skills. Certainly it was also a tight fit getting the body over those exhaust pipes too. IMG_6328 A couple of pics of the interior, because this is where a lot of the careful painting is needed with those seats. The seats and that red in the engine bay were my first attempts at mixing paint so I'm quite pleased with how that came out. Unfortunately, in getting the body on, I managed to dislodge the right-hand-side glass, so had to stick it back on using a paintbrush handle through the windscreen hole as that goes on later. All things considered, I can live with that small gap near the A-pillar (it only shows up on the camera anyway). IMG_6329 This pic below also shows the line around the rear spoiler where it joins the boot (bonnet?) lid. I was in two minds as to whether to join the spoiler and fill the join before painting and risk having poor paint coverage in the gap, or to fit the spoiler after painting and have that line between the two which doesn't exist on the original. If it had been silver as most of these seem to be then I would probably have gone for the first option, but as I'd chosen a dark colour I figured the join wouldn't show as much. But if anyone has any tips for this sort of thing, I'd be glad to hear from you. IMG_6342 Finally, a set of pics from around the car. The original plan was to use Revell's matt anthracite, but I ended up with a can with almost no internal pressure so it just spattered on the side. I had to sand back the paint on the side of the car and on the (front!) bonnet, then reprime. With the colder weather approaching, I decided to change to Halfords paint for the colour coat for time reasons which has given me the effect I was after. IMG_6335 IMG_6336 IMG_6339 IMG_6340 The view from the front. The Tamiya instructions call for a silver surround to the headlights, and show that on the box so I followed the instructions. But, they should really be body colour so that is a little bit annoying. Not the end of the world though, just wish I'd checked first. IMG_6344 And the view from the back with the engine cover fitted. So now, the engine is only visible from underneath or through the grille. IMG_6345 And finally, this is it when the sun gets on it. IMG_6366 I bought the kit because it was a car I like, and as an added bonus it's also cheap so it wouldn't matter if I messed it up. Looking inside, I was expecting a quick build as there didn't seem to be too many parts, but the interior painting slowed me up a bit. However, in the end, I'm happy as it represents another step forward for my modelling skills. Hope you all like it too.

It seems as though there is a lot of Dodge Chargers around this section of the board, and as luck would have it that's what my next project is However, this one isn't quite the same as most of the others around. Generally, when you say Dodge Charger, most people would think of the classic muscle car similar to the General Lee. A few may well think of the modern version, but either way you're probably thinking of a big V8. What you're probably not thinking of is a 2.2 litre 4-cylinder hatchback from 1982, but Monogram's version of that particular version of the Dodge Charger was my very first 1/24 car model built way back when I was about 9 or so, I seem to remember buying it because it was a) bright yellow, and b) cheap because even back in the mid-80's it was obviously not seen as a desirable car and so was reduced to the sort of level pocket money could afford. Being a snap kit, it was relatively easy to build, and for my parents had the added advantage that I wasn't going to get glue all over the kitchen table. Fast forward 30 years, and it's showing signs of age and being built by a child. The decals were definitely not on straight (where they hadn't disintegrated on me), the chrome was degraded in places, particularly the front left wheel, at least one part (the gear lever) is missing, it doesn't sit straight and when I took it apart I remembered that was because the front subframe and wheel are held on my blue-tak. at some later date (I guess when I was early to mid teens) I decided being American it should get some chrome bumpers and mirrors not appreciating that it had virtuallyno chrome on at all. And the interior almost looks like there is carpet in there with 30 years worth of dust. Basically, I've decided it's time to try to get this looking shelf-worthy and do it justice. But first, this is the starting point: So over summer I set about getting the body and chassis sprayed while the weather was ok. First job was to dip it in the IPA to get rid of that silver paint, which unfortunately put paid to the decals too - the bonnet one at least would have been nice to keep but it just wasn't to be. Then it was on with the primer, which didn't completely block out the yellow of the plastic but as the car will end up yellow that didn't matter too much. (Just realised you can see when I did the various stages by the S600 and bits of Trabant in the background of all of these photos). After that, it was on with the yellow paint which looked a lot better than yellow plastic did. The paint is Halfords Ford Signal Yellow. This one is my first two-tone paint job, so a couple of weeks after that the car was masked up and ready for the black. Initially I airbrushed this one but after a bit of operator error (basically leaving too long between coats and blocking the nozzle) I finished off with the car with a rattle can meaning the black is a bit thicker than I would have liked. There was a little overspray but nothing too unmanageable and it was cleared up without too much bother, Since then, I've redecalled it (decals were from Rays Kit Decals in the Netherlands) and given it a clear coat, but didn't grab a shot of that stage. It's part way though being panel washed, so the next body pic will have to wait. And then it was onto the engine, which was all just yellow apart from the chromed engine top end and exhaust manufold. That's been dechromed, and the engine taken apart. When I first built it, I hadn't filed any of the bits where it came off the sprue so these needed tidying up. So far, the remains of the sprue attachment have been remarkably tidy, especially as I think they were removed using kitchen scissors. I think I must have had parental help! With the washing going on, I have done minimal work on rebuilding the engine, but did get the block stuck together (the sump is on now too) ready for painting. One of the tabs holding the two sides of the engine together had snapped, and the other didn't go in as far as it needed to, so both were trimmed down prior to gluing the two halves together (hence the clamps). Hopefully tomorrow I can show off a completed body and main part of the engine.

Hi All, Finally calling this one done. It was not without its issues! Over the years, I have had trouble with Hasegawa kits. I actually binned a 1/24th Ferrari 189, because of several mistakes that I made putting it together. It rather put me off them for a while... If you look at the build log, you'll see that I had problems with the steering (steering rack too short) and front suspension (one wishbone decided to detach itself... twice!) In a moment of clumsiness while trying to put the body on to the floor, I dropped the body on to the floor (A hard laminate floor...). At first, I didn't see anything obviously wrong, until I looked a bit more closely at the rear of he body. A large piece had broken away! Luckily, I found the broken piece, and was able to re-cement the part on without any really visible line on the bodyshell. Also, while assembling the bodyshell onto the floor, one of the front springs dropped out. I thought, "stuff it, no one can see it..." and no one can. So, here are the pictures: I managed to get a good shine on the paintwork using Halford's polishing compound. This stuff is a foam that you spray from a can. I then used a very soft cloth to gently rub the compound in, followed by a gentle rub with a soft cloth. Quite a shine came up. It's not perfect by any stretch, but I am very pleased with the outcome, despite the problems. I will be building more Hasegawa kits in the future... I has joined the car park. Any comments are always welcome. Thanks for looking, Alan.

So after an 11 year break, this was my first model that I had a go at and luckily it got me back into modelling, but I made so many mistakes whilst making it. My biggest problem is rushing near the end of completion and not letting things dry, but I have learned my lesson and on my last model which was the Pirelli Golf it turned out really well. I was really pleased with the paintwork on this, but I reckon by the time I had finished its had 2 full rattle cans on it, but it had a lovely shine once I polished it up, and the decals sat pretty nicely on it. So this is not perfect by a long way, but it made me fool in love with a hobby that I had been doing on and off for over 40 years.

So made a star on the 1/24 scale kit, this is a resin sculp of a bit of art work by Shunya Yamashita. I'm painted it very similar to the original but with a few tweecks https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.pinterest.com/amp/pin/479492691550596236/

So I thought I needed to challenge myself next and start something that had plenty of decals, so thought this Celica would be a good start: And so to one of the bits I wasnt looking forward to....spraying the body. I only use automotive rattle cans so picked up a tin of Toyota White, warmed it up and once I had primed the body I gave it a couple of coats, and must admit I am pretty pleased with the outcome. And now to the bit I am not looking forward tp, painting black around the windows etc...but I cant wait to start on the decals.

Not usually my thing to 'Pimp' a street car, but just couldn't help m'self... Aoshima kit, not a straightforward build but pretty good. Tamiya TS44 Light Gunmetal overall, A Pillars, skirts & air dams all Tamiya enamel (standard) Gunmetal. Decals plucked from an unsuspecting Revell Mitsubishi Eclipse. Wheels are after-market Aoshima's - Rays 19" GT-C's. As ever thanks for taking the time to look, all comments, abuse and questions are welcome. Next, something very, very small. Ian.

Hello All, This one has also been on the 'shelf of doom' for some time. Probably about 4 or 5 years... It's the Hasegawa Ferrari 348 tb. It'll go well with the other Ferraris that I have been working on. What with the 308 having been finished, and the 288 GTO nearly complete, I thought that I would clear the decks of old builds and add this one to the list of 'in progress'. The box. A pretty car, if not quite so beautiful as the 308 & 288... The sprues. It doesn't look a lot, but the engine is already built and almost ready to be put aside. ... and, the instructions. I'm hoping that this Hasegawa kit will be a bit more successful than a couple of others I tried... I tried to construct the 1/24th Ferrari F189, but it went completely pear-shaped on me and the body work would not fit. I binned it! I also tried the 1/24th Jaguar XJR8 (or was it the XJR9?, I can't remember). That was going well, then I managed to split the rather large wind-screen! That ended up as spare parts... On the other hand, the 1/32nd F-16 seems to going rather better. Anyway, more pictures... The body has been painted with Halfords acrylic spray paint. I can't remember the colour. But I don't need any more (unless I screw up with the cement!). If I do, I'm pretty certain that I can mix up the right cocktail of (Tamiya) colours to get a near enough match. The engine, not quite fully assembled. Again, I have added ignition leads. No engine looks right without ignition leads, except a Diesel. Actually, my wife's Meriva is a petrol, and the ignition leads are nowhere to be seen. Each spark-plug is fed by it's own coil in an ignition block that sits on top of them. Anyway, utterly irrelevant in this case, as the 348 has separate leads to each plug, and they go ... somewhere! (More on that later!) The wheels. Matt chrome seems to work on car kits. I always thing the the high-chrome finish looks too toy-like on 1/24th scale! (Actually, I built the Revell 1/8th scale Jag, and the chrome on that looked too bright and toy-like!) The windows, door-mirrors and the engine cover. That's it for the moment. Thanks for looking, Alan.

My next one for 2017. Must be the third, I think. I handed it over to my daughter last night, and she was well pleased! The smile on her face said it all. (She's 20 by the way) So, here are the images: I like the 'arty' 'up-hill' look. Actually, it was me with the camera at a skew angle! On the whole, a very pleasant build. I had a few problems during the build. Some of them were my own (The clear-coating being the major one) and one was the kit (The wheels!). I have just noticed that on these pictures, the little 'sting' aerial is a bit off straight. I corrected that after the pictures were taken. Any comments, positive or negative are welcome. Thanks for looking, Alan.

OK, so I decided for my next project to have a go at the legendary 956. Namely though the Jacky Ickx/Derek Bell Rothmans sponsored No 1 car. This one: I used to live near the Rothmans Factory in Spennymoor, Co. Durham as a kid and a couple of times in the 1980's they brought these cars down to the factory ( with the Bikes ) for their open days. They'd close off a bit of the industrial road and run the cars and bikes up and down showing them off. Of course as a youth I was totally in awe of these machines, the noise, the raw power, the smell. I can still hear and feel it like it was yesterday. I even had my own race tuned NS125 in the Rothmans livery which I'd ride around the town in my Rothmans racing jacket thinking I was king. I also raced ( not that successfully I will add ) the bike in a couple of amateur races so it's definitely going to be fun building one of the Porsches. Now I know this has been done in threads before here, but I'm not going for a standard build, I'm going for this: Basically the bodywork off, up on jacks, pit in version of the car. Thing is though the Tamiya kit is very basic so I'm going to have to scratch build a ton of it ( especially the front end frame work which basically doesn't exist in the kit ) I know that this super detail kit exists that was a collaboration between Scale Motorsport and Tamiya ( a more in depth look at the kit here ) and I've managed to track down one ( for a price ) if I want it but I just thought: you know what, where's the fun in that? So I've decided to see if I can scratch-build all the parts I need myself. So I started to do so a month or so ago armed with zero knowledge of working with styrene In at the deep end again. I however have the small photo etch parts kit that is commonly available to add some detail. So armed with some styrene profiles and sheets, the Rothmans decals and the Tamiya Porche 956 Canon kit here's where I'm at: The kit: All pretty basic stuff really. First job was to lop off the front and doors from the main moulding: All good. Then these awful looking moulded into the bodywork exhaust manifolds came off. I'll be replacing them with 1mm solder. Out came the Dremel for some hacking. Then some filler and sanding: Then I turned my attention to the front end frame and bulkhead build: First some paper cutting templates Cut out in styrene and test fitted Then I cut the holes and formed some rivets by pressing on the reverse with my scribe Then made a rough bulk head piece And primed and painted up with some alclad airframe aluminium Added the tiny brake, clutch and water reservoirs to the bulkhead using various bits of styrene and a cut up plastic milk carton for the bottle caps ( needs a bit of cleaning up ) also need to add clear tubing and wiring to complete the piece: Made the front end brake duct inlet frame from styrene. Bit of a headache this one, took ages to get right at this scale and I hummed and harred for hours over an actually design from the original walk-around pictures which don't show enough detail. Plus how it was going to actually fit onto the car, again the walk-around pic revealed no secrets here. I bought some clip on magnifying lenses for my glasses which are really helping with work at this scale. Ms Borez says that I look like a mad professor. I made and scrapped three others before I finally arrived at this design: Added the aluminium top frame and painted it up. I'll be adding some styrene hex bolts to the top for detail and obviously the brake ducting. The original piece on the car: Next up is priming and painting the car undertray and to start work on the actually frame which shouldn't really give me any issues as I have aluminium tubing of this size left over from the C9 build. The front hook is one of the photo etch parts I have too. This bit: Then I'll start fitting all of these pieces together before concentrating on the rest of the front end i.e. suspension and brakes. And that's where I'm at right now. Pretty pleased with my bits so far, all going to plan. Thanks for looking

I wasn't going to post this one up until I started it properly, but here goes anyway. At the moment, I'm just doing the spray painting bits while the weather allows. The build will be later in the year, but with my spray booth in the garage I have to do the spraying while it's warm and dry enough. So first job is to decide on the colour. The instructions are for the car in beige, but I wanted to try another of the factory colours. Unfortunately, the choice of colours from Trabant demonstrate the wow factor you would expect from the Eastern Bloc - as well as beige the choice is Invalid Carriage Blue, Dirty Off White, Pale Grey, Baby Sick, and two shades of green, one of which resembles the glowing stick of uranium from the Simpson's opening and one of which resembles dying grass. I decided to go with the grey as I think it might suit the car. The kit is Revell's Trabant Universal. On first glance, and from what I've read, it looks a nicely detailed kit with lots of parts... and also lots of steps to the instructions (46!). The body looks pretty nice apart from some sink marks front and rear on each side so those have been filled, and the mould lines are hidden behind what will be a trim line from front to rear with only small lines on the front of the car. The door lines are also quite shallow so I scribed them too. There's quite a lot of bits which are body colour, which means quite a bit of spraying with this one. I'll only put up the chassis and the body for the spraying, the rest would just be repetitive. The pic below shows it very early on, and I've put the roof panel, bonnet and boot in place to give an idea of how it will look. This pic is after the scribing and the first attempt at filling the sink marks, the ones at the front needing quite a bit of filling. The spoon in the foreground shows what I hope to be the final colour - this one is Revell's USAF Light Grey, which being a matt paint will need a couple of goes with the clear where there are decals. As usual, the primer showed that this wasn't the best filling job, so all the sink marks needed filling and sanding again before it got another coat of primer. And here we are with the body finally complete and wearing it's coat of primer. Meanwhile, the chassis paint was running in parallel to the body. This one is mostly in matt black and I managed to get it painted relatively easily. However, the rear wheel arches should have the finish in body colour, so I had to break out the foil and the masking tape in preparation for colour coating them. Two weeks later, after adding the colour coat (directly over the black), I added the clear coat and then removed the masking. I have to say that I am quite pleased with the result. There is some detailing required to parts of this (principally the handbrake cable), but that will come when I reach that stage of the build. And then my paint woes hit. First of all, that can of spray paint which was fine for the chassis wheel arches decided to lose pressure two weeks later. And the other can I had ran out very quickly only doing a few larger parts and a mist coat and a half on the body before running out. So this is where it is now: So I'm out of spray paint and have a very unfinished car. Fortunately, I've just got myself a new, but cheap, airbrush which I was only planning on using at first on areas where it wouldn't be that visible. Having managed to extract about 20ml from the low pressure can I guess I will have to try with that. Would I be right in thinking that the paint from a spray can will go straight through the airbrush ok without thinning? And has anyone any experience of spraying with Revell acrylic paints from the tub if I need to go down that route? Would I be better off just getting another spray can if so required?