Haha!
Beautiful. I mean you lost me already! All these improvements will take me years to complete. It looks already amazing with all these add-ons but you've set the bar so high, I cannot touch it with the tip of my fingers, let alone to jump over. Yeah, I'm deeply impressed!

Gabriel

Always a treat to watch you bring these builds to life Nick, great work!

Cheers, D

Hello gents,

And happy Saturday night! Have we got night planned! a couple bottles of a Cab/Syrah blend and a DVD of a Grateful Dead Show from 1987 - that I was at! woohoo - and, before, an update on the snappy P34.

Hi Gabriel, well, maybe you won't spend unnecessary time fiddling with parts that no one but us will see, but, and a big but, your body work will no doubt outshine my shenanigans with bits and pieces! Glad you like what you're seeing though -

Damian, thanks and glad you enjoy seeing this stuff - my blogs seem to be fairly quiet in terms of comments, so, I appreciate you putting up with my rambling and sometimes misguided efforts at adding more to these kits! As I've recently noted, now anyway, this guy has the excuse of a quarantine to be pursuing this stuff!

Ok, for tonight's set, only the rear tail. I've now worked with a lot of PE, on a variety of kits, but mostly 1/35 armor, and along the way, I've learned that yes, it's clearly possible to add this stuff and it's worth the effort; next, it's never as easy as the instructions suggest; and, along the way, I will destroy whatever it is I'm building at least twice before it's ready to show!

So, on with the show, a fine lattice/truss that looks really nice that supports two vertical struts and two wing planes - and, as always, how hard could it be?

well, take a look:





Above, you can see two big etch pieces forming the truss. The thing is, the instructions suggest a simple fold of one large piece, that you "just" glue into some precut slits in the vertical elements, then "just" fold and add the second big truss piece, by "simply" inserting it into a couple more precut slits.

In reality, I was unable to achieve this simple task - the "just" or "simply" parts of the instructions, or should I say, I predicted I couldn't, so I did the right thing and didn't follow the steps provided. Instead:

1) reamed out the slits a bit with the Xacto, so that the truss micro-tabs could actually be inserted into the slits;

2) insert and glue the "big" truss tabs into one side first, and then, reinforce the inside edge of the connecting edges with really small sheets of aluminum foil glued to both sides;

3) inset and glue the "small" truss per above;

4) then, install the "second" vertical element to the other side - a note here is that the instructions imply that you should add an additional piece of sheathing (big pieces of PE) to each of the verticals before you insert the truss elements - I didn't do this first, because, if you do chances are good that you will either: 1) get glue into the slits, or, making the receiving depth of the slits too shallow to receive the trusses. Ask me how I guessed this?...;

5) As the truss is relatively big, and made of etch...it's flimsy!! something I would no doubt bend or break, so, you'll see I added 1/16" wide, really thin brass bars to stiffen it up. Yes, they overlap a bit, but, I'd rather have that than this thing breaking or twisting whenever I handled it - I hate making fragile models; and,

6) the instructions would have you install some really small etch "benches" to support the "big: wing - nope - those will fail - so, I added doubled up pieces of brass bar instead - if you look toward the top of the part, you'll see them sicking out of the vertical elements.

and with the wing:



Unlike the delicate etch, the wing is big, clunky plastic - featuring lots of flash and irregular surface plane, which is nice. Strangely, the big wing rests on the aforementioned "benches" while the comparatively small upper wing, is installed with sturdy, giant plastic pins...yeah...no. So, the lower, bigger wing is mounted on my brass benches, and glued. For the upper wing though, I cut off the provided chunkster plastic pins, and replaced them with thin metal rods, capped with small etch washers - stronger and better looking than the solution provided.

And, despite this effort to create a light and tough assembly, I essentially disassembled/destroyed it twice - very gracefully I might add, by dropping it onto the ever-forgiving concrete floor below my work area! What a treat -

No matter the process, now that it's said and done, I think it looks pretty good

OK gent, we've got some wine to drink and Grateful Dead music to enjoy -

Stay well, and keep building

Cheers
Nick

I'm actually drooling over your build like the Village's Idiot over a picture of Marilyn Monroe in bath suit!
And all that shiny and nimble metal will be clunky plastic in my build. Do you suggest that my painting skills are going to thin them down? LOL.
Nice build, mate, very nice!

Gabriel

That intricate metal work looks amazing. Nice and straight and perfectly aligned.

Now wouldn't that be something. Just build in big chunky, easy to handle, parts and just paint them down to size. I will be sending you some wirewheels shortly Gabriel.

Your threads are quiet because we are all just lost for words most of the time mate!

Red wine, classic music and scale modelling. What a brilliant combination! Sounds a lot like heaven to me, only SRV instead of The Dead.

Carry on, don't hold back with the rambling, we love it!

Cheers, D

Yes, I found the short way to become a millionaire. I'll paint my bachelor's into a penthouse just now!

Nick, D. is right. Most of the time I feel I have no competence to comment on your thread because your skills are so advanced!

Gabriel

I am with the others, we just need more superlatives
Oh, and nice job on the rear wing.

Cheers
Michael

Howdy gents,

D - yes, Mr Stevie Ray Vaughn! nice! This guy was lucky enough to see him play in San Francisco at the Warfield Theater on his Texas Flood tour - that was a long time ago! and a great show - wow. I'm eager to see what you do with the Chevy drag car - maybe I lost track, but the last time I saw it you had the rear wing installed - nice! I think your various theme builds - Five window, Chevy etc inspired this and the MFH project. I think it's a fun way to really work through a subject - and because each build is a little different, you can sharpen your skills - thanks for that idea!

Garbriel and Michael - glad you guys like this stuff. I enjoy your work too - Gabriel, you ALWAYS nail the finish, and Michael, you seem to get the cleanest builds around! I'm envious of both!

I'll try and post some updates tomorrow - I'm making headway on the P34. The nature of the build, requires sort of a strange assembly/painting process - needing to do a bit of both as I move along. I've taken a few steps for camouflage the less than great fit in a few places - So far so good.

Last night I worked on the distributor, fuel pump, injectors, fuel lines, ignition wires and the rubber boots on the sparks. The latter task, with the little boots, REALLY tried my patience. The boots are soft rubber, mounted on a little sprue. Job one, drill a pilot hole in each with a #78 bit - then, ream the hole with a #72 bit to accept the ignition wire. This was no straight forward task - at all and took more time that I imagined - they're now done and installed!

While not doing that, off to painting. I put down a good coat of aluminum paint (Vallejo Metal Paint - a big tip o' the Xacto to D for this product lead - it's great!) on the inner body/cockpit, then a base coat of French Blue on the outer body. It was all primed first with Tamiya fine grey. I sprayed a coat of Tamiya Bare Metal Silver onto the lower chassis and engine/transaxle - and have since detail painted it.

The stay at home thing is weird - My real work is in a phase that involves calls and waiting for the next task to start, and taking various Zoom and Webex calls. I can build models in the big gaps of time between on weekdays. Funny enough, when the weekend rolls around, I'm not all that eager to build kits! I wonder what will happen when things get "normal" again?

This guy has also succumbed to Zoom and Facetime cocktail parties! wow - very odd indeed - but fun!

Ok gents, stay well, party on -

Nick

Hands down my favourite guitarist, an amazing showman and incredible talent! I still remember the very first time I heard one of his tracks, it was Testify off the Texas Flood album, on a Sunday night in 1984, I was sitting at my desk at home doing homework as I was in my final year of high school. Listening to the radio, the presenter was interviewing Gary Moore (another of my favourites) about the release of his Corridors of Power album, and Gary was talking about SRV as well.


Black primer is down, grey primer on the body and metallic paints pending shortly!


I'm really pleased that you are running with this type of thread, it's good to be able to track a number of themed builds in one place rather than searching all over the forum threads.

As an aside, I had my first Zoom conference sales meeting today, a steep learning curve but lots of fun.

Looking forward to more updates!

Cheers, D

Hello model builders,

As noted above, I have an update or two - first tho, proof of this guy - social distancing, AND wearing a bandana, keeping it safe and whatnot:



Yeah...almost six weeks - no haircut, and a bandana! I'm now looking a lot like I looked around 1990 when I went to big, loud rock concerts!! lol -

and - from Spotmodel, this guy received another F1 and another kit in the mail:



Still going after F1 on the cheap! another on sale Ferrari! For grins, I took a look at Lucky Model's website last night, man I wish I'd done that before!!! they have a few Tamiya F1s for around $20 each!! - shucks - oh well - on to what I have in hand.

The P34 made it's way to get painted:



All clipped up and waiting for some primmer - and below, Tamiya bare metal on the lower monocoque and engine:



and below, the cockpit in Vallejo Metal aluminum:



As I mentioned, this painting is not going in the order I prefer, but that's fine. Allows me to jump between painting and the use of (shattered) fine motor skills.

First up, the piece of etch below - it eventually became the dog house over the intake trumpets - but, look carefully, the etch doesn't have round openings for each trumpet - the end holes are not completely opened. This must be because the kit intake must have reciprocal, molded plastic shapes. Well - I'm not using the kit intake - nope, I'm doing something else. I used the rat tail file to make these round - you can see I did that already on the opposite side.





I found these snappy intakes along with ignition/distributor, and a fuel pump, to use instead of the kits parts. They were not a "joy" to assemble, but I like them.

Next, You can see some progress:



This was some fancy, foul language inducing model building. First the aforementioned dog house. Seems simple enough and as always, it wasn't. The tape is there because the real version has silver mesh and the rest is blue - as if they didn't offer enough of a challenge folding this together...nice.

Next, how about those trumpets? and, while metal fuel injectors - a dream come true. Except - the bracket that holds them together. I think they expected you to drop in and glue the trumpets, then add the injectors. I decided not to do that - I want all the injectors pointing in the right direction, and don't believe for two minutes I could do that with the trumpets installed first, so I didn't. Instead, this guy built the trumpets and injectors (both of which needed to be drilled out first). Then cut notches through the collector to receive the trumpets. While a bit slow, requiring cutting, flattening and filing, they worked fine.

In the meantime, painting went on:



The body parts now have the first layer of base paint, Vallejo French Blue - so far, not dots, dusts, fingerprints, hairs - nothing. The lower chassis and engine are about done:



As this guy tends to do, on went a throttle linkage - It still needs a touch of paint on the spacer - and the rest of the engine:



What you can't quite see here is that distributor and fuel pump are between the trumpets, and the intake manifolds. The fuel lines go from the pump and under the manifolds to get to the injectors. While you might not be able to picture this from my fantastic description, getting it to work was some tricky business.





And there you have it - and to my surprise, relatively few areas in desperate need of touch up.

Tonight I'll add go back to work on the body - maybe paint the wheels too - don't know just yet.

Stay well and happy model building.

Nick

Some dexterity on display there Nick! Getting those fuel lines under the manifold, between the trumpets and neatly on to the injectors would have been quite an exercise!

The overall picture of the engine is coming together beautifully, and great to see some paint on the body now as well.

Stay safe, don't fear the Grizzly Adams look, and rock on!

Cheers, D

Beautiful work, Nick! Good to see you're keepin' it safe Bandido.😷

Talk about hair... well, I shave mine off. But as soon as the Colorado lockdown happened, my 30-year-old Norelco hair trimmer decided to crap-out. So, I went online to order a new one, post-haste... and a model kit while I was at it.😁

PS: I went outside today... ☀️

Cheers!🍺
—mike

Great work on the engine and those little details you, especially to 1/20 scale car are amazing. What I like most are the colouring on the pipes, they look really good. And a good job on assembly of those since Tamiya exhausts are notoriously tricky.

cheers
Michael

Nick, by the time I will receive the shipment containing my Tyrrell, you'll be done rebuilding this kit from scratch. You have spares, PEs, knowledge, fuel lines, everything! Although supposedly I'll build the same kit as yours, the outcome it will be the most different from modelling history

All that wizzardry you're spelling on your desk should be illegal!

Gabriel

Man, that looks good. Beautiful detailing and great variation in metallic tones.



I was in serious need, of a haircut, before the lock-down. I was in the "I need to make an appointment, for a haircut very soon" mode, which can last a week or two and when I finally got to the point of "I will make an appointment NOW!" the prime minister was on TV, shutting everything down. Well, hairdressers where allowed to reopen, last Tuesday, so after 12 weeks, I lost, what felt like, several pounds, in 15 minutes.

Hi guys,

thanks for taking a look. D, yes, those many wires and tubes! This whole process was slow going and frustrating! There's more of this to come in the cockpit.

Hi Mike -good to see you pop in from time to time! I'll get back to armor one of these days - I forgot you are in Colorado. I was up in the springs a few times in the last couple of years for work - great place and nice people - I liked visiting.

Hey Michael - thanks, and glad you like the coloring of the pipes. I started with Tamiya Bare Metal, then added a series of washes blending various metal and copper shades. I've griped about the quality of this kit already - in addition to just ok fit, there were/are seams on everything! I sanded the heck out of those pipes - the pics...they don't lie - there are still ugly seams on those shocks!! too late to fix now. As for the headers, Tamiya made this a bit harder than it had to be because of the huge receiving points on the block, and small pins on the headers - it was really a drag trying to get them to stay in place and not lose proper alignment!

You know Gabriel, I am interested in seeing your build - that is, you always do great paint work - I wonder if a strong paint job won't stand above some chunky parts etc?

Hi Jesper, thanks! Yes, our friend D turned me on to Vallejo Metal colors - they are great! I've always liked Vallejo Model Air metallic's, and this new product - I'm pleased!

And, still no haircut! just big fluffy hair! lol - tho today I was on a video call with several of us 50 somethings, all looking about the same! lol - various shades of grey beards etc - lol!

As for the model - I need to keep working on body parts (the mid-monocoque is attached to the cockpit internals). My plan is to get the body done, then go back to the nifty bits and pieces inside. So far, two coats of base on and lightly sanded, and first coat of Aqua Gloss II not lightly sanded and polished - next, more gloss, decals, gloss, and gloss again!

Stay well gents - this guy is still quarantined, doing real work and model work -

Nick

Stick, again with the next-level builds

Nick, I don't know the outcome
And probably I'm gonna be confined to OOB by the review request. Still no sign of the package though. Supposed to reach today...

Gabriel

Howdy model building friends,

Yep, the guy is still stuck at home, I suspect like many of you. Turns out I "could spend" some more time on video calls this week. I found putting my peepers on some folks beyond the few that I see everyday to be surprisingly nice, even a bit funny from time to time with little kids and pets popping in and out of "intense" work calls - lol!

KS, thanks for dropping by - always good to say hello -

Hi Gabriel, Yeah, I've had some mighty slow deliveries too - our friends at BNA sent me something around the end of March...no sign of it here. It usually takes a bit more time for things to get to me from Australia, than say China or Spain. This time, it's just a long wait.

This guy spent some time with paint and decals:



Above, you can see the body parts with French Blue and a few clear coats - I still need to do some fine sanding and polishing- It appears the guy spaced on correctly finishing the nose...oh well, I do have time. The other thing you'll notice is the front suspension and cockpit area need to be painted - the silver, actually aluminum is something of a placeholder in some places.

The cockpit will stay mostly aluminum, but the steering column etc will all get repainted another color - same for the front suspension, which will become much darker - black and dark metals.

and below, sort of a mock up:



Not bad - even the little dog house over the intakes. I didn't drop the body over the chassis because the fit is almost like a snap kit - once together, it doesn't like to come apart! and my fantastic track record suggests that if I: 1) assemble too early I will: 2) break or knock parts off.

OK gents - stay safe -

Nick

Hello gents,

I'm calling the P34 done. As a whole, it is an interesting build. I had a bit of sun today, so outside I went:

















This is a kit that I like more in terms of it's individual elements, than the whole:



I showed this photo last so you can see just how dramatic the difference in size between the front and rear tires is. There's just something about the geometry that I don't like all that much.


In any case, one more F1 done. I'm not sure about what to try next. I'd like to build a newer car - say used within the last 20 years! I have a few in the stash - same story, cars I found on sale -

OK, take it easy -

Nick

Looks interesting! And nice, of course. All that detail like the screen over the air intake and the straps for the front spoiler are very good in accentuating the detail.
I'll start mine tonight - so we can make a head-to-head comparison, although I'm not going to dig too much into the scratch-building drawer.
BTW: I've been looking for Cosworth engine online and I've seen 8 out of 10 have some orange (sometimes yellow) inserts into the "trumpets". Any idea what rthese are?

Gabriel

HI Gabriel,

well my guesses are first, they could be custom filter clamps (you know, as each velocity stack has it's own screen, these would be like hose clamps), or they could be plugs - for when the engine is not in use, or in the shop - you don't want odds and ends dropping into the engine.

ok - thanks for dropping by -

Nick

Another very nice F1 rocket to the display shelf, well done! As Gabriel said, the number of fine details so nicely done really lift your builds.

Looking at the front view, there seem to be some alignment issues with the outer shell and cockpit shroud being angled vs the chassis. Is this because they are just loosely dry fitted?

Looking forward to the next chapter.

Cheers, D