My first full guitar build: Semi-hollow body

So, after some promising but lackluster results with my attempt to refinish a damaged Ibanez G10 guitar I figured why not go whole hog and do one from the ground up? To add a ton to the degree of complexity, I decided to go with a semi-hollow body guitar for full build number one. To further add to the difficulty, I chose to dye the wood grain rather than paint over it. Because seriously, when you’re learning to ski, are you going to learn more on the Bunny Slopes or on K12? (and kudos to anyone who got that reference without clicking the link. So I ordered up a kit and set to finishing it. The body looked like this coming out of the box: The front had a beautiful grain that I figured I’d be able to finish without much of an issue. Seriously, it looked like I could Continue reading My first full guitar build: Semi-hollow body

Second Pancake Complete!

I believe Q*Bert said it best when he said, “@!#?@!”. I could probably expand on that, but the eloquence of the simple phrase seems so fitting to describe project: second pancake. It’s finished now, and finished is such an apt term. The engine and interior really look very good on it. Even the wheels, decals, etc.: And then there’s the body. Jesus Fucking Christ. Everything that could have gone wrong certainly did. The initial attempt to install bare metal foil on the side trim resulted in having to strip and repaint it. The second shot at painting wasn’t nearly as smooth as the first. Still, I soldiered on. I went with the two-tone paint because I knew it wasn’t going to be a showpiece and I figured I could learn something along the way. That also went pretty well. Even the application of the trim paint wasn’t too bad. Then Continue reading Second Pancake Complete!

Second pancake nears completion

With the neck no longer bothering me, I was able to get project second pancake to this crucial stage. All parts from the trees are now in place with the exception of some of the chrome and the windows. I’ve been applying decals along the way, so there will be little left to do once I have those in place. As with project first pancake, the most disappointing part of this one is going to be the body paint. I had such high hopes in the beginning… I just overshot my skill level in choosing a car with so much chrome for my second go around. I should have gone with something much more mundane. Oh well, you live you learn. The interior on second pancake is far and away the best feature. From the dashboard features to the two-tone trim and even the decals, this turned out really good. Continue reading Second pancake nears completion

’50 Olds chassis

A recent neck injury has kept me from working on this one for a while, but I finally got around to finishing the chassis. In my last update, I had the engine mounted to the chassis and needed only a few minor parts added to the suspension to complete it. Then I ran into a major problem with installing the exhaust. In this kit, the pipes lined up with the header fairly well. The problem was that after I installed the engine, part of the frame was pushing where the pipes needed to be. Because of the small area I was working in, there also wasn’t a way to get a clamp of any sort to hold it in place. If I tried to glue it into place, there was going to be a sharp angle where the pipe met the header, and that wasn’t going to look good at Continue reading ’50 Olds chassis

50 Olds Chassis

I’ve been snapping photos as I’ve been working on the 50 Olds, but I haven’t posted any of them in a while. Consider that remedied! When we last left our hero, he had just completely fucked up an otherwise near flawless paint job on the ’50 Olds Coupe with incompetent usage of Bare-Metal Foil. That pissed him off quite a bit. He soldiered on, even knowing it wasn’t going to be as perfect as he had hoped. Here is a fairly good representation of the state of the car once the trim was painted with basic Testors Metallic Silver instead. Largely due to the knowledge that the body was already pretty fucked because of gouging issues in the current paint, I decided to go ahead and take a crack at the two-tone finish that I had previously decided against. This is an ill-advised way to go about this. When I Continue reading 50 Olds Chassis

Getting better

As previously mentioned, I’ve been putting off painting the body on the ’50 Olds because that is where I expected it all to go off the rails. I don’t know why I have such trouble getting body paint to look good. I’ve probably watched twenty videos showing how to do it at this point, and it looks so damn easy. Yet the second I touch the paint can, it all goes to hell. But what really doesn’t make any sense is that I can make the primer look perfect, just not the color coat. I finally had to suck it up and go for it: I really hate that I can’t photograph this one in anything approaching the correct color, but you’ll get the idea. The paint went down with only a couple of very minor imperfections (a couple specks I had missed in my final cleaning and a rogue Continue reading Getting better

Wasting perfectly good OCD

The interior of the ’50 Olds Coupe is coming along nicely. In the last post, I showed the dashboard after doing some detail painting and using Micro Sol and Micro Set to apply the decals. I updated the photo after the decal applicator had done its job and I’m including it again to the right (still with a bright pink arrow pointing at the odometer that isn’t really visible to the naked eye). This is certainly far from perfection, but for a second shot at building a model, I think it looks pretty damn good. I’m continuing work on the interior, mostly because I am afraid to paint the body. After the issues I had painting the GTX, I’m not eager to fuck up the body paint and end up half-assing the rest of the project. The paint for this project is a Model Master Honduras Maroon. This is one Continue reading Wasting perfectly good OCD

On Sharpie as model paint

When last I checked in, I was waiting on some Sharpie Oil-Based Paint Markers, Extra Fine Point, Metallic pens to try out for the purpose of chrome detailing. They have now arrived, and they simply don’t work for the intended purpose. The directions for use of the pen read thusly: Remove cap. With marker it tip up position, depress point with finger. Recap and shake well to mix paint. Depress marker point several times on surface to saturate point. Based on that, my expectation was that the point would become saturated, after which you would be able to use it like a normal pen. Not so much. When you ‘depress marker point several times on surface’, the paint runs down the outside of the pen to get to the tip. This means that the paint is pooled up on the instrument just above the tip and the second it touches Continue reading On Sharpie as model paint

tedious taping

In my brief time working on these models, one lesson I haven’t quite yet learned is to take pictures before instead of just after. In the case of the frame, I have a before, but it’s not from the car I’m building. Nonetheless, it will serve to illustrate my point, so here it is. One of the great things about this Revell ’50 Olds Coupe Kit is that the floor panel is a separate piece from the frame. This made it really easy to paint the frame in black and the pan in grey. However, when test fitting the pieces, it looked odd having the front portion of this in black. You can see where the frame comes out and makes a nice little rectangle there but the rest of the front of the car is attached to the frame because the engine compartment makes it impossible to attach it Continue reading tedious taping

Door panels on the 50 Olds

I’m typically not a very lucky person, however, in the case of the ’50 Oldsmobile, I happened to find a number of them for sale online. Finding the car for sale makes researching paint colors and details way easier than trying to google search. In the case of this car, there are no less than 12 1950 Oldsmobiles for sale on Hemmings.com which gave me a number of sources to view. The reason it is so much easier is that cars for sale tend to have way more pictures than you’re going to find in a simple google search. As luck would have it, one of them has the same two-tone interior colors that I was trying to match. Technically, I think this one may be done in three colors, but I don’t think I can reasonably pull that off. Sticking with my two-toned theme, and taking inspiration from the Continue reading Door panels on the 50 Olds