Finished Build: 1953 Ford F-100 Pickup

 

Somebody's Humble but Faithful Old Truck

There's something noble and respectable about a beaten-up, unassuming old vehicle which has served for decades with minimal care and very few 'Thank Yous' along the way. Commercial vehicles often survive further into old age than their passenger car cousins, simply because as long as they can continue to do a job and earn money, somebody will think it worthwhile to carry on running them. I think that's what happened with this truck.

 

 

I bought this kit, a Round2 reissue of the old AMT 1953 Ford F-100 Pickup, from Rochester Games & Models back in January during a spot of new year retail therapy. The kit is great fun - it is an old kit going back decades, but the general parts fit is OK (if you ignore the easily-removed flash) and the build options are just brilliant. The kit advertises that it can be built one of three ways (3-in-1 as the US kit manufacturers always used to say) but honestly, I think 30 ways is quite possible. 

 

 

I won't try to list every option, but overall the kit provides three sets of wheels, optional white wall tyres, two V8 engines, three exhaust setups, three grills, three types of bumper, plus all sort of optional items such as custom rear wings/fenders, marker lights, air horns, speakers and much more. The instructions stick to three specific builds - stock (factory original), service (like a modified working truck) or custom. Personally I can imagine mixing and matching all the parts to create some great builds, like a rat rod parts delivery truck, a retro custom truck or a hard-worked old beater, which is what I settled on for this build. I am planning to build at least a couple more versions though.

 

 

 

I built the truck with the hood/bonnet closed, saving the engines for use in a future project. I tried a new technique with this build in order to create the appearance of peeling and bubbling paint with rust or primer coats emerging. To do this, the majority of the parts were sprayed with red oxide primer straight from a Halfords aerosol can. Then, small bits of sea salt mixed with a little water were daubed onto the panels wherever I thought the paint would be flaking off. Given time to dry, this was then sprayed over with the pale blue top coat: again after drying time, the salted areas were rubbed to allow the salt lumps to break away, leaving the red oxide primer coat visible, together with some surface paint bubbling. Overall the effect is something similar to an old respray beginning to rust through and flake away from its primer coat, as might be the case with an old work truck which might have been crudely resprayed in somebody's barn. This technique is widely used and there are tutorials on YouTube if you fancy trying it yourself.

 

 

 

After getting the bodywork to look suitably worn, I added some of the included kit parts to the pickup bed to give the look of an old garage truck which is still used sometimes to go and weld new mufflers or silencers onto somebody's car, hence the oxy acetylene bottles and rusty exhaust parts lying in the back. The model spanners and wrenches were also included with the kit. I also put the spare wheel in there to add some character. The items in the bed, along with the road wheels and much of the chassis, were given either a oil paint wash, a brush with weathering powder or both.

 

 

Overall I strongly recommend this kit. It is old and the fit and finish are not up to the latest standards, but you will end up with a great fun model and lots of plans to build more!













Finished Build: Revell 1/25 Ford F-150 Flareside Pickup

Straight Out of the Box



 

I'm not sure what initially drew me to this kit in a local model shop (Rochester Games and Models): maybe it was childhood memories of seeing such pickups on TV and in films, maybe it was just because I thought it looked good. Anyway, during the winter I bought this Revell 1/25 scale Ford F-150 Flareside Pickup (dubbed Flareside in the US because the pickup bed is narrow and sits between the bulging rear fenders or wings), painted and lacquered the bodywork, then left it aside. Cut to last weekend, and after completing a Kenworth truck kit (read more here) I decided to get the painted body out and finish the kit.

 

 

 

This is a slightly strange vehicle to British eyes. The 1980s squared-off cab and hood sit in front of a 1950s-style flareside or stepside body. The truck is also a 4x4: my guess is that Ford created this model as a sort of sporty truck for people who like an outdoor lifestyle, a bit like car manufacturers do these days with their numerous SUV models.

 

I quite like the look of the finished truck, but the kit itself is not a particularly well detailed one. For example, the model lacks a bulkhead or firewall at the rear of the engine bay, leaving an open gap. It also lacks inner wings or wheel arch liners at the front, so you can see the untidy meeting of chassis and interior components behind the wheels. The lack of a correct engine bay led me to choose not to model the engine and to seal the bonnet or hood closed.

 

 

The kit includes quite a nice set of decals in dark grey which recreate the original factory side panels on the cab and bed. After spraying the bodywork with silver auto paint, I applied the side panel decals and over-sprayed the whole lot with clear gloss lacquer. This has given a reasonably good finish, though quite honestly I did not get a good enough finish with the silver paint so some areas look a little dark or mottled. Also, in places I could not the get the large decals to sit flat on the bodywork, and where they stand a little proud they have cracked or stretched. Ultimately I began to realise that this model was not going to turn out to be a masterpiece, so I stopped worrying about all these things and just got on with finishing it!

 

 

 

The interior was sprayed with Humbrol dark red in a satin finish, with the seat panels given a coat of matt lacquer to give the impression of fabric inserts with vinyl surrounds, along with the carpet. The coloured interiors of American cars in this period have always fascinated me, which is why I decided to go with a dark red interior instead of black or grey or something more European. The kit also includes a nice set of off-road style wheels with nice big rubber tyres, which really look the part.

 

Overall, I would not say that this kit is a must-have, but even given a quick build turnaround it can still be made to look good enough to go on your shelf. 





 



Finished build: Revell 1/25 Kenworth Aerodyne

Snap Decision? An old snap-kit got me back into building trucks

 

 

Despite spray painting several body shells ready for building, I had not completed a kit build since last year. After a trip to the US, which happily involved stopping off at a branch of Hobby Lobby, I picked up a couple of truck kits and voila - here is a completed model from that enjoyable stop. Below is a short video I made showing the kit in its unbuilt state.

 

 

The kit in question is the Revell 1/25 scale Kenworth W900 Aerodyne. This is actually an old snap-kit, in other words a simplified kit designed to be completed without the need for glue, and targeted mainly at younger modellers and perhaps modellers who prefer a simpler building process. Though no longer marketed or labelled as a snap-kit, many of the parts can still be assembled with nothing more than a firm 'snap', and some of the major sub assemblies, like the chassis/frame, are in one piece.

 



 

This is a reason I chose this truck as my next project. After spray painting the one-piece cab and sleeper body, plus the one-piece hood/front fenders assembly, the actual build was completed during a few hours over two weekends and a few evenings. After not finishing a build for so long, my main aim was to simply get something finished!

 

 



 

I spray painted most of this kit. The cab and sleeper, hood and fenders, frame, interior and most other components were sprayed either as individual parts or as built-up sub-assemblies. The white stripe decals were applied over the blue base coat before over-spraying the cab unit with clear gloss lacquer. The diesel tanks suffered the usual fault of being made in halves then chrome-plated, leaving an unsightly join line if assembled as made, so I glued the halves together, sanded the join lines, then sprayed them with enamel silver paint and brushed some Pledge floor wax onto them to hopefully get close to a natural metal finish. The chromed cab steps/battery boxes were brushed with matt lacquer to make them again look more like bare metal. The real trucks seem to have a mixture of chromed or polished parts, such as the wheels, exhaust stacks and bumper, with duller aluminium and unpolished stainless steel parts like the diesel tanks and steps. This was the look I decided to go for. I left the grill surround in chrome finish, then matted the grill mesh before giving it a wash with dilute black oil paint. This approach was also used elsewhere to highlight some of the details and tone down the bright work.  

 

 



 

Once assembled, I gave the chassis, tyres and lower parts of the truck a subtle brush with some sand-coloured weathering powder to give the impression of a life at work on dry roads. This is supposed to represent a clean and well-kept truck, but I feel it benefits from some dust to bring out the details and make it a little less 'new'.

 

 



 

This kit is available now in the UK for about £25 and in the US for about $25, so I really recommend it as a nice simple build which costs little and will display nicely.