Project Galaxie: Update 1

Model kits have been available in some form or another since it was practical to make them. Balsa wood planes and boats appeared early on, and when plastic injection moulding became cost effective after World War 2, all manner of model kits began to appear, including cars. As with many things in the 1950s, the big commercial strides were made in the United States, where real car manufacturers were quick to catch on to the concept of plastic model cars as a promotional tool. The bigger brands offered ‘promos’ – 1/25-scale plastic replicas of their new cars to give to children, all part of securing a sale with ‘Mom and Pop’. These promo models were also offered as kits which required assembly, and in this manner the US scale model car kit as it has existed for the last several decades was born.

Such was the origin of the kit in question today: the AMT 1965 Ford Galaxie 500. Back then, American car brands operated a marketing technique called planned obsolescence, which is to say they purposely released a slightly revised model every year to encourage owners to return to the dealership and trade up. That meant the promo models changed each year too, and as such kit manufacturer AMT produced a new ’65 Galaxie kit for dealers to promote their new model for that year. Of course, promos were often released as model kits available in hobby stores, as this kit was. AMT continued to produce it on and off for decades, along with many other similar models based on dealer promos, and that gave us the back catalogue of American model car kits which has formed the backbone of the hobby in the US for so long.

I picked up this lit on Ebay a few years ago, during a phase in which I was mad about crisp 1960s styled cars. When it arrived, I was dismayed to find that many parts had been removed from the sprues and were loose in the box with no part numbers. Anyway, I got stuck in and gave the body a lovely coat of Peugeot bronze metallic paint, with a few coats of lacquer. I decided to follow the 1960s theme by adding a vinyl roof: this was pretty easy - all I did was mask off the rest of the body and give the roof a few light coats of Plasti-cote stain black spray paint, which gave a satin black and slightly uneven finish like a vinyl roof. The same satin black was used more carefully to give a vinyl look to the interior.

The Galaxie 500 has a lovely Ford 427 (7-litre) big block V8 engine, and this was built and painted with a blue similar to Ford engine blue. I also added sparkplug wires using 0.3mm black wire, and painted the relatively simple chassis and underside in suitable colours. The kit includes custom parts like 5-spoke racing wheels and a supercharger, but I decided to keep it razor-sharp and stock, 1960s style: some cars in my view benefit from being left factory standard, and the Galaxie is one of them.

To complete the sharp original look, I decided to use Bare Metal Foil (BMF) to dress the model’s window edges and body trim. BMF is a very thin self-adhesive chrome foil designed for this job, and with a lot of patience a very realistic look can be achieved. The foil has to be cut roughly to size, and is then placed onto the relevant area and rubbed down firmly with something like a paintbrush handle. After that, a sharp scalpel blade is used to trim the foil to size: if on a window frame for example, the blade is run along the edges of the frame leaving the chrome foil in place on the trim. I have so far done the window frames but still have to do the chrome side strips.

Next jobs on Project Galaxie: finish the chrome. Fit the glazing. Assemble the main parts and add finishing pieces.

Project Heavy Haulage: Update 4

I had started to have a few doubts about Project Heavy Haulage, mainly because of a few details which I thought were wrong. So, I decided to take a few steps back and get the truck back on the right track. My main concern was over the chassis length: European trucks are only as long as they need to be because of legislation and the general need to save room in towns, depots and ferries, and the Volvo’s chassis had become unnecessarily long when I converted it into a 6x4 (see this post). I decided that the chassis needed a reason to be long, and what better reason than an extra axle? Also, I realised that the cylindrical diesel tank supplied in the kit was outdated and not right for my truck, so I decided to make a square tank which would fit into the space left between the axles.  This meant removing the diesel tank and battery box I had previously installed.

Several small companies make conversion kits to enable truck modellers to add extra axles, and add new diesel tanks. However, I decided to do some research and make my own new parts. First job was to make an extra axle: I decided to make a lift axle (an extra axle which can be dropped down onto the road to allow the truck to carry more weight, then lifted after the job to save on tyre wear and improve cornering) as these seem to be common on heavy haulage trucks. This was created starting with a spare steering axle complete with steering mechanism, onto which a frame was made out of plastic L-beams to mimic a real lift axle frame I found online.

Real lift axles use airbags to raise and lower the axle: I made a pair of airbags out of Milliput (epoxy modelling putty) and stuck them onto the frame. After a coat of grey paint to match the truck chassis, the lift axle was installed using superglue. I will need to add some mudguards for the wheels, though I am not sure whether to make some or buy a pair from a resin parts manufacturer.

Adding the lift axle meant there was not enough room for the cylindrical diesel tank which came with the kit, and which was inaccurate and outdated anyway. So, I decided to make a modern square tank to fit the space (heavy haulage trucks often seem to have odd-sized diesel tanks). My main concern was weight: truck diesel tanks are notoriously difficult to attach to the chassis because they are big and heavy but only attach via a couple of small brackets. To help overcome this, I decided to make my new tank out of balsa wood which is a nice lightweight building material. After measuring the space the tank needed to fit into, I cut several pieces of balsa wood to the required size and glued them together using PVA glue.

After letting it dry for a few hours, I sanded the balsa block to shape and gave it a layer of Squadron Green putty to begin to make a smooth finish. A few coats of putty were required before the block began to look smooth enough for painting. After all, it needed to look as smooth as metal when finished so it was very important to smooth over the grain of the balsa wood.

After a few coats of putty, smoothing each layer with sandpaper between coats, the diesel tank began to take shape and was then sprayed with several coats of satin black enamel paint to prepare it for a coat of Alclad chrome lacquer. The Alclad will give a natural metal finish like a real diesel tank.

I also did some more work on the crane, which will be mounted behind the cab. I completed assembly and added the decals, and I also added some hydraulic lines which were missing from the kit (these were made from black sprue heated in a candle flame and stretched to the correct thickness). I then applied a black oil paint wash to highlight the details and add a grubby, used look to the crane. I will talk more about washes in a future post: they are easy to do and can add a very realistic look to your model.

Next jobs on Project Heavy Haulage: finish the diesel tank. Add the crane and cab details.

Down Memory Lane: my early days as a modeller

There is something about miniatures which fascinates children. Though adults are often interested to see scale recreations of things, children in particular seem to be absolutely enthralled by the sight of real things captured in miniature. Of course, many children’s toys have traditionally been scaled-down versions of real-world things like cars, houses, guns, animals and so on. So it is probably not too surprising that when I first saw scale models, I was very impressed and wanted to make my own.

My childhood experiences of model making relate to my dad and my older brother, Ash. My dad has been a railway modeller since as long as I can remember, and Ash was into military aircraft and became a very respectable young aircraft modeller in his teenage years. Seeing my dad’s model railway layout made me familiar with the idea of creating a world in miniature from the word go. I also remember the fascination I felt as Ash removed the lid from a new aircraft kit and revealed all those grey plastic parts attached to frames, which I knew would eventually become a colourful and dramatic-looking miniature fighter plane. This being the early 1980s, our village was encircled by airbases from which RAF and USAF jets flew daily. My young friends and I were quite used to our peace being momentarily shattered by low-flying military jets, and I wanted to be able to build models of those thundering kings of the sky.

The first model kit I ever built was a Matchbox kit of the RAF’s Canberra bomber. Like many young modellers, I did not paint the plane – it remained in its plastic colours with the various RAF transfers (decals) being applied on top. I did not have a blade with which to cut parts from the frames, instead using a screwdriver to punch the parts loose! Still, I learned a lot even on that first build; the kit made me choose whether to make the bomb bay doors open or closed, and whether to build the landing gear down for landing or up for flying (I chose gear up and doors closed).

My memory is a bit clouded over my next build; I can recall building various planes and painting them with my dad’s old Humbrol paints, along with a Renault 5 police car (given to me by our neighbours) but the next kit I remember distinctly is an Airfix Stuka dive-bomber given to me by my grandma for Christmas. This one was painted by me in all-over olive green paint donated by my dad, and the transfers were applied, though they fell off later (I had much to learn…)

Once my family realised I liked building models, I regularly received model kits as presents – mostly plane kits – and soon built up a collection. It wasn’t long before I started building more car kits: I have been into cars since I was very young, so it was an obvious choice to build models of them, starting with the police Renault 5, followed by a 1979 Ford Mustang and then a 1956 Chevrolet. Again, the car bodies were left unpainted and any paints needed for the engine and interior were borrowed. However, it wasn’t long before I was buying glue and paints specifically for the models I was making, and at this point you could say I was taking model making seriously as a hobby.

To be continued

Project Heavy Haulage: Update 3

During any build, whether it takes a weekend or a year from beginning to end, it is always very pleasing when the main parts of the model start to come together and give an idea what the finished model will look like. Project Heavy Haulage reached that stage this evening as the Volvo’s big red cab was finally united with the chassis. However, this heavy haulage Volvo FH is still a long way from completion.

Since the last update, I have added most of the chassis details such as the diesel tank, battery box, exhaust system with turbo pipework, front mudguards and a few other bits. This required a little extra thought as I have altered the chassis, as you can see in Update 1, meaning I had to carefully check the location of these parts. The other complication was the unfortunate fact that the kit manufacturer, Italeri, had based this 2000s truck model on an older 1980s Volvo kit chassis, making many of the chassis details including the engine incorrect and outdated. Rather than replacing the engine and all the other parts, I have decided to leave the old-style engine in place and use most of the old details with a few updates where I can. I am not a truck expert, so as long as the finished model looks good I will be happy, even if there are a few inaccuracies here and there.

The other tricky job was to attach the tilting cab to the chassis via a pair of plastic brackets which are fixed to the cab floor. As with the steering gear which allows the front wheels to be turned, the cab brackets allow the cab to tilt by allowing free movement of the pieces against each other, the pieces being pierced through to allow short rods or kingpins to run through them with the kingpin ends slightly melted to stop them falling back through the holes. This is all a bit hard to describe, but it’s just like a rivet which holds things together by slipping through a hole then having its head flattened. However, that wasn’t the tricky bit – it took only a minute or two. The tricky bit was hoping that the cab, made of numerous parts, would sit correctly on the chassis and over the engine and mudguards, again assembled from many parts. Luckily enough the cab sits pretty well, maybe a bit low at the front but good enough, and it sits perfectly on the rear cab support, a nice surprise.

The biggest problem came when I fitted the front bumper and headlamps unit, which fixes to the chassis rather than the cab: I have ended up with too large a gap between the bumper and the bit of the cab below the doors. I can’t think of an easy way to remedy this so it will have to stay as it is. Otherwise, I am pretty happy with how the cab has fitted.

The truck is now starting to take shape and I can now concentrate on the details: the crane which will sit behind the cab, the rear mudguards, and all the external parts like spotlights and the 5^th wheel (the trailer coupling).

Next jobs for Project Heavy Haulage: finish and fit the crane. Fit remaining cab and chassis details.

From the Archives: 1970 Mustang Boss 429

I built this mean-looking Mustang about 5 years ago. It is built from the 1/25 scale Revell 1970 Mustang Boss 429 kit, which includes parts to build a standard (stock) version or a custom version. Well, I like drag cars, hot rods and customs a lot, but for some reason I have never liked to see modified Mustangs: to me, the original sleek look is just right and difficult to improve upon. So, I decided to build it as a factory-fresh car in an original Ford colour.  

History: I won’t go on at length about the real Mustang Boss 429, after all if you are reading this you can read about them online, but it is quite an unusual Mustang. The Mustang was introduced by Ford in early 1965 as a new kind of car for American buyers: a smart-looking 2-door car with sporting aspirations and an extensive options list which enabled buyers to specify their car to be what they wanted, from a basic 6-cylinder cruiser to a hot V8-engined flyer with sports wheels and racing car gauges. By 1970, it had grown into a larger but meaner-looking car with bigger engine options, and the 429 (7-litre) big block V8 was one of the biggest ever available in Ford’s blue-collar sports car. The Boss Mustangs were really a marketing gimmick to capitalise on the contemporary wacky muscle car trend, and the Boss 302 and Boss 429 arrived at the height of the scene. Despite Ford’s marketing claims at the time, the 429 was not a superfast street rod like the Plymouth Barracuda, and it was not a nimble lightweight like its predecessors: it was designed to run endless fast laps on the racetrack, its huge 429 cubic inch (7-litre) V8 engine providing enough torque for effortless high speed.

The kit: The Revell kit is pretty good, though it has a few pitfalls which I did not manage to completely overcome, more on that later. American muscle cars are a bit odd from a modeller’s perspective – they came in a variety of exterior colours, but the interiors were mostly either black or white (some manufacturers offered other colours but white and especially black seem most common). My reference materials, chiefly the brilliant 1989 'Complete Book of Mustang' by the editors of Consumer Guide, showed white as a common colour for the 429, particularly with my preferred exterior paint colour Grabber Orange.

The interior parts were sprayed with Tamiya XF-2 white acrylic and the body shell was given a coat of the same white, followed by a gentle covering with Tamiya X-6 orange acrylic, a reasonable match for Grabber  Orange. The purpose of spraying the orange over a white basecoat was firstly to provide a smooth, matt primer coat for the orange, and secondly to give a bright white undercoat to make the orange ‘pop’ (the orange is brightened by the white coat beneath). The orange paint was then coated with a couple of shots of Johnson Klear floor polish which gives a subtle but quite realistic shine. The hood scoop, rear window slats and rear spoiler were given a coat of satin black as on the real Boss 429.

The fantastic 7-litre Ford V8 engine was brush-painted with a colour similar to Ford engine blue. It is nicely detailed in the kit and includes some nice manufacturer decals to add realism to the engine bay. I added sparkplug leads using 0.3mm black wire and gave the engine bay a coat of satin black paint to match those in my reference photos. I was careful when assembling the big engine to ensure that it sat low enough to allow the hood to close, though unfortunately the hood is not a very good fit on this model, being slightly warped and creating a poor join in the trim along the top of the grill and headlamps. As with many muscle cars, the Boss was fitted with Magnum (known as Rostyle in the UK) wheels with matt black segments, which were painted in carefully with a brush and some matt black enamel paint. The decals, other than those inside the engine bay, were limited to license plates and a small '429' motif behind the front wheelarches.

Overall I like this kit, though there is room for improvement. The overall shape is very good, though the front grill is a little too tall and not quite the right shape. Also, the real car was (and is) a rarity, so it feels as though build options and colours are limited if you intend to build it as a standard car.

Bad bits:

Poor hood fit is clearly visible from the front

The grill is a little too deep

Good bits:

Nice overall shape and detail

Well-detailed engine bay

Assembly generally straightforward

Project Heavy Haulage: Update 2

For Update 1, click here

Having got the Volvo’s chassis extended and painted, I decided to do some more work on the cab interior. I had been holding off from finally assembling the cab because I intended to add some extra details to bring life to the model, so this was my next focus.

Access to the internet and colour printers have made for some real advances in modelling. The internet is invaluable for research and for finding images of things you want to make, and with the aid of a colour printer, you can reproduce detail items in scale and add them to your models. This is what I did to add a lived-in look to the Volvo’s cab interior.

I thought about what a heavy haulage driver might have lying around in his cab, and came up with a shortlist: soft drinks, cigarette packs, soccer and truck magazines and a hi-visibility vest. I set to work finding colour images on the internet of those items, and having saved the images onto my PC’s hard drive, I then embedded the images into a Word document and using the built-in ruler and a calculator, reduced them in size to be 1/24 scale. When printed out, these were folded as necessary (the Pepsi label was wrapped around a plastic rod, cut to length) and added to the cab interior. I also printed out some soccer team pennants and a scarf and put them in the windscreen (I chose Beerschott, the Antwerp team, to fit the Belgian operator theme I had decided on for the truck). Once these bits and bobs were placed in the cab with PVA glue, I finally fixed the interior into the cab shell.

I needed to get on with the chassis detailing before I fitted the cab, so it was time to look at what parts still remained to be fitted: the main items were the diesel tank, exhaust system and battery box. Model truck diesel tanks are notoriously awkward to finish because they always seem to be moulded in two semi-circular halves, leaving an obvious join along the length. Also, they tend to be made of stainless steel, as are things like the battery box and exhaust expansion box. So, the first job was to assemble the two halves of the diesel tank: I used a little Squadron Green Putty to fill the seam, which was sanded and smoothed before painting with satin black paint. Why satin black? I’ll get to that in a moment. The battery box and exhaust box, already assembled and smoothed, had already been painted with the same grey paint as the chassis.

Stainless steel is very hard to replicate in model form, but there are a few products available which give a fairly realistic look. I decided to use Alclad Chrome , which is specially formulated for creating metal finishes on models. Alclad can only be applied with an airbrush, so I used my old Aztec A470 to apply a coat of Alclad onto the diesel tank, battery box, exhaust  and front wheel trims. Spraying Alclad onto gloss black gives the best possible shiny finish, but spraying it onto the satin black diesel tank gave a realistic dull metallic look. Applying it to the grey battery box and exhaust box gave a silvery aluminium finish, not quite what I wanted but still quite nice. The black plastic wheel trims turned out pretty shiny like stainless steel.

I had decided at the start of the project to add a crane to the Volvo, as often found on real heavy haulage trucks. The easiest way to get hold of a suitable crane was to buy the Italeri Truck Accessories 2 kit, which includes a great little crane. The crane turned out to be quite a complex model in its own right, and so far I have built the main assemblies and given it a coat of yellow car spray paint. It still needs the hydraulic pipes and other details adding, followed by some dark washes to tone down the dazzling yellow paint.

Next jobs for Project Heavy Haulage: Finish the crane. Fit the chassis details. Fit and complete the cab.

Beginners’ Workshop 2: Gluing and joining

Welcome to the Beginners’ Workshop. Some of you experienced modellers might prefer to skip this post, but I hope some newcomers to the hobby will pick up a few tips here.

Gluing parts together: that is the essence of model making for many people and to be fair, it is the central process for any build, but there are a few misconceptions. People who have never built a model often assume that they are stuck together with ‘superglue’. When I was a young modeller, I learned to NEVER use superglue. And as for PVA wood glue, surely it has nothing to do with assembling a plastic kit? Here, I will try to clear up a few misunderstandings and hopefully offer some useful advice.

POLYSTYRENE CEMENT

So, what do you stick kits together with? The preferred glue for assembling a conventional plastic model kit (the ‘plastic’ is a form of polystyrene, or styrene for short) is polystyrene cement, which is sold in model shops and hobby stores under various brand names and is specially formulated for kit building. Despite the ‘cement’ name, it has nothing to do with building cement! It actually does a different job to most other adhesives: it melts (very slightly) the surfaces of the plastic parts being joined, and forms a bond as the melted areas fix to each other. Because it is the glue most people first attempt to build models with, it is also the glue that people associate with poorly-built models from their junior years. It can make clear parts cloudy, and it doesn’t stick chromed or painted parts very well because the plastic underneath the coating cannot melt. This type of glue is available in tubes, jars and precision applicators from most model shops.  

Upsides:

It is the best adhesive for general kit building

Used properly, it forms a strong bond for years

Readily and cheaply available, can be kept for years

Downsides:

It clouds clear plastic on contact, spoiling windows and lights

Does not stick chromed or painted parts reliably

SUPERGLUE

Cyanoacrylate, or superglue as it is usually known, is great stuff but has its drawbacks. Unlike polystyrene cement, it works by simply forming a solid coating on the surfaces it is joining, bonding them together. It dries in contact with air, so a thinner coating dries quicker. People sometimes joke about sticking their fingers together with superglue and joining your fingers to each other – or to other things – is all too easy. Superglue is not ideal for joining kit parts together because it can warp or dissolve styrene, and it is almost too good at its job, bonding your kit parts, your tools and your fingers to each other at any opportunity. However, it does a couple of important jobs very well: chrome-plated parts and painted parts, often impossible to join with polystyrene cement, are easily joined with superglue. Resin and white metal parts can also be assembled with superglue.

Upsides:

Sticks practically any materials together – chromed parts, metal, resin

Cheap and easy to get hold of

Bonds quickly

Downsides:

Can ruin kit parts

You WILL glue your fingers to something unexpected at some point

PVA (WOOD GLUE)

What good is PVA wood glue for modelling? PVA is great for lots of jobs, especially if you are creating display bases or dioramas. PVA (polyvinyl acetate) is formulated for joining wooden parts together, which it does well. PVA works by soaking into the parts and setting hard, so it is best at joining together porous materials like wood and card. PVA can be diluted with tap water, which is excellent for creating gravel tracks and grass fields for your models: you can sprinkle your miniature gravel or grass onto your display base, then drip diluted PVA over it which will set hard overnight, fixing your scenic material in place.

PVA is what I always use for installing glazing or light lenses in models, whether it is a car, truck, aircraft or whatever. Though in theory PVA should not be able to do this job, it does it brilliantly – it dries clear, it does not cloud the clear plastic, and it sticks well enough to hold the parts in place thanks to its rubbery polymer form. Best of all, it does not create nasty fumes and does not irritate your skin.

Upsides:

Cheap and easy to buy

Harmless to your kit parts and to your skin (the glue you used to get all over your hands and enjoy peeling off at school was PVA)

Can be diluted for various uses

Downsides:

Not suitable for general kit assembly

When diluted, takes hours to set

HOT GLUE GUN

Glue guns work by heating up sticks of solid glue and releasing a stream of melted glue from a nozzle which, when cool and hardened, bonds almost any surfaces together. This kind of bonding ability is essential for heavy jobs like carpentry but not necessary for assembling kits, and in any case hot glue is not ideal for easily-melted plastic parts.

Upsides:

Creates very strong bonds

Downsides:

Too hot to use with plastic parts

Not designed for fine work, so too clumsy for kit building

Glue sets when it cools, so you need to fix parts together quickly

Not recommended for modelling at all



OTHER OPTIONS

There are other types of adhesive out there, and a few other materials which can be used as adhesives. Epoxy glues and contact adhesives are very strong but often damaging to kit parts. Various kinds of varnish can be used as adhesives, though beware the solvent properties of many of them. Some household products like Johnson’s Klear floor polish (sold in the US as Future) are also used by some modellers, though apparently Klear is only suitable for gluing small parts as it does not form a strong bond. I understand it is also good for fixing clear parts though I have never tried it as an adhesive myself.

Do you have more suggestions for useful modelling adhesives? If so, please comment below.