Art Anderson

Chuck, truthfully, 1/25 scale is just as easy to work with when scaling--if you think of it, a 1/25 scale inch is just .040" one my digital calipers, and 1mm is just a gnat's whisker smaller--in fact, I have used 40-thousandths Inch and 1 millimeter interchangeably all the time when working with plastic (the only time the slight difference is important is when I have to machine something out of metal on my lathe or mill, for precise fitting. Art

I based my comment re: 54mm & 1/35 scale, as that was the comment that was going around, all over the place in the late 1960's, as Tamiya was just starting their line of 1/35 scale armor and soft-skin military vehicles. It just happened that one of the founders of IPMS-USA lived here in Lafayette IN, when IPMS-USA was started up--known for years as the "First Lady of IPMS", Doris Reeves kept me updated constantly about new scale kits coming out, which I then laid in as the plastic model kit buyer/manager for our then-very-large and comprehensive hobby shop here. Art

I too have the Franklin Mint Auburn Boattail--hate the hideous ivory colored paintjob, with red highlights--one of these days, I'll disassemble it, redo it in some other color. Art

To have used real caning, the canework (depending on the pattern) would have necessarily been pretty think (look at chair caning sometime--the same material), and would have had lots of high and low areas, which would have made cleaning a nightmare. In addition, even with a good clear finish applied, sooner or later the canework would have begun to deteriorate. For these reasons, most "canework" applied to car bodies was done with striping brushes and enamel sign-writing paint--painstakingly, and time-consuming, as each "layer" of "cane paint" had to be allowed to dry, then be covered with a layer of varnish (more drying time, then rubbed out (still more time), then the next layer of "cane painting" was done, and the process repeated. I had the privilege of seeing a 1931 or 1932 Chrysler Imperial Phaeton in the Behring Museum at Blackhawk Center in Danville CA about 20 yrs ago or so--the basic body color was dark blue, with black accents, the faux canework pattern being in the areas within all the molding highlights. Very stunning car! Art

Simply because the rest of the World uses the metric system, which makes 1/32 scale a bit problematic. In addition, when Tamiya started kitting armor, the military model world was fixated on "54mm" figures, which tended to be 1/35 scale, hence the adoption of that scale by Tamiya from the get-go. Art

TBird platform was shorter, but the center pan is where the difference was, pretty much. Both were unibody cars, and the deal made between the designers and then-Ford President, Robert McNamara (who wanted to ax Lincoln completely) agreed at last to authorize the '61 Lincoln, provided it could be done using as much of the TBird structure as possible. Art

Frankly, I would NEVER bother with that "punch drill", regardless of its possible popularity in Japan, as I cannot think of any tool that would cause the instant death of say a #76 (.020" carbon steel drill bit)! I'll keep my pin vise, thank you.

Peter, bear in mind, Pyro first released that Auburn in 1954 or so, and if you think seriously about it, HOW MANY model car kits introduced in 1954 can you name that were really very accurately done? Hmm? Art

Uh, and that very same Cord (the '36-'37 Convertible Phaeton, first issued about 1966 or so in 1/24 by Monogram) has been reissued more than once by Monogram since it first appeared in the mid-1960's. Unfortunately the Classic luxury cars of the late 20's through the 1930's never really achieved Oscar-winning status (taking the Academy Awards of Hollywood into model car stardom), as most all of them "flamed out" as model car subjects when as the Baby Boom Generation was growing up in the 1960's. That's fact, not fiction, take it from one who was deeply into the hobby industry at the retail level 1964 all the way out to the 1980's!) Art

BTW, at DAAM, I had a boy, 13 yrs old, taller than me, stop at the Moebius Display, talked with him at great length, who, after the awards, where my WW-II "right off the Ford Motor Company Assembly Line" Ford GPW Jeep, asked me to show him in detail what I had done to build and finish it--he was definitely deeply interested. Will he, in future years, go on to continue his 13yr old interest in building model cars? I have no idea, but still, he was deeply interested enough to engage me on his own terms--so who knows?

I was at the DAAM (Detroit Area Automotive Modelers) show and contest this weekend Sunday, March 25, 2018, and both the swap meet and the contest were big--in fact they announced that this year's model car & truck contest was their biggest ever, well over 300 entries, double their "normal" entries from the past several years. While I was one of the more "senior" modelers there (approaching 74 yrs old) there were a great many in attendance far younger than me--yes the "Junior Class" was woefully small, but those "kids" who did enter appeared to be very much as intense in their passion as we older, white-headed geezers. However, there were numerous faces in the crowd of the "adult" classes whose hair (and whiskers) were still colors other than white. Our hobby, building models in an "analog" way, entering an "analog" contest in this, an increasingly "digital age" appears to be incongruous,. an "anachronism" in this, a much more modern age, but that is something to be overcome, and that won't happen if all we adults (younger as well as older) just sit back, and lament, wring our hands, shake our heads in sadness--in seeming "disgust". As part of my trip to DAAM this year (just as last year) Dave Metzner and I stopped at the Henry Ford Museum, courtesy of a well-known Detroit Area resin-caster who's got a part time summer job (weekends) as a docent at the Henry Ford and its adjacent Greenfield Village--and we could not help but admire the rather large group (about 20 or so younger kids having a blast at a bin full of Lego's, putting together what those kids saw as "models" of stuff THEY were inspired by, touring that massive museum. I'm willing to bet that at least some of those pre-teen kids will attempt, at some point, to build some sort of "classic" plastic model kit--not all, but some. Purdue University (just a mile or so from where I am sitting, and where I still work a "semi-retirement" sort of gig) has had, since the early 1970's, a program for "gifted and exceptional children", a program in both the fall and spring semesters each and every year called "Super Saturday", which covers all manner of interests; in the summer, it's called "Super Summer" both programs covering 12-16 weeks. For about 15 yrs or so (1974 though 1989) a late professor in the College of Liberal Arts (and a model builder) and I taught a weekly, Saturday morning 2-hour class in "plastic model building" which was so popular that we had to limit the number of kids who could join the "course" due to our being able to use just one classroom--meaning about 30 school kids, both boys and girls, ages 9-about 13 or so, both boys and GIRLS. While of course, today, the vast majority of those kids, now grownups have moved on, away from our twin cities (and BTW, those kids came from as far away as 50-60 miles every one of the 12 or so Saturdays to be a a part of that--and I do know that someone else is still offering that very same course today, as I have seen the results in a classroom there in a building I used to clean just 4-5 yrs ago, as part of what is now "Super Summer"--the same program, offered for 10 weeks every summer. Indiana being still a very "rural" state in which there are several "statistical metropolitan areas", 4-H is a very popular program every summer--every one of our 92 counties has a 4H program, including Marion County (Metro Indianapolis is an example) and model building is a fairly popular 4-H program still, and plastic model building is, certainly in many counties here, a fairly popular classification. Of course, only a fraction of today's kids in such a program have, and will continue to have, an ongoing interest in such programs--but think about it, the same is true of virtually EVERY such program (regardless of the subject or interest) as kids grow up--kids who participate in say 4-H, just as with Boy- or Girl-Scouts will necessarily at some point, will move on to other interests--no matter the young-age area of interest, no matter the "event area" that captured them for a few of their growing up years--that has been the way of such childhood/teenage areas of interest all the way through the history of such things. If you think about it, SERIOUSLY, how many adults today go camping "out in the woods" in tents and sleeping bags, who did such things as Boy- or Girl Scouts, really? Only a percentage, and I would submit, a rather small percentage. Be it a "young age" or raising a calf, a pig, chickens, wood-working, "roughing it" in the woods with a canvas tent & sleeping bag, or a model kit--most any of those things they got exposed to as kids, many if not most will move on to other interests, other "passions", their trophies and ribbons of youth to become something that some will display in their homes to show their kids, probably more likely, their grandkids. Face it or not, guys, while many of us who frequent this, and other online forums are PASSIONATE about our hobby, never--not even in our younger years as teenagers and young adults did we ever really "preach" or "practice" the "gospel" of the hobby we loved as say, 8 to perhaps 15 or 16 yrs old, to the age groups coming up behind us--no we did not, no we really don't even today (myself included!). I will submit that the same is very true of just about any pursuit that any who read this drivel of mine here, period. I know I have not. I think, that at the age I am, nearly 74 yrs old, no kids of my own (not for lack of trying!), and that is nothing at all we need be ashamed of--the very same thing can, I insist (!) has been true of most any generation that has come before us, since time immemorial. While the building of plastic model kits was, in my boyhood years of the 1950's, of FAD proportions, by 1970's that fad was running down, fading--I know that now, being as I was, fairly deeply involved in hobby retailing--other competing interests were already raising to our (often uncaring) eyes. By the mid-1960's, it was slot car racing, then it was real cars, girls, as our "Baby Boomer Generation" began to come of age, Girls (who became our wives and in most cases, the mothers of our children (and children, all the way down for generations, have reached out often to interests that differed from their parents). For example, my parents, having been born at the opening of the 20th Century, who were expected, when they were mere toddlers, to follow traditions as old as civilization itself, to aspire at being as good (if not better) than their parents and grandparents at the simple, yet laborious tasks their ancestor's daily lives, instead went on to move onward and upper (how many of your parents--or grandparents churned perfect butter every week?) As for me, I am about to expose two of my great-nephews, age almost 13, the other just 8, into the idea of making something with their own hands that interests them as much as it does me--building a model car. I hope I am not stupid enough to expect either of them to become as passionate as I've been for the last 66 yrs though, but both are passionate about doing stuff with their hands, building things, making things. A man, in my boyhood, told me once, that "Throw enough mud balls against the side of your barn, some will stick", and I believe that is true. So, if we are to spread the concept, the passion we have for building models, especially models of automobiles, that becomes, or so it seems to me, very much the same thing--"throw enough balls of that "mud" against the wall of kid's minds, and some of that surely will stick." Does that make any sense at all?

Conventional only in that all Fords from about 1907 until the end of Model T production in June 1927 used Ford's standard 2-speed planetary transmission with foot pedal controls--not exactly your "conventional manual transmission" that most think of--sliding gears, with a separate foot-pedal clutch, and a gear shift lever. And this includes EVERY Ford Model TT truck as well--those even had the same 176cid 22-bhp flathead four cylinder as mounted in every Model T. Art

Absolutely! While I don't know the various hobby wholesale companies around the country any more, there have pretty much always been wholesale distributors regionally across the US. Granted, for several decades since the beginning of hobby wholesalers (Trost Modelcraft & Hobbies was, I believe, the very first one, out of the south side of Chicago beginning in 1932--hardly an auspicious time to start such a business--but they did, and were in business until just a few years or so ago). When I had my own hobby shop (The Modelmaker 1984-92) Chicago was still arguably the center of the wholesale side of the industry--Trost, United Model Distributors, Midwest Model Supply, and another whom I never did any business with). Great Planes had just gotten really going in Champaign IL, Wm. K. Walthers (on the train side of hobbies) having been in business in Milwaukee since about 1940. There are a couple of fairly large wholesale houses on the East Coast, and of course, the same on the West Coast. Art

Scott, nothing that a simple Google Image Search is all it took! (I highly recommend them, BTW!) Art

They didn't start installing their own "manufactured-in-house" 4X4 drive line until 1967, IIRC. Art

Depends on what Jimmy based his body shell on (odds are that a Revell '57 Country Squire was used, or else he recast someone else's resin body. In real life, all '57 Ford wagons (Sedel included) were based on Ford's sedan series chassis, which is shorter overall than AMT's 57 hardtop, which was on a longer frame). Go with the Ranchero for underpinnings. Art

If you want a '57 Ford sedan, in 1/25 scale, then Revell is the one, as AMT's kit is the somewhat longer, very different '57 Fairlane 500 hardtop. Art

The TT has a longer, much heavier frame, along with a heavy, worm-drive rear axle, and a rear transverse spring that dwarf's the standard Model T

More like the cost of highly skilled labor, frankly! For example, if your hourly pay at your job (you know, the job that pays your bills, puts food on your table, clothes on your back, makes the car and house payments--on and on) is $20/hr, and you decide to build a very well-done (in the opinion of say, contest judges, not your own opinion to the exclusion of all others), and you decide to enter this "market", consider how many hours it takes you to complete a model car that will turn the heads of others, how much would YOU charge for it? Consider that at your standard rate of $20/hr (what you, in this perhaps hypothetical situation) if a model that will "turn heads" in the marketplace of folks who choose to buy the work of others, and that this hypothetical model takes you 100 hours to complete, wouldn't you have every reason to expect $2,000 for your excellent work? Guys like Paul Hettick, have been at this business of doing scale model cars professionally for years, and he has a well (and hard)-earned reputation. End of statement. Art Anderson

No, it's not a TT truck, but a commercial body on the standard Model T passenger car chassis (Ford sold Model T's as just the bare frame, with fenders, hood, firewall and cowling, for just such a conversion--back in the 'teens and 'twenties (of the 20th Century, of course) there were hundreds, if not thousands of fairly small, local shops (even small factories) that built such commercial bodies on special order. Art

JoHan did them, back in the day. Art

Again, as stated just above your post, AMT NEVER had tooling for ANY Olds Toronado's--MPC had one, apparently irretrievably altered the tooling into a TV/Movie car (could well be that this tooling no longer even exists) and JoHan--whose tooling slowly disappeared over the years. Art

Steve, the photo of an unrestored example says it all! Keep in mind that the '65 Plymouth was a unit-bodied car, and in a quick image search online, I've seen a couple of pics of restorations, and there is NO seam visible between the "tulip panel" and it's adjacent rear quarter panels. As such, more than one detail such as this would be characteristic of a unibody car would be seen, back in the day when the only other US automaker, besides Chrysler, went so "whole hog" into unit-body construction. Art

Frankly, while I have considered working up an Ecto as a hearse, with a fully detailed Cadillac Commercial chassis, I've never tried it, but I suspect at least the Monogram hood, grille and front bumper will work though Art