... of course I've been building for much longer, but much of it was before the advent of the InterWeb. And coming out of the closet was a big step. So if you'll allow me to wallow in self-indulgent reminiscences, I'll share some of the highlights here.
In six years I've pursued all the oddball stuff I wanted when I was a kid. D-Type Jags, 917 and 908 Porsches, Cheetahs and Cobras, the list goes on. Mostly what I have learned has been better detailing, especially under the hood where arguably a lot of the beauty resides. This also led me to resin and multi-media kits from a range of small producers, since a lot of this stuff is not available in styrene from the major producers.
The first Model Factory Hiro I kit completed was this Abarth OT 1300 Periscopio. MFH makes devilishly complex kits of gorgeous, obscure and otherwise unavailable cars. They should be tackled with this in mind. This obscure Abarth was one of their simpler builds.
I worked on these Alfa Giulias as a mechanic in the 1980s. Gorgeous little cars, even if they did tend to smoke a bit, and second gear synchro did not suffer fools gladly. The Fujimi plastic was good enough to polish, not paint needed.
Alfa TZ1: racing precursor to the Giulia. The MFH kit is very nice.
Dino 206S from Pierpaolo Pintarelli, available through his Facebook page. Sadly this kit has no engine, but we'll forgive him because the car is gorgeous. A quick build given the lack of mechanical detail.
I drooled over the 166 MM Berlinetta and Barchetta as a kid. Long nose, short deck, and a 2-litre V12: what more could you want? All in a package the size of an MG Midget. The MFH wheels are sublime. The Barchetta is in the stash.
Cheetah! This superb kit, now unavailable, is from Historic Racing Miniatures.
OK, seems it's all been red so far. Here's a green Ferrari, one of the most beautiful cars ever made: the 250 GT Lusso from MFH.
Engine detail in the 908/03 from Model Factory Hiro includes 16 plug wires. It's a flat-8 but follows the trend at the time of twin-plug heads.
What a beast of a kit! I also have the MFH kit of the 917K in the stash, but this one is the much easier Fujimi kit.
Jaguar D-Type and Aston Martin DBR1, both from Profil 24.
Some fellow named Shelby drove the Aston to a win at Le Mans in 1959. No one remembers his co-driver, a Brit named Roy Salvadori.
Finally some road cars: The 300 SL was on my wish list as a kid; and the DS19 won me an award.
A bunch of barges, all of them lightly hot-rodded. The top-chop on the Hudson was particularly fun.
The custom exhaust making a coy appearance under the passenger door is a clue to the hotted-up Twin H-Power six.
I've also gotten better at scratch building what-if stuff. In particular I've discovered that military 1/35 scale kits can serve as interesting components of a what-if 1/24 device, starting with the supercharged sidewalk plow based on a 1/35 Japanese light tank kit.
The Russian MAZ heavy hauler is a monster, even at 1/35. The Hitachi digger is also 1/35, but the engine and White cab are 1/24 bits.
While the blog is called 24th-scale, I've wandered a bit into 1/43 and 1/12.
The 1/43 kits are brutally small. I am particularly pleased with the MFH BRM H16, even if it is in the shop with a broken upper A-arm arising from excessive handling.
The engine is smaller than the images in the printed instruction sheet.
The Rover 2000 TC from K&R replicas is a lot less detailed, and some of the bits are cheesy. But since the first car I owned was a Rover 2000 TC, and given this is the only kit I've ever seen of this oddball, I had to have it.
Finally in the 1/24 scale world, I tackled the lovely but enormous De Havilland Mosquito. With a wingspan of 27 inches, it's going to hang from the ceiling, assuming I ever get it done, because it sure doesn't fit in any of my display cases.
The Rolls-Royce Merlins are well detailed and part of the attraction. My interest is also piqued by the fact the fuselage and wing are made of plywood with a doped fabric covering for waterproofing.
It's been a fun ride, and I hope you are enjoying it. There are about 100 decent builds on the shelf but there's more to come given the 200 or so kits in the stash. And feel free to post questions; most of this also winds up on various Facebook feeds, but the full story and detail is always here.
Stay tuned!
