Posted in 2022, The Bench

The Bench – December 2022

 Published Date: December 31, 2022

My yearly, self imposed “goal” is finish 8 projects. Ultimately, I’d like to build as many as possible. For this year, I hit my goal of 8 despite the fact that I didn’t have the bench time I would prefer. Some may say that eight projects finished is still respectable. However, I need to point out that most of the completed builds were prepped and painted last year. Two of the builds are 1/64th scale restorations which go quickly. The one big project was the Viper van. No matter, I have eight more finished builds on my shelf!

Models Completed this year:

Finished in December

First build completed in December was the 1/64th scale Beetle. It was one of five cars I found in my yard while pulling bushes. It was hit by the axe I was using and suffered the most damage. On top of that, it is a poor rendering of the Beetle. Alas, it was one of the survivors and I felt it needed a place on my shelf. Most of the work was completed earlier. I painted it and repaired the chassis using sheet styrene.

Picked wheels was trickier than I had planned. Party because of the odd proportions of the car. In the end, I used the photoetch wheels I bought on ebay.

For the color, I used Gravity Colors Jaguar Loire Blue Metallic along with 2 part clear. The headlights disappeared when the chassis was damaged. I used UV resin to fill in the holes and backed them with bare metal foil. Now that it’s done, I’m really glad I took the time to restore it.

The NSX was a build that I casually started a few years ago. I would tinker and set it aside. Last year, I finished prepping the body and painted it. I had a few builds in progress that I could have chosen to wrap up the year. Since this one was slowly turning into a clinger build, I decided to wrap it up. Most of the parts were painted and detailed last month. I still needed to sand and polish the body as well as get the aftermarket wheels and brakes fitted properly.

One of these days, I’ll do a better job of prepping parts before paint. I had to do work around the headlight buckets to get them to fit. There was plenty of hair raising sanding and grinding. Fortunately, I was able to fix the issue and not damage the paint.

The wheels were prepained the perfect shade of Bronze. They also came with Volk decals. The center cap decals were too small. I decided to use Zoomon Honda logos instead. Once the spoke decals, and center cap logos were attached, I gave the wheels a shot of Tamiya semigloss clear.

Fitting the wheels, when I’m doing an upgrade, is always the last step. This ensures everything on the rest of the model is where it needs to be and I can get the stance perfect. The Fujimi wheels needed significant trimming to fit with the Zoomon brakes.

I used a milling bit and my drill press to get the wheels ready to fit. If you look carefully at the picture, you can see that I almost went too far!

Wheels and brakes done, it was time to pull it all together.

Done!

After wrapping up the NSX, I went through my year end ritual of a photo shoot of the year’s work. With that out of the way, I pulled out my Corvair build. Take 2 unfortunately. I botched the body work and painted it, then realized I needed to do better…lets just say it was stripped and time to start fresh. I started to organize all of the parts for the build and continued experimenting with different wheels. I’m still sticking with the BMW IMSA wheels…for now.

Thoughts…

Looking back over the year, I’m glad I was able to work on builds and bring so many across the finish line. My career and other obligations have made it much more difficult to find time to relax and build. Looking to 2023, I’m wrapping up building a new house and will be moving. I need time to tear down my shop and then rebuild it in the new house. With that in mind, maybe I can get 5 done next year? All that aside, get busy building and have fun!