I finished a model!...sort of

Nov 11, 2004 3 Replies

Just put the finishing touches on my JoHan SC Rambler. Rebuilt the taillight area to correct the taillights, built a new (posable) front suspension for it (the kit's front suspension is metal axle-hole-in-the-block type), built a new dashboard, corrected the front seats and headrests, and a bunch of little stuff.



The worst part was the paint; I painted the little devil three times and ran through four sets of Fred Cady's decals, but I finally got a decent paint job. The JoHan decals were misshapen, the wrong size, and the wrong color. The Cady decals were nice, but when I applied the Tamiya clear a bit too heavy, it dissolved them. Arrrrgh. Mr. Cady probably thinks there's some nutcase out in Seattle building a whole fleet of SC Ramblers....



Managed to score one of the Testor's reissues, incomplete, for its photoetched emblems, which look very nice. The photoetched side marker lights were a bit too big, so I made my own.



The only things missing at this point are the bumpers; I just couldn't bear to put them on the car as-is, so I sanded off the mold parting lines and sent them off to ChromeTech; they're not back yet.



I started it for a "Three of a Kind" competition our club was having. I'm about a year too late for the contest, but it looks good beside my Hawk 1903 Rambler and my JoHan '59 Wagon.



Steve H


It's nice to hear that someone's building Ramblers. I could kick myself for selling off my '67 & '68 Ambassadors 20 years ago. Speaking of stupid, stupid....;]

Bill Banaszak, MFE

Huh?

Sorry to hear about the decals melting. Cady decals are screen printed so they shouldn't be melting. Is the Tamiya clear a laquer? Maybe you should advise Fred of this situation. hth

The Keeper (of too much crap!)

I have no idea what the Tamiya paints are (someone will be along to tell us shortly, I imagine) but they don't smell like anybody else's. I laid on a heavy-ish coat of clear and the decals did a couple things: the edges "blurred" as though the ink was being dissolved by the clear, and formerly straight edges became wavy.

It was strange. I eventually got the Tamiya to work, but it involved very light mist coats at first, then the heavy coats later.

Steve H

Keeper wrote:

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