Discussion Forum - Northstar Chevelle Club

During a model build, you can have several phases going on at the same time - because you're literally "waiting for paint to dry"!

(Another essential tool(s) is a TV, DVD player, and box-sets of your favorite shows )

While the firewall pieces were setting up, I was giving thought to the front wheelhouses. In the original form of the kit, the wheelhouses didn't need to go all the way out to the fenders... you wouldn't see it, so they didn't do it.

With the nose/front end of the car off, it's a different story. How to create/extend the plastic 1/2 wheelhouses to the fender. hmmmmm. Trying to cut/shape/bend sheet stock proved to be impossible and impractical. Enter my fall-back DDSSAPSAMBF and some aluminum foil.

Modellers use a technique call "foiling" to recreate the intricate chrome trim on cars. Two ways to do it - use a commercially available product such as "Bare Metal Foil", or a bonding agent and regular 'ol Reynolds Wrap.

Using Bare Metal Foil product (BMF) has drawbacks. It's expensive, comes in a 6 x 11 sheet, and the entire sheet has "sticky stuff" on the backside (it comes on a release-paper backer sheet). It sticks where you don't want it to, and after applying and burnishing down you have to cut along the edge and remove the waste. 

"Micro-Scale Industries" markets an adhesive product (liquid in a bottle) that you can brush on exactly where needed, then apply your own foil. There's very little waste, and the foil is only stuck down where you applied the glue. I also use the cheapest "Dollar Store/Dollar General" aluminum foil I can find. It's very thin and lousy for cooking, but great for model car trim!

Using MicroScale adhesive, I painted the edges of the plastic wheelhouses, and the edge of the fender. Then some foil strips were coaxed into place, roughly curving and shaping the remainder of the wheelhouse.

Then several batches of DDSSAPSAMBF (I need a shorter acronym) were mixed up, and buttered into the area. Once set up and hardened I can go back and contour this with the Dremel and shape it to blend to the plastic wheelhouse and fender.

As mentioned, there were other things going on. As the fenders were drying, I'd started on detailing the engine components.

This kit has the Big Block, but with a late-model EFI setup on it, and HEI distributor with vacuum advance (??). The distributor was drilled for plug wires, a retainer cap/ring made from .003 sheet, and it was threaded with scale appropriate plug wires. (That is a toothpick holding the parts... just to give you a size reference).

Another job was to go OCD on the alternator, crankshaft, and water pump pulley system. A company called Detail Master markets some really cool laser cut stuff for hyper-detailing. It's one of their fan blade pieces under a custom pulley I made.

One of the things that's always torqued me was the clunky and not-to-scale look of the combination crank/WP/alternator/belt "thing" that every model car kit engine has! Granted, it's an easy & cost effective way to represent a difficult bunch of parts, but it's ugly.

Now that I've got my mini Sherline lathe setup, I can finally make my own parts. Taking measurements from the plastic pieces, I chucked up a piece of 1/4" aluminum rod-stock, and re-created the three pulleys.

They were painted with semi-gloss black, and a gold mix (haven't found a good simulated cadmium color...) for the alternator.

The engine block, bellhousing, and transmission were painted Chevy Orange and Flat Aluminum. Plug wire holes drilled in the heads, and totally scratch-built shifter linkage & arms on the transmission.

Remember, Craftsman use chemical filler, the other guys use "Bondo"

John, I am incapable of having the patience to do most of the stuff you do!

Really neat effort, have fun!!!

Karl