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Welcome to Terry Jessee, who many of you know from his articles and books about commercial vehicles. With his new column "Poured Plastic", Terry will step out a bit, and talk about what's happening in the world of resin casting. You'll find info about light commercial vehicles, plus muscle cars, classics, sports cars, trucks, and who knows what else. Maybe even pedal cars, figures, boats, and other unidentified resin objects!
There is a lot happening right now in the world of resin, and we're glad to have the knowledge and experience of Terry to help us sort it out.
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 High-quality resin-cast kits, conversions and accessories. |
02/22/00
How do you know if you're getting a good resin kit? A number of factors enter in. First, how clean is it? The better resin casters do a lot of work to ensure that the castings are crisp and have clean, sharp lines. That includes door and panel lines, edges, and window and fender openings.
Any body modifications should be clean and finished—no wavy edges or panel lines, no evidence of putty or other fillers (at least on the outer surfaces).
The resin itself should be clean, relatively pliable, and smooth to the touch. Once in awhile I run into parts that seem sort of "chalky." My experience has been that such resin will be brittle and very difficult to work with, and I tend to shy away from that product.
The body panels should be of a uniform thickness. In the early days of resin casting, the technique was to produce a single-piece female mold, then pour the resin in and roll it around until it began to harden. Ideally, the resin would fill in all the surface detail and build up in a uniform manner. In reality, that kind of "slush casting" resulted in body panels which ranged from paper thin to as much as 1/4" thick. That early imprecision created a lot of fit problems and put off a lot of modelers who might otherwise still be using resin parts.
Surfaces should be clean and clear of voids and bubbles. Back in the mid-80s when I started buying resin parts, I had to spend a lot of time filling in pinholes. Caused by airbubbles in the curing resin, pinholes could creat all kinds of problems. Currently, most casters use some form of pressurization to push the bubbles out of the liquid resin during the curing process. Occasionally, though, you'll still find them on innner surfaces or in fine areas like fender tips or wheel rims. A little super glue and microballoon or baking soda will take care of the problem, but you'll still have some fine detail work with a file and sandpaper to repair the part.
Over the years, such casters as the Modelhaus have spoiled a lot of us by going to the length of smoothing INSIDE surfaces, too. The best castings will offer that feature because it helps with fitting the parts. Parts fit is another problem you may encounter. Sometimes the master used to create the part will be off slightly, so that some trimming, sanding, and careful filing will be necessary to get a good fit.
Overall, though, you should expect that the parts will fit properly, that they're carefully finished on external surfaces especially, and that they're completely filled. Most casters will cheerfully replace a defective part, although there are still some who will tell you that "you're lucky to have this unobtainable widget" on your work bench.
I don't order from those guys a second time.
For the price you have to pay, you should expect high quality. Anything else is unacceptable. Fortunately, most of the people who are in this as a business feel the same way. Your best bet always is to deal with reputable folks.
PAINT YOUR WAGON
Since station wagons are kind of mundane, you don't find a lot of them in model form. In recent years, though, the resin manufacturers have worked hard to produce many different versions of existing kits. Station wagons are kind of a natural possibility. Consequently, they've released quite a few station wagons as conversions for plastic hardtop kits.
Occasionally, you'll see one that really does come out of left field, but is so unique and unusual that it's worth a second look. Case in point is the new '81 Chevy Malibu station wagon kit from Perry's Resin Replicas.
Perry's Resin Replicas does this unique '81 Chevy Malibu wagon. It's beautifully molded with crisp panel and door lines. Although they're not shown here, the kit includes chromed grill and bumpers, vacuformed glass, dash, steering wheel, and clear/clear red lenses. This is a great kit, one that I look forward to building.
The Malibu at this stage was part of GM's downsized line of "mid-sized" cars. Originally a version of Chevy's popular Chevelle line, the Malibu first started as an upscale edition. Chevy dropped the Chevelle name in the mid-70s, so that all of the cars became Malibus. In 1978, the Malibu line was downsized to produce the series shown here. The entire line was replaced with the Citation in about 1984.
The only models based on the downsized Malibu were the '78 El Camino kits from MPC and Monogram. MPC changed theirs and updated it as the cars were changed, and even did a GMC Diablo version in about 1980. Once MPC's kits were folded into AMT's product line in '89, the El Camino was retooled to include a Monte Carlo-style nose and released as an '86 El Camino SS in about 1993. Last year AMT re-released the kit with water-based paint and some other items for new modelers.
No kit of a late Malibu was ever produced until Randy Frost announced his Malibu coupe about three years ago. The wagon is another conversion of that kit and is a neat idea.
What you get is nearly a complete kit, less wheels and an engine. Randy lists the chassis as "promo style," but it has a nicely rendered rear axle with driveshaft and an open engine bay. Too, the hood is separate and a firewall and radiator wall are included. So you can set one up as a stock wagon, a police/fire department wagon, a Street Stock drag car, or just about any way you want.
The body appears to be very well done according to my reference sources (there aren't a lot of references for early '80s Malibus), and is crisply molded. Proportions are good and it just "looks right." As I mentioned, the hood is separate.
The interior bucket includes the firewall, a molded rear seat, a separate front seat, and the dash and steering wheel. Vacuformed glass is included for the windshield. You also get a sheet of clear plastic for side and rear windows.
The grill and bumpers are chromed pieces and look crisp and sharp. A final touch is the clear-cast headlights and taillights.
If you're interested in a stock Malibu, then using the wheels, tires, and engine from MPC's El Camino will get you all the parts you'll need to finish that off. In fact, you could even substitute the pickup chassis so that you don't have to trim out the wheelwells on the resin part.
For other versions, almost any parts from AMT, Revell, and MPC should fit. These little wagons have been very popular in the Street Stock drag classes for many years because of their weight distribution.
All in all, this new Malibu is a high quality resin kit for a moderate price. I've been looking at resin for a long time, and this is one of the nicest products I've seen. I have a lot of projects ahead of it, but it's sure hard to keep my hands off this one.
FAMOUS DEUCE
Tim King's Resin Rods produces a number of '32 Ford conversions, not the least of which is this Milner coupe from American Graffiti. You get the shortened grill, grill shell, and radiator; front cycle fenders with brackets; rear transverse spring; bobbed rear fenders; and even a set of Modelhaus chrome reverse wheels. This has lots of possibilities and is well-done. Although it's designed for Revell's Deuce kits, it fits AMT's early frame, too.
I've always been a fan of the George Lucas film "American Graffiti." And like so many modelers, I wanted a model of John Milner's yellow Deuce coupe from the film. In about 1976, MPC did a kit based on their earlier "Switchers" series. The model was inaccurate in many aspects, and was a real handful to get together.
I'd thought about trying to build a clone from AMT's Deuce coupe kit, but that's a
handful, too. Now, though, much of the heavy duty work is done for you.
Tim's Resin Rods of Vacaville, CA has
a transkit for Revell's '32 Ford. Using the conversion with the Deuce chassis yields a
fair replica of the Milner coupe.
One of the fun aspects about resin conversion parts and kits is that they really open up your modeling possibilities. Whether it's a detail part, a different engine, or a whole new body, your opportunities for "different" projects seem virtually unlimited.
Tim's kit includes a chopped, five-window coupe body, sectioned (shortened) grill shell with radiator and grill inserts, bobbed rear fenders, and front cycle fenders with separate brackets. There's also a transverse leaf spring cast in resin. In addition to those parts, the kit includes a set of chrome reverse wheels from The Modelhaus.
You can take this project just about as far as you want to. To get beyond the basics, you'll need to come up with a small-block Chevy V8. The Man-a-fre four carb intake manifold is probably a light scratchbuilding project, and you'll need some outside headers. A good set of "weed-burners" is available in Revell's latest reissue of Ed Roth's "Tweedy Pie."
Other necessary parts include a pair of hairpin radius rods, which you can get from Revell's Tony Nancy 22JR dragster/roadster kit. Or, if you're industrious, you could make those easily from some wire and bits of plastic or aluminum stock.
The body looks to be correct, as do the accessory parts. And like the full-sized coupe, the roof panel sticks up about two inches (in scale). That padded insert has always been an unusual feature of the real car. If you want to tone it down a little there's lots of material underneath, so that's just a manner of some filing.
Inner door panels are cast into the body shell, so that you don't need to use the Revell panels. Some slight cutting and pasting is necessary to get the interior to fit the body, but beyond that, very little prep work is required to set the model up.
And if you aren't a Milner coupe fan, this kit is a great basis for just about any '60s style hot rod. It's a neat little model, and very reasonably priced.
One of my favorite aspects of resin kits and conversions is the HUGE range of possibilities these casters offer. If you can think of a car or accessory, SOMEBODY is probably doing it in resin.
Great fun!.
This is really different. Resin Rods' newest release is this custom '36 Ford mastered by California modeler Nathan Sills. The model is a combination of an AMT '36 Ford with the roof and upper body from a Tamiya Volkswagen Beetle. It sounds implausible, but it works and is a beautiful design. Some of the panel lines are a little shallow, but some careful work can fix that. The only real drawback is that you'll need to scratchbuild an interior. The casting, though, is very clean and well-molded.
If you like Deuce kits, Ron Cash has a cute little chopped five-window coupe. This one is designed for AMT's Victoria frame. I think it's one of the best castings from Ron Cash Scale Models. I started this for a project a couple years ago (hence the primer and flames), but had to use the frame for another project. This is a perfect body for a vintage "rat rod" model.
RON CASH SCALE MODELS
The Modelhaus does only a couple vintage rod conversions. This one is a '40 Mercury transkit for AMT's '40 Ford. It requires the complete chassis with the lowered front axle. Everything else is included with the Modelhaus kit. These kits really are the standard by which you should measure other resin casters. The casting masters are superb; the castings are free of voids, rough edges, and ripples; and the finish is nearly flawless.
Once it's assembled, the '40 Merc makes for a unique custom. This is actually a model of a '40 Merc built by Gil and Al Ayala right after World War II. The nice part about resin kits is that you can paint them with nearly any paint. The model shown was painted with Dupli-color Chrysler Garnet Pearl right from a spray can. They're fun kits.
See you next month!
Contact Terry Jessee at jessee@mcn.net
Want to see more of Poured Plastic? His first column tells the history off resin and model cars, and takes you on a tour of a major resin casting facility. His second column gives you some great tips on starting out with yout first resin kit! Terry's previous columns are located in our Archive. Get info here...
Your thoughts, feedback, comments, criticisms, beefs, boasts, and bodacious rumors are welcome! Please send them to jessee@mcn.net
All content is the property of The Model Car Hub, an may not be legally reproduced, except in short reference. All references must include mention of the author, Tim Sickle, and links to http://www.modelcarhub.com
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