Car trouble and work

There I was and everything was going along swimmingly when my friend and awesome car mechanic showed up to take our beloved motorhome in for a smog check  and it wouldn’t start. So I had to get the Z out of the bay and take it home, grab our Subaru and bring it back to the studio, collect the dogs and all our stuff and go back home.

Why not do this with the Z you ask? Well it’s 1985, restored inside and out and now a collectors car not well suited to dogs and their claws. It ate a hole in the day.

I was at the point in the day where I was about to go upstairs and work on the Star Destroyer.
I plan my days out an hour or so on one project, an hour or 2 on another, and so on. It’s the, “so on” I didn’t get too. Seems I have a bad starter or ignition sensor. I’ll find out today.


But I did get some more done on the U-boat and the T51 Cooper. I made a cast from the mold and started to clean it up. It’s pointing up so well. Today I can scribe panel lines and it won’t be too long before I can mold this master.
The sub’s center section is framing up well. It wasn’t as easy to do as I had hoped for but not too bad.
Today I’ll get to that Star Destroyer!

Pushing hard

  Most people when they reach 69-70 years old seem to throttle back. But in my case I just push harder, work more and do more things I really love to do.I could just never retire and relax. To me that’s a ticket to an early grave. So this week I decided to do many projects at once. 


I started out yesterday with making the first pass mold on the Cooper T-51 formula car body. From this mold I will produce a solid resin copy of the first pass. With the resin casting I can then work more precisely to point up the curves, adding panel lines and scribed details before I mold it a second time to make the production run mold.

​This setup above is the car body ready to be poured with silicone. The mold is poured and today I’ll open it up and cast a master form.


​The next thing I did was ​take the plans for my next U-boat project and enlarge them to the scale I need and using a PDF format I printed out the plans in poster mode and taped them together. I made the bulkheads too and cut them from thick styrene plastic and started the assembly of the Type 2 hull U-boat. I have always wanted a model of this early WW2 sub. Building this way I won’t need to make masters, molds and fiberglass castings. I just build the boat the way it was done back then but in styrene and it’s really cool! Something I always wanted to try.




​Last but not at all least I started the Russian kit of the Star Wars Star Destroyer for a customer who I have built for in the past going back to 2012. This will be the third model I have built for him. It’s a very nice kit and goes together very well. I got a lot of parts on it yesterday.​ This model will be lighted just as it was in the movies.

​
It was a very full day. I plan another today with more progress on all three projects. I have been shooting video the whole time and three different build log videos will be posted at the end of this week showing you how this is all done in detail.

Review from Whitley Strieber

I heard from Whitley this morning and here’s what he had to say about “the Dreamtime”.

This is a very contemplative and personal film with a unique vision. The way Hitler is used as a character goes against expectations, but is surprising and insightful.
People have a tendency to see only the surface of things, not what lies beneath. This film lies beneath. It’s beautifully done, Steve.

Whitley

Last day of the week work 10-23-2021

I’m running out of titles! Yesterday was spent finishing the apes mask and Laser Blast figure. Both are ready to ship Monday.


I’ll have video later today from Yorba Regional State Park of radio controlled submarines. This time underwater because I remembered to bring my GoPro camera and underwater case!


More “Slot Car Fun”, the weekend addition and a new customer build of a big Star Destroyer begins Monday!
Good things ahead!