... several years ago jon, roger, erik and i shared a nice wanderabout of new brunswick, nova scotia, and quebec on our motorcycles ... using my little point-and-shoot olympus, this is a snapshot i took at the fortress of louisbourg ... i decided to revisit it and find out if my skills in photoshop have improved ...
... many, many years ago i bought a pocher alfa romeo model ... the company went out of business years ago, so the highly detailed kits are in great demand both by builders and collectors ... i'd put my acquisition away as a "future project," and this winter i decided to make that so ... as i examined the model i decided that i had no great desire to do such things as assemble the internal workings of the engine, pistons, rings, crankshaft, etc. ... there was a time that i would have considered it a great challenge to work on such intricate details even if they would never be visible once the model was completed, but—well, i'll just say that my approach to this hobby is a bit more mature than it was as a teenager, so i sold the pocher on ebay ...
... roger decided to join me in the fun ... we spent a month selecting our models, while at the same time we set up and equipped a nice work area ...
... so many things've changed over the years—"acrylic" paint that cleans up with water and dries in a few hours, "super" glue that does away with the overnight waiting patience ordeal—yet, as i practiced on an old p-51 model, it seems my hands have fantastic skill memories ...
... roger's going to work on a tamiya model of a 1966 rc166 racing bike, a beautifully detailed kit of this 6-cylinder 250cc 18,000 rpm (!) screamer of a machine ... mine is a model that is equivalent to the pocher, minus the internal workings of the engine, an italeri model of a fiat 806 ...
... both models are the same scale, 1/12, and that will add to the fun as we work on them side-by-side ...
... a zillion pieces, this ain't your aurora "snap-together" mustang kit ...
... beautiful plating, too bad it will have to be completely refinished ...
... upon examination i decided that in some ways the italeri kit is even more detailed than the pocher ...
... right, to paraphrase the bard, "here's the rub" ... the italeri kit is a plastic model formed using molds from a now-defunct company that had used them to pour white-metal models ... thus, well, you can see what i'm talking bout ... for this one piece, the body shell, just fixing the mold errors and flaws is going to require several hours of painstaking filling, filing, sanding, and buffing ...
... a few days ago jon had a snow day so we went for a little wanderabout ... a rather dreary afternoon, we decided that if we couldn't find any pictures we might as well go to the governors and eat pie ... (remember, there are few rules to wanderbouting) ... we did make a brief pause behind the home depot to catch the sunset outlining the colby chapel ...
... me, utilizing a giant pile of snow as a tripod, my own little homage to the movie "free solo" ...
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| COURTESY JOHN MEADER |