From My Collection... A Pair of Western Buicks

Gorgeous, John, especially the hardtop!

I decided to remove the Indy decals from the white one and love how it looks.

Nice models John. The wire wheel conversion looks great.

Posted by: @jack-dodds

I decided to remove the Indy decals from the white one and love how it looks.

I did that too. I also painted the wheels red. I wanted a model of one a friend had many years ago.

John, I like your Buicks from "the Age of the Fins."   Here's mine.

@d-m-holcombe 

Another nice one too. I have that color as well. I am a fool for these Western Buicks, so with that, 10 of them are in my collection. 

Great pics, as usual. I find it easy to take a cursory look at these and dismiss them as older castings with some of the "charm" of white metal from a few decades ago. But, taking some time and looking closer, I can see some amazing detail work. Those grills are little works of art. The wire wheels are very well rendered and the scraped and polished chrome bits look good and have held up well over time. These are nice castings and can be had for great prices these days. Thanks, John.

Long before there was a production model of the four door hardtop I did one up on my own from a Western kit.    Better to work with a kit than a beautiful fully built model.

@john-quilter   John, you know that I agree with you, but the vast majority of our 1/43 models just are not available in kit form. Of course, with my skills, my results are no challenge to those models built by nimble-fingered Chinese artisans.  Could it be that I was never taught to use chopsticks?

David H  

@d-m-holcombe  I understand the (probably underpaid) young women in China who do all this amazing model work actually have better digital dexterity than males.   Some here complain about production model quality control.   I would only suggest they built or modify a few more models to see how difficult ultra high quality is to achieve.

@d-m-holcombe 

Your comment about not learning to use chopsticks has some truth. I remember reading an article in a model magazine many years ago talking about a skill called finger craft. People learning to use chopsticks when very young would more easily learn to do intricate and detail work with their fingers.  In 1985 I went to China for my vacation. We visited several small factories. I still remember visiting a ceramic pottery factory and watching the young ladies hand painting intricate designs. My thoughts, I wish I could do that for my models.