Plastic Parakeets Never Die!!

 Plastic parakeets never squawk, shed feathers, need fed, bite, poop, or die. They just get dusty. Here is an old Bachmann "Birds Of the World" series Parakeet model kit from the 1960's that I bought on eBay about 5 years ago, built it up and painted it to look like our late parakeet that we had that we named "Beak" because he had one. Here are pictures that I took of the life sized model recently.

Here, below is another plastic parakeet model that started out as a robotic toy. But because of how that the batteries had to be placed inside a cavity through an access door in the front breast feathers, and a head that looked like it was partially popped off or severed, I decided to modify it into a static, more realistic model, if you will. I filled in the battery compartment cover cracks, as well as the screw holes where the screws go that hold the toy together, using a plastic filler putty. After it dried, I sanded the breast back to its original contours, but I purposely left it a little rough to simulate the layered look of the bird's breast feathers. I also did before I did all this removed the button cell batteries, and disabled the heads animated movements, by cutting off the metal motor shaft that the head was mounted to, and crazy glued it directly to the birds body. While the thing was still animated, my wife said it's head moved when it chirped like it had Turret's Syndrome, the animation was that bad. After I did all this stuff, I went to my True Value store, and bought a small bottle of "Folk Art" brand acrylic paint in bright green, to repaint the breast back to the green color it originally was before I partially sanded it off when I resculpted the breast feather features. Here are the results.

Jim.

1957 Chevy Bel Air 4 door Sports Sedan Hardtop 1/25 scale model-Revisited!

Beings that since I posted about this model back in 2010,  it has become my most popular post.  I thought I would revisit it with better, brand new digital photos of this model, that I just took, today. Now you can see this 1984 built AMT/Jo-Han scale model in somewhat more detail. It is a little over 8" long in 1/25 scale.

For these photos, I took the clear cover off the display box, and took the model outside to photograph it.

For a model that I built 28 years ago, I think it came out nice, and it still is very presentable! It is far from perfect but scale model kit builds of this body style of '57 Bel Air 4 door hardtops are practically non-existent.

 That is why I combined an AMT 1957 Chevy Bel Air 2 door hardtop kit with a Jo-Han/Ex-El products 1956 Pontiac Star Chief 4 door Catalina hardtop reproduction dealer promotional model to make this model.

Door lines on the body needed to be filled in and rescribed. Door handles needed to be shaved off and rebuilt in different spots.

The interior cavity opening in the body needed lengthened to accommodate the longer interior box and 4 door hardtop roof.  The back half of the interior box needed to be totally cut away, including the complete removal of the coupe rear arm rests, reconstructed, as well as lengthened, including rebuilding the package shelf, new rear door panels, new arm rests, as well as extending the width of the back seat, and making the coupe split back front seat into a sedan type solid back front seat. The window assembly came from a junked AMT original AMT 1957 Pontiac Star Chief Catalina 4 door hardtop friction promotional model. It fit my body shell without my having to modify it. I also added a turn signal lever to the steering column, as this is missing from the AMT kit. In that time period 1956 and 1957, Pontiac and Chevrolet shared the same hardtop roof sheet metal.

  The AMT '57 Chevy kit has the hood bar molded in as an integral part of the bumper grille assembly.

  

For this model, I cut the piece free from this assembly and attached it to the front of the hood as per the actual car.

A close up shot of this detail

This model is a replica of a yellow and white '57 Bel Air 4 door hardtop that I owned from 1980 through 1983. My dad made me sell it because he said that it was junk, and it would never be worth anything. I had alot of misgivings about this, but I was still "just a kid that did not know anything". so I did not really have a choice.The choices I did have were, either sell the car, or my dad would have booted me out of the house. There was no way that I could afford that, so I sold the car at a tremendous loss. My building this model was a consolation to me.

I thought you might enjoy seeing these images of this what I consider to be a nicer body style than the two door hardtop. I tried to open the hood to photograph the fully painted and detailed engine compartmet, but it was stuck shut. I have not opened it in about 15 years, and I was afraid if I would have used too much force, that I would have damaged the model. So I let it go.

                        So enjoy the images that I was able to take of this one of a kind model car.

Grille, and Chevrolet coat of arms on grille bar.

Let's zoom up on this view!

                                                 Oh, them cool '57 taillights!!

Here is the original post from 2010.

http://jayveejayaresjunk.blogspot.com/2010/11/1957-chevy-bel-air-4-door-sports-sedan.html

Jim.