Let’s see your oldest surviving builds

[atomicholiday]

Man, I wanted to spark up some nostalgia and get people to show a little of their history with the group, and you guys REALLY came through BIG-TIME! I'm absolutely loving reading some of the stories, and these old builds are just great. So cool.

406 Silverado - Hmm...  That blue Camaro looks vaguely familiar...  

When I was 13 I used the money I earned pumping gas to buy a '56 Chevy 210 Sport Sedan (4 door hardtop) that had been sitting in a field for about 15 years. It was pretty much toast with no floor a seized solid engine and not an inch of brake line left but I only paid $20 for it. My dad scored an mid sixties 327 and four speed tranny that came out of a stock car that a local junkyard used to run and in it went. I have a picture someplace of the car with that engine sitting in front of it. After many square feet of tin, several thousand pop rivets and about a 5 gallon pail of tar it had a "floor" and I made up all new brake lines out of some sort of tubing that probably wasn't rated for brakes. Took about 2 years but I actually got it drivable. I drove it for about a year on plates from my mother's T-Bird. Yes I was only 15 but you could get away with that back then. One day I went over some railway tracks a little fast and the whole car just buckled in the middle. Apparently my frame welding skills were still sub par. I took the plates off on the side of the road and walked away. No idea what happened to the car.



This story is on topic since it explains one reason why I stopped building models at 13!

On topic or not, I think every one of us would love to know what happened to that car after that!  Great story!

[tatocorvette]

Hello,

  I've been building scale models since I was 8 years old, back in 1978.  I still have junkers and parts from some of those early builds, but this is my oldest surviving model:
Famous 3n1 kit.  I built this in 1984-85 or so. I clearly remember going to the hardware store next door and getting a can of black hi heat engine enamel. For some weird reason I was thinking it could protect it or something. Go figure.  I also remember taping the wheels and the air filters to a cardboard and spraying them gold, at the back corner of my house, outside of course. The red interior, I think was painted with mom's floral paint.
I also clearly remember putting an additional chrome timing cover in the firewall as a decoration. Hey! I was 14!


Ohh the memories......












Thanks,
Ismael

[kyledehart5]

Dec 11, 2023 13:10:06 GMT -5 tcoat said:

Dec 11, 2023 11:39:41 GMT -5 406 Silverado said:

I resemble that remark but I was around 16 when I bought my first 1:1 scale ride.

1966 Plymouth Barracuda

 

This was once model money that I used to build this engine here with:

When I was 13 I used the money I earned pumping gas to buy a '56 Chevy 210 Sport Sedan (4 door hardtop) that had been sitting in a field for about 15 years. It was pretty much toast with no floor a seized solid engine and not an inch of brake line left but I only paid $20 for it. My dad scored an mid sixties 327 and four speed tranny that came out of a stock car that a local junkyard used to run and in it went. I have a picture someplace of the car with that engine sitting in front of it. After many square feet of tin, several thousand pop rivets and about a 5 gallon pail of tar it had a "floor" and I made up all new brake lines out of some sort of tubing that probably wasn't rated for brakes. Took about 2 years but I actually got it drivable. I drove it for about a year on plates from my mother's T-Bird. Yes I was only 15 but you could get away with that back then. One day I went over some railway tracks a little fast and the whole car just buckled in the middle. Apparently my frame welding skills were still sub par. I took the plates off on the side of the road and walked away. No idea what happened to the car. 

This story is on topic since it explains one reason why I stopped building models at 13!

Excellent!! When I was 13 I got a job polishing chrome at the local farmer’s. Close enough I could ride my 50cc Suzuki Shuttle there. Saved up enough to buy my first car when I was 15. 1987 Ford Crown Victoria. Fuel Injected 5.0. 1 owner I bought off an old couple in town. I should’ve kept it. Not because it’s worth anything but it would be great to drive back and forth to work. Continued working so I could spend money installing the best sound system I could. Had to impress the high school girls. 🤦🏻‍♂️🤦🏻‍♂️🤣 Turns out very few of the opposite sec have ever been impressed by cars and none of them have ever been impressed by an 87 Crown Vic. Lol!!

[kyledehart5]

Dec 11, 2023 16:30:14 GMT -5 tatocorvette said:

Hello,

  I've been building scale models since I was 8 years old, back in 1978.  I still have junkers and parts from some of those early builds, but this is my oldest surviving model:
Famous 3n1 kit.  I built this in 1984-85 or so. I clearly remember going to the hardware store next door and getting a can of black hi heat engine enamel. For some weird reason I was thinking it could protect it or something. Go figure.  I also remember taping the wheels and the air filters to a cardboard and spraying them gold, at the back corner of my house, outside of course. The red interior, I think was painted with mom's floral paint.
I also clearly remember putting an additional chrome timing cover in the firewall as a decoration. Hey! I was 14!


Ohh the memories......












Thanks,
Ismael

very cool. What a great survivor.

[moparmadness]

Man there are some really cool survivors here. This is an interesting topic for a thread. A few years ago I picked up this tank at Hobby Lobby and put it together with my son at our kitchen table. He didn’t seem to enjoy it but I became hooked! But I can say with certainty it’s the oldest one I have.

[dukemaddog]

Right now, this is the only pic I have of my first models. I still have the others, I just need to find a way to bring them out to shoot pics of again since all my original pics were erased by my wife.

This is the ancient 1/72 scale ESCI Panzerjager I that I built when I was 7. It survived and still sits in my ever-growing armor/vehicle collection:

[project510]

Its very cool to see all your "oldest builds."

Unfortunately I don't have any older builds to show off. Anything from my early build days as a kid were lost during random last minute moves. I came home from school too many times to my mom saying "Help me pack, we need to move out." A lot of my personal stuff was lost, left or damaged in the rush to leave. As I got older I always built stuff for other kids/friends and gave them away.

I do wish I had my old builds. Specially my very first. Which brings me to a interesting story of how I got into modeling (Hopefully its not too far off topic)

When I was around 10 or 11 my dad was into building RC Cars and model cars. He was building the Monogram 1/12 scale Camaro. I would ask to sit and watch, but he never let me. Probably worried I would touch something and break or spill it. Which is probably accurate. None the less, he gave up after his third try to get it right and tossed the kit in the garbage.
I pulled it out of the trash and brought it to my moms on one of my weekend visits. It was an orange peeled canary yellow paint job and I used a red tube of testors glue to build it by twisting off the parts from the tree. Even at that age I loved low cars so instead of modifying the suspension I glued the tires to the top of the fender wells to give it a slammed look. Even used the drag slick rear tires haha.

Later on as an adult I bought that same kit off eBay. I told myself if I had a kid I would hold onto it until they were ready to help me build it. My boy is 7 now, so hopefully in a couple years we will be ready to build it, and I will for sure never loose that one!

[jeaton01]

I don't have any pictures of my first builds. I had been building stick and tissue models prior to my first plastic model, which was the Revell 1/79 scale F-89D. It was a revelation to me and much more realistic than stick and tissue. It was first issued in 1955 and that is when I built it. I quickly built up a lawn mowing clientele, from which all proceeds went to plastic models. I know I built most of the early Revell and Monogram kits, such as the R3Y-2, WV-2, PBM, and many others. I built most of the early Aurora biplanes and my friends and I re-fought the world wars over many times, but I never intentionally damaged a model. I damaged them enough building them. There were probably more than 100 models built up to 1964, including the Revell 1/49 F-102 with all the ground equipmnt. All of those were lost when I got in an argument with my father about whether I would go to college, or continue working in the family business which I had been doing almost full time since the 8th grade. When I got a night job to support myself I was tossed out of the family abode for being disloyal and I never saw any of those models again. When last seen the survivors were hanging from the garage ceiling.

In college I started building the Monogram 1/48 kits which were an amazing improvement, and I still have many of those. Quite likely the Hawk P-47D may be the oldest survivor.



I never did any hot rodding, but I overhauled my first engine when I was 12 or so, a Chevy 235 6. I went to the parts house and asked for some bearings and the fellow asked me if the rods were babbit or inserts. Huh? Such was the start of my engine education. Since then GMC 270's, Detroit Diesels from the 3-71 to the 12V71, Cummins 4 7/8, 5 1/8, and 5 1/2 inch bore engines, Cat engines from the D-2 to the D-9 crawlers, 1674, 1160, 3406, and 1693 crossed my workbench.  In my aviation career which included an A&P license and an Airline Transport Rating I worked on many engines, from the C-65 continental to the R-2800 Pratt, and managed maintenance on the PT-6, JT-15, and TFE 731, with a little Viper tossed in on a DH-125.

My first car was a 1949 International pickup, but it was a brief affair. Next in line was a 1951 Mack LJT, which had been on the Glen Canyon Dam project. It had a 220 Cummins. I did several in frames on it over the next few years and learned how to drive a 4 X 3 transmission setup. The main transmission was a Spicer 7741 and I had that apart in little pieces. I put a new interior in the truck and repainted it. I started driving it over the road hauling gravel, hay, well casing and tractors when I was 14. I never got stopped in all that time except once, I was driving home from a ranch in a 46 GMC cabover and got pulled over by the CHP because a mud flap had fallen off. I don't remember how old I was but I might have been 13. The guy walked up to me, took a look, and told me to have my father fix the flap when I got home. Like I was going to have life that easy!

[eaglecash867]

My first 2 builds after my 25+ year hiatus from modeling. Lots of them before that, but none survived.  Had a really nice F-117A I built in the early 90s sitting (Testors, I think?) on the shelf for a few years...and that was when I found out that an iguana can climb just about anything they see.  All the low-observable technology in the world couldn't save the Nighthawk from that threat.  LOL.

Going back further, I started building models in 1978 when I was 7...still remember the familiar burning sensation from getting that Pactra tube glue on my arms and just ignoring it and keeping on going.

[tcoat]

Dec 12, 2023 19:49:59 GMT -5 eaglecash867 said:

My first 2 builds after my 25+ year hiatus from modeling. Lots of them before that, but none survived.  Had a really nice F-117A I built in the early 90s sitting (Testors, I think?) on the shelf for a few years...and that was when I found out that an iguana can climb just about anything they see.  All the low-observable technology in the world couldn't save the Nighthawk from that threat.  LOL.

Going back further, I started building models in 1978 when I was 7...still remember the familiar burning sensation from getting that Pactra tube glue on my arms and just ignoring it and keeping on going.

[stikpusher]

Dec 12, 2023 18:46:56 GMT -5 dukemaddog said:

Right now, this is the only pic I have of my first models. I still have the others, I just need to find a way to bring them out to shoot pics of again since all my original pics were erased by my wife.

This is the ancient 1/72 scale ESCI Panzerjager I that I built when I was 7. It survived and still sits in my ever-growing armor/vehicle collection:

Mark, that looks pretty damn good for being built by a 7 year old... and even more so to be so intact after all these years!

[TJ]

Dec 12, 2023 19:49:59 GMT -5 eaglecash867 said:

My first 2 builds after my 25+ year hiatus from modeling. Lots of them before that, but none survived.  Had a really nice F-117A I built in the early 90s sitting (Testors, I think?) on the shelf for a few years...and that was when I found out that an iguana can climb just about anything they see.  All the low-observable technology in the world couldn't save the Nighthawk from that threat.  LOL.

Going back further, I started building models in 1978 when I was 7...still remember the familiar burning sensation from getting that Pactra tube glue on my arms and just ignoring it and keeping on going.

I had that same feeling but it was from having to use paint thinner to clean my blue leg from spilling an entire bottle of Testors enamel sea blue all over my thigh with shorts on.  I think I was 11-12

[atomicholiday]

project510 - Hope you get to build that old Camaro together with your boy someday.  That would be awesome!  Enjoy him while he's young.  They grow up so darn fast!  Mine's in Grad school already.  How the heck did my little girl turn 24???


jeaton01 - Thanks for sharing your story, John.  I found it absolutely fascinating.  Sounds like you've lived quite the life.

[project510]

Dec 13, 2023 16:00:56 GMT -5 atomicholiday said:

project510 - Hope you get to build that old Camaro together with your boy someday.  That would be awesome!  Enjoy him while he's young.  They grow up so darn fast!  Mine's in Grad school already.  How the heck did my little girl turn 24???


jeaton01 - Thanks for sharing your story, John.  I found it absolutely fascinating.  Sounds like you've lived quite the life.

Don't I know it! I helped raise my niece while her parents were in nursing school and getting masters and such. She's more a daughter than a niece and she's in her 2nd year of college. It feels like I went to sleep and woke up in my 40's and she was off to college. I appreciate everyday with my boy!

[dukemaddog]

Dec 13, 2023 0:25:47 GMT -5 stikpusher said:

Dec 12, 2023 18:46:56 GMT -5 dukemaddog said:

Right now, this is the only pic I have of my first models. I still have the others, I just need to find a way to bring them out to shoot pics of again since all my original pics were erased by my wife.

This is the ancient 1/72 scale ESCI Panzerjager I that I built when I was 7. It survived and still sits in my ever-growing armor/vehicle collection:

Mark, that looks pretty damn good for being built by a 7 year old... and even more so to be so intact after all these years!

Thank you Carlos! I was surprised it survived all this time too. Even the decals stayed on the non-painted surface! Several years back, the only other thing I did was to shoot a dullcote over it to insure that all was sealed in.

Later I built a PzII and did a partial camouflage paint pattern on it.... meaning I added brown stripes over the bare tan plastic for an Afrika Korps look. I still have that too, I just need to re-shoot pics whenever I get the chance.