On the bench.

[willimo]

I don't have a ton to show for an almost decade hiatus from AF, but I'm going to start by sharing what's currently on my bench. It's not strictly street, but I can't currently search for my old threads so I doubt any moderators will be too bothered. I'm going to lump my entire bench together here, because I'm still relearning building after a kind of hiatus, and trying to revamp my process, so some stuff may get abandoned or postponed, and they won't be worth their own thread for a while at least.

First I'll share the current status of a model I started a thread for here on January 10th, 2009:



So, that's as close to being exactly 15 years as you could get. I don't think anything has changed on it since then, except everything. I'm pretty sure I was still in an 8-year relationship that ended, I met a new woman, got married, moved three houses in New Mexico, moved to Texas, bought a house, sold it, bought another one, changed jobs three times, went back to college, got my 1:1 EK project running, bought a 1:1 Type R... basically lived an entire life. Wild. Anyway, back to models.

Another, similar model I'm working on is a Time Attack Civic. I may even have a thread about here, so no telling how old it is. This also started as a Fujmi EK but this one gets little spurts of productivity here and there.









This is the one that's not particularly "street" but if it were a 1:1 it could probably be street registered so...

I have paint on a Zoom-On resin full kit of a Mugen RR.





It's also part of what was, for a minute, a project to build all the 10 generations of Civics. Of course, as happens, all I got was a coat of paint down before Honda made the 11th generation. Oh well.

I'm also working on an FJ80 overlander build. I got lucky and found a Tamiya kit for a good price, then immediately threw a bunch of money after it.



The front bumper is Tamiya's, modified, which I may regret. The winch is Fireball models.



The decals in my kit were unusable, but blubaja had a good set he didn't use so he sent them to me. Lifelong friends, made right here on AF. Anyway, I was pretty happy with how these decals came out under the clearcoat!



Incomplete chassis. I decided against modifying the ride hight, it comes pretty "high lift" and seems right for an overlander.



The front is more correct, since this is just a mockup. The wheels are from eBay, the tires are weighted swampers from Fireball models.



I wasn't going to go out of my way to share this - in fact I had forgotten that I'd done this to the underside of the hood. It fell out of the body when I flipped the model over and it was a happy surprise. I started this pretty recently, and I can't believe I forgot I did this, but I'm pretty happy with it. So yay.

This will get a trailer with the same wheels, and I'd like to add a canoe and a bike and etc etc. This model was going pretty well when I set it down so I hope that continues, and it should continue to be fun kitbashing, scratchbuilding, modifying and collecting parts for this one to get it to the finish.

There are a couple on the bench and currently fully active.

This AMT Bronco which I'm building as a shake the box.



Not pictured, I modified some old resin TE37s to 6 lug TE37 offroad wheels. The result was not perfect but pretty good, and the whole thing is getting me back to bench and practicing.

I'm also playing around with this AMT (I think?) Toronado.



I got it as a glue bomb, and am still figuring out how to get the paint off. The nice thing about these old models is that sometimes the builder used crummy cement/glue, and it can come apart without much damage.

The rear bumpers, though, still came out with some nicks. Maybe from the original build, or maybe because I was handling them pretty rough while trying to take all the BMF off.



I'm still not exactly sure where I'm going with it. Wheels, color, even whether I'll build it with an engine or not, are all future decisions. These were famously front wheel drive, so it sounds to me like it's begging for a turbo Honda K motor...

Of course, as any of us know, this isn't (and couldn't possibly be) an exhaustive list of in progress models. That first Civic certainly isn't the only in progress build I have getting into the decades old by now. This is just what active or at least active adjacent. Some of these may even get threads as I get more into it.

Anyway, I want to be more active here on AF. I don't know if many others will be, or maybe there can be a new community, or maybe nothing. But the big social medias are bad for this sort of thing, I think, and I hope we can start this place growing again.

Thanks for looking!

[MPWR]

Hey-

It's Will!

Tiny Hondas and all!

Great to see you still around. It's never too late to get back into building (and AF, I hope)!

[potsie]

Well, the models on your bench are certainly a great starting point to get enthused again. I am similarly coming back from an hiatus, though not as long as yours. All I can manage are some simple Fujimi box-stock builds at the moment until I get my modelling-feet back!!

[willimo]

It's not been a full hiatus from modeling, mostly from AF. I'll share the handful of things I've built in the interim here shortly. Thanks for looking.

[potsie]

@willimo - I look forward to seeing what you have produced recently. I have been posting a few threads on models completed just before my break (new house, kids, work, etc), though will be able to photograph a recent completion this weekend!